Wingardium Leviosa!

Harry Potter: Magic Awakening launched in China last week and took command of the App Store's Top Grossing chart very quickly and for quite a while, a feat usually reserved for Tencent and no one else.

Given the almost universal popularity of Harry Potter, I don't find this surprising, and with a really well-thought-out marketing campaign by NetEase, the company behind the title, this success makes a lot of sense.

In its first week in the Chinese App Store, Harry Potter brought in $9M of net revenue for NetEase and Warner Bros. and around $3.8M in fees for Apple, according to our App Intelligence. The success was a result of the brand, of course, but also the hype NetEase built around the title's launch. Luckily for them, Harry Potter made that easy. The title used pre-registrations to get momentum, which included a letter from Hogwarts and a sorting ceremony a couple of days prior to the launch.

Downloads and revenue reflected the excitement. Our estimates show that the game added an average of 100K new users and around $1.2M in net revenue every day in its first week.

China's App Store has become a new gold mine for international developers as the culture opens up to western content. Right now, it's less likely to see non-Chinese content in the store, but that's quickly changing. We saw that with the launch of Louis Vuitton's game earlier this summer, and we're likely to see it again when NetEase launches Lord of the Rings next week.

What about kids? China's limitations on game time is definitely going to put a thorn in this launch, as well as those of any other titles to come. But... This title is likely attractive to kids and adults, possibly more adults at this point, given when the books were released, so this may not be bad news. Plus, it is what it is, so this is more of a "good to know" performance that will set the bar for future releases.