[talk] A game that Newjins is obsessed with?!?

A mobile game that was released three years ago is experiencing a reversal of popularity, with the number of users increasing more than tenfold in three months. It is a healing game based on augmented reality (AR) similar to Pokemon Go called 'Pikmin Bloom'. It seems to be gaining more popularity after it was recently revealed that New Jeans members also enjoy this game.

According to the IGA Works Mobile Index on the 5th, 'Pikmin Bloom' ranked 4th in the domestic mobile game rankings as of last November. 'Pikmin Bloom' is an augmented reality-based mobile game released by Niantic in collaboration with Nintendo in 2021. After not receiving much attention for 3 years since its release, it has been on a box office comeback in Korea since September~October thanks to word-of-mouth on social media.

New Jeans members enjoying Pikmin Bloom. Live broadcast capture Looking at the monthly active users (MAU) trend of Mobile Index's 'Pikmin Bloom', it was only 40,000 to 50,000 until July of this year, but increased to 100,000 in September, and then 1.45 million in November, a whopping 1,350% increase compared to last September.

The reason the game industry is paying attention to the 'Pikmin Bloom' craze is because the game's main users are Generation Z in their teens and twenties. Looking at the age composition of the 'Pikmin Bloom' app users on Mobile Index, teenagers were the largest at 56.19%, followed by those in their twenties at 32.5%. This means that users in their teens and twenties make up the majority (88.6%) of the users. Those in their thirties and forties only make up 5% each, and while women make up the majority at 77%, men also make up a considerable 23%.

It was also named in the top 10 of the 'Most Growing Mobile Apps of the Year' announced by app analysis service WiseApp, Retail, and Goods. It is the only game app. When we looked at the proportion of countries that newly downloaded this game as of last November due to its sudden popularity in Korea, 65% were in Korea.

The industry cites the harmless and cute characters and the fact that it is a healing game without competition as the background for the sudden popularity of 'Pikmin Bloom'. This game is a kind of walking game where the more you walk, the higher the level. You can obtain seedlings in the game to create various colored Pikmin characters (Pikmin), and Pikmin follows the user as they walk, receive gifts, and bloom flowers. Different flowers and Pikmin are obtained depending on the specific area, and it is different in that it is easy to enjoy on mobile devices rather than on Nintendo platforms, which is similar to 'Pokemon Go'. In particular, it is analyzed that the focus on simple 'fun walking' rather than receiving cash rewards based on the number of steps walked matches the tastes of young users. The cute Pikmin characters are also loved by Generation Z, and there are over 14,000 and 12,000 posts on Instagram tagged 'Pikmin' and 'Pikmin Bloom', respectively.