[Misc.] Japan server, 56 million downloads reached! How about other servers?
Expect next event to be named 56 million download memorial. I’m calling it now.
Milestones this year!
Some milestones this year for those curious:
- January: HK/TW server 3 million downloads
- February: Korea server 3 million downloads
- March: Japan server 54 million downloads
- August: Japan server 55 million downloads
- November 8: Japan server 56 million downloads!
I’m sure Demon Slayer collab played a major role in this milestone…
Number of downloads by server, as of November 2020
Here are download counts from iOS + Android + Amazon Fire. Note that the discontinued Europe and China servers never had an official download number posted, so we can assume some number below 1 million.
| Server | Total downloads |
| Japan (JP) | 56,000,000+ |
| North America (NA) | 13,000,000+ |
| Hong Kong / Taiwan (HK/TW) | 3,000,000+ |
| Korea (KR) | 3,000,000+ |
Even more data
GungHo publishes whenever a download milestone is reached, so you can really try to map out when a milestone is reached for each server.
… So I was bored at work, started punching in the data into a spreadsheet, and plotted them based on server. Below is the resulting graphs, note that HK/TW and KR basically has 4 data points total, so the graphs for them are more jagged.
Some interesting things about this
- Japan server: 1 million downloads were reached on release of PAD (February 20, 2012), but 2 million downloads were not reached till October 17, 2012. You can see that 8-month flat line at the start! This could be because Android version wasn’t released until September 18 of the same year, or everyone was sick and tired of rerolling.
That begs the question – If Android was the reason, then why did they keep Europe version iOS-only when EU server was still around? - North America server: NA server reached 13 million downloads on Christmas of 2018. I’m still waiting for the 14 million download event…
- HK/TW and Korea servers: Both servers actually hit 3 million downloads in early 2020. It took 6 years for them to go from 2 mil to 3 mil downloads. Do note that HK/TW is a little special though, since they’re practically on the same server as Japan (can co-op with each other, etc.).
[Advanced #1] First derivative plots
The best way (that I can think of) to show rate of increase is through plotting the first derivative, which shows how the slope of the curve above changes. The higher the number on the Y axis, the more rapid increase of download it is.
In short, you can see JP had many spikes for rapid increases, and a small spike in late 2018 (Appreciation Event did good), and now we’re picking up the speed again. NA server hasn’t has a spike in years, in comparison.
(If anyone who is more of an expert has better ways to show this, we can totally discuss.)
[Advanced #2] Comparing days needed for 1 mil download
Discussions with the great chu2 and tb_ax lead to seeing the difference in time needed to get 1 million downloads. Here’s the plot, for JP and NA servers. Higher number of days on the y-axis means more days are needed to reach 1 million downloads.
From this, you can see that JP server has been gradually longer to reach 1 million downloads (but currently decreasing time needed, likely thanks to Demon Slayer collab), and NA is going up high as we are still waiting for the next million milestone.
Random fact
How many of you were around, or remember when JP server had an event to celebrate NA server reaching 10 million downloads? (This was 2016! I can’t read Japanese back then omg!)
Also I feel like I just wrote up a lab report or paper with this post… Whoops work habits kicked in.
Very interesting information Reni! I cant believe Im playing PAD since 2012!
2014 (NA) and 2015 (JP) for me! It’s crazy how long we’ve all played this and… still playing… lol
man the 55 stone gift + 55 plus + 5 stone godfest just barely hit NA and JP is already at 56 million. glad I switched to JP server so I can actually enjoy the event.
This is such a cool post. Thanks for all your work!
Wonder if NA will ever reach the next milestone DL now that people are jumping ship
Hmm hard to say, JP is attractive but many do play both (including myself), or just stick to NA since some really really really are uncomfortable handling non-English interface.
HK/TW will probably get to 4 million downloads fast with the Demon Slayer collab though. 😛
When I first started playing JP PAD I was quite frustrated due to the lack of guidance and translation… Now it’s all muscle memory, physical memory, and limited understanding of Japanese writing (knowing days and minutes).
So yeah I understand if people are uncomfortable playing in the JP version, especially since it’s much more active and it’s full of new fun things to catch up with!