In today's age, mobile gaming is a massive market, with players of Candy Crush and Bubble Witch probably never even realising that flicking their fingers idly on their smartphones while sitting on a bus technically makes them gamers.
Fans of Dragon Ball Z have certainly had their fair share of video games to choose from over the years, but none of them has really garnered much mainstream attention. This is understandable, since games aimed at fans of both the anime and beat 'em ups are unlikely to topple the likes of Call of Duty from the top of the charts- especially when they get poor reviews, as many of them have.
Yet the latest mobile craze is not a casual finger-flicker like Fruit Ninja or Angry Birds: it's Dragon Ball Z: Dokkan Battle, a mobile fighting game which, in its two years of release, has now taken over $1 billion in revenue, according to figures from mobile app ranking site Sensor Tower- no mean feat. Predictably, 60% of its users come from Japan, the home of anime; but that leaves the remaining 40% of players from other countries around the world who enjoy fighting against the franchise's legendary villains in the palm of their hand.
Considering that Pokémon is probably the best-known anime franchise in the world, the fact that aimless-wandering simulator Pokémon Go has amassed $1.8 billion in a similar period of time really puts Dokkan Battle's achievement in context- and with ongoing events and continuous updates, it doesn't show signs of disappearing any time soon.
