Tech blogger Chiyo Komoriya pointed to an interesting phenomenon today over on her website, noting a trend in Japanese social game developers first releasing their apps in the Canadian app store, as a sort of testing ground before launching in the US.
While this sort of tactic may seem obvious to many in the mobile entertainment industry, I couldn’t help but be a little surprised that this is a ‘thing.’ Analyst Serkan Toto (who has previously noted this phenomenon as well) tells me that for many game developers with eyes on US expansion, trying Canada first can be a good way to incrementally improve their product:
What those Japanese developers are doing is very common actually, and the reason is simple: getting some early feedback, ironing out kinks that users can spot (and not the devs themselves), observing activity, etc. And if a game doesn’t work at all, it’s also better to not have launched it in the US and quietly pull the plug in Canada.
He adds that US developers are known to use Australian and New Zealand app stores in a similar fashion.
Similarly, we sometimes see companies using Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macau as a testing ground before looking to China. NHN Japan’s popular Line application is a good example of this, I think, as the service’s iOS app hit number one in those three regions last October and is soon looking to break into China.
I find it interesting that some countries which share a common language with mega-markets like the US and China can sometimes serve as a testing ground in this way. Conversely, looking at global developers who want to break into the Japanese or Korean mobile markets, they don’t really have such a testing ground to benefit from.
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