Uma Musume Pretty Derby No. 1 on Apple App Store

Uma Musume Pretty Derby, developed by Cygames and published by Kakao Games [KAKAO GAMES]

Uma Musume Pretty Derby, a mobile game that involves the racing of "horse girl" characters, topped the Apple App Store's popular games and highest-earning games charts the day it was released.

According to Kakao Games, it became the No. 1 earning mobile game on the App Store 11 hours after it was released on Monday morning. As of Tuesday, it was No. 1 on the Google Play Store's most popular game chart, which uses a number of criteria including the number of downloads and reviews.

Uma Musume Pretty Derby is a Japanese mobile simulation game developed by Tokyo's Cygames. It was first released in February last year. Players must choose and train their own uma musume — horse daughters in Japanese — which have horse ears and tails and equine speed. Players train their characters with the goal of winning the horse race.

The game achieved $965 million in sales within a year of release in Japan, making it the top-grossing game in the country. Analysts believe that the game made 3 billion won ($2.3 million) in the first 24 hours in Korea.

Although these types of games have been less popular in Korea, analysts say that character-collecting may change the local mobile gaming scene, which is dominated by the massively multiplayer online roleplaying games (MMORPG). The top three games by revenue as of May were Lineage W, Lineage M and Odin: Valhalla Rising, which are all MMORPGs, according to Mobile Insight.

"Uma Musume Pretty Derby had an impressive start by climbing to the top of the iOS app store chart faster than Lineage W," said Kim Ha-jeong, an analyst at Daol Investment and Securities. "The game is not the kind to see a concentration of revenue in early stages, so its revenue decrease will come slowly."

BY YOON SO-YEON [yoon.soyeon@joongang.co.kr]