Yo-kai Watch (franchise)

is a series of role-playing games developed and published by Level-5. Each game have its own unique story, Yo-kai's, quests and characters. The franchise has released games and merchandise worldwide as well the animated series based on the franchise.

Popularity in Japan
The success of their three major IP's, Professor Layton, Inazuma Eleven, and Danball Senki let Level-5 to create a new IP that is meant to stay for a very long time. They took a popular anime and manga series Doraemon as their influence and decided to create the IP Yo-kai Watch. Their first step into the development was to make the player to explore freely and walking around in an open-world environment.

Their first video game released in Japan and became a major success. It debuted with 53,000 sold copies in its first week and sold in total 1.29 million in 2014, which became one of the best selling games on the Nintendo 3DS.

The sequels of the game became extremely popular and the demands in other countries than Japan were extremely high. The animation series that is based on the game became one of the most watched animated series in Japan, mostly ending in the top ten of the rates alongside with other popular animation series such as: Detective Conan, One Piece, Pokémon and Doraemon.

The franchise gained as well numerous of cross-overs in Japan with popular characters from popular series or franchises. The popularity in Japan leads Yo-kai Watch to become a phenomenal creation, as it became quickly a multi-billion franchise.

Release in the west
Yo-kai Watch became quickly sparked in the west and plannings were revealed to release the game worldwide.

The first game was released in the west seperatly, as the game was released in 2015 in North America, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand with a 2016 release in Europe. The animation series as well was released in the west, but known that only one season made a run. However, it became very popular in the west.

It is unknown how much the first game sold in the west in 2015, but is revealed that the video game series sold a total 10 million after its debut in the west.

Gameplay
The player can explore a fictional town in Japan and in America and uses their Yo-kai Watch to find Yo-kai. Yo-kai are hiding everywhere so with the watch, the player mostly knows where they are. The player can engage in battles with their Yo-kai. The Yo-kai are doing everything themselves, but the player can help them in different ways.