- Uma Musume: Pretty Derby gets an English trailer and website confirming Western version
- The racer will release on iOS and Android on an as-yet unconfirmed date
Uma Musume: Pretty Derby is “racing towards its English debut”, as developer Cygames has launched an official website, Twitter account, and YouTube trailer teasing the game in the West.
The horsegirl racer has seen huge success in Japan and across Asia in the past three years and now it seems that Cygames is finally ready to gamble on the West, though an exact release date has yet to be revealed.
What has been confirmed is Pretty Derby’s eventual launch on iOS and Android, in English, sometime after a demo’s appearance at next month’s Anime Expo in LA.
Ready to race
Uma Musume: Pretty Derby places players in the role of a newcomer to Tracen Academy and tasks them with training up racers – each named after a real racehorse but transformed into a 3D anime girl with a penchant for athletics.
Jungle Pocket is one of the latest additions to the Japanese version of Pretty Derby, named for a Japanese thoroughbred who raced until 2002. Around the time of her release in-game, Pretty Derby officially surpassed 21 million downloads in Asia alone.
Meanwhile on the revenue side, Uma Musume has generated more than $2 billion from Japanese players alone. It “dominated” 2021 and 2022 as the country’s top-grossing game and was even the world’s third-biggest monthly revenue earner among all mobile games for a short period after release.
While it hasn’t maintained such lofty heights three years on, Pretty Derby continues to rank highly in Japan’s monthly charts.
Winning in the west
A Western release could see a resurgence of Cygames’ racer on a global scale, with an upcoming launch all but confirmed for the US and likely in Europe too. Of course, Cygames did try launching Pretty Derby in China too, but it was soon pulled despite receiving a licence.
While an English release date hasn’t yet been revealed, Cygames does appear to be self-publishing the latest localisation, complete with plenty of gacha girls to train towards victory.
