A. Case Study: Boom Beach

Using your resources to internationalize your app can be costly. Add to that the cost for translation services, and it can have your business owners asking relevant questions: Does it pay? Is it worth the added expense to do these additional actions? How can the extra expenses be justified and accounted for? Let’s focus on one app and see what benefits were gained from adding Japanese localization.

Boom Beach is an iOS game from the gaming company Supercell. It’s a strategy game with the main player on an island with defenses and troops. On the game’s initial release, it had limited localization: English and Canadian English. Six months from their initial release, Supercell released a Japanese-specific version. This version of their app included complete internationalization for Japanese and was also localized for release to the App Store in Japan. The following link will take you to Boom Beach’s entry in the Japanese App Store: https://itunes.apple.com/jp/app/boom-beach/id672150402?mt=8. Note how the entire app is localized for the Japanese market, including its screenshot previews. As a comparison, this link will take you to the English App store entry for Boom Beach’s English localized version: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/boom-beach/id672150402?mt=8.

The result?

Average downloads increased 17 times one week after they released their Japanese localized version.

The average daily revenue for Boom Beach increased 4 times one week after the Japanese release.

Boom Beach reached Top Five on the Apple App Store’s global top free and top grossing leaderboards.¹

¹ Source for Boom Beach statistics: Distimo; www.distimo.com/blog/2014_05_japanese-translation-for-boom-beach-grew-downloads-by-17x-revenue-by-4x-in-japan/.

This isn’t the first time Supercell has demonstrated increased revenue from distributing a localized version. Supercell added Japanese support for Clash of Clans, tripling its revenue compared to the previous month.

Supercell’s game Hay Day reached the iPhone top-grossing games chart in Japan, landing in the top 25 just a few days after it was updated with Japanese support.

It goes without saying that “your mileage may vary,” and there is not a guarantee of downloads or revenue after you release your internationalized and localized app. This case is encouraging, though.

More internationalization successes can be found on the Apple Developer internationalization site: https://developer.apple.com/internationalization/.