Nintendo Co. might have scored a hit with the explosive debut of Pokemon Go this year. On its home turf, however, Sony Corp. has quietly dispatched its rival with a popular mobile game called Fate/Grand Order.

The game, based on the anime TV series “Fate,” allows players to travel back in time and team up with historical figures like Julius Caesar, Leonardo da Vinci and Joan of Arc to rescue humanity from looming disaster. While the basic version is free to play, people can pay for tokens that make it easier to add characters and speed up gameplay.

Fate/Grand Order has been at or near the top of Japan’s app revenue rankings all year and has been downloaded more than 7 million times since its July 2015 debut. It has made more money than Pokemon Go among Android users 104 out of 133 days this year, and 51 days on iOS devices, in the same period, according to researcher App Annie.

“In terms of the amount of money people are spending, it’s up there above Pokemon Go,” said Damian Thong, an analyst at Macquarie Group Ltd. in Tokyo. “The intensity and engagement level for Fate/Grand Order is a lot higher.”

When Sony reported its latest quarterly figures last month, Sony Chief Financial Officer Kenichiro Yoshida singled out the game at a press conference, saying “it continues to positively” contribute to the music division, where it’s based. Fate/Grand Order helped to lift Sony Music’s operating profit by 23 percent to 16.5 billion yen. Revenue rose 8 percent to 150 billion yen. The game’s success is a sign of how important Sony’s gaming and entertainment businesses are for Chief Executive Officer Kazuo Hirai, as the company struggles with razor-thin margins and competition in televisions, cameras and other hardware. The company plans to expand its mobile games effort with more titles in more markets in the coming months.

The original Fate television series and more recent game emerged from Sony’s Aniplex studio, created in 1995 to produce anime TV shows and movies. Atsuhiro Iwakami, 44, the studio’s president, said the idea to branch out into gaming was hatched three years ago when he realized the show’s complexity and large cast of characters lent itself well to the mechanics of mobile games.

“Sony Music was quite generous with its budget and said, why don’t you give it a shot,” Iwakami, himself a gamer and former producer on Fate, said in an interview.

Aniplex partnered with game developer DELiGHTWORKS and creative studio Type-Moon to produce Fate/Grand Order. “Whether you look at the number of downloads or users or revenue, it has exceeded our expectations,” Iwakami said.


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