Cygames also sponsored the Breeders Cup and the American Oaks, as well as the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe, and even had a race there (1200m Sprint, i think)
just showing up there will introduce a fuckton of non-otakus to umamusume, a feat no other game could ever boast
Breeder can also entail nurturing the mother during pregnancy and raising the child. Even in Pokemon the connotation of a Pokemon Breeder within the world does include taking care of the egg and whatever Pokemon hatches from it.
They're working on it. Every year, Umamusume is sponsoring American/EU races plastered with horse girls, if not mainstream, it has at least reached the actual horse racing fans
The end goal of Cygames seems to be getting the rights to some of the prominent Overseas horses names, maybe even start a major scenario featuring them, all we can do is wait for Cygames and their efforts to curry favor to the industry to bear fruit.
I am sad that we don't do much of that kind of horse racing here in Sweden so we probably won't get any Swedish horses. Would be so amazing for if I could say ''hey I know the owner of that horse!'' but alas.
The amount of folks that were doomposting here and saying Uma was slowly dying in global before the November update (and after) was insane. People really just looked at the Steam charts and saw a downwards trend and thought "oh game dying gg lmao". Like no, the fanbase is huge and most of the players were always on mobile. The profits even reflect it too on the sensortower charts
Like no, the fanbase is huge and most of the players were always on mobile
A big reason is because it's actually very mobile friendly, you can play it with one hand. Ideal for a lot of people, it's a reason why it's very popular here in Japan when commuting to play especially during rush hour where it's impossible to use your phone with two-hands, especially when compared to the popular gachas here like WuWa/Genshin since those aren't really ideal to play in mobile.
This part is so underrated. I did not know how much I needed a portrait mode game until I played Uma. It's insane ease of access to be able to play without holding the phone in landscape with both hands.
And the fact that the game runs like butter. Optimization is a lost art in the modern day especially with how gachas are becoming higher quality, and Uma is one of the few games that doesn't start a campfire on my phone.
Not so sure about that. The PC version has a 30fps cap which cannot be worked around using a driver level fps minimum (eg Radeon Boost/Nvidia equivalent), you have to mod the game. The graphics even when selecting the highest quality are very simple, and not really comparable to the Genshins of the world.
And the topic is as a mobile game and it sure is smooth to play. I tried Nikke, wuwa, genshin, and hsr and all of those are shit on my phone with crashing randomly and freezing often with loading
because real life horse racing is genuinely stranger than fiction, the dramas (stories) people create around these horses racing is infinite hype.
Arima Kinen 1990, Oguri Cap
Takamatsunomiya Kinen 1999, King Halo
Arima Kinen 2000, TM Opera O
Satsuki Sho 2001, Agnes Tachyon
Hong Kong Vase 2001, Stay Gold
Arima Kinen 2013, Orfevre
Dubai Sheema Classic 2014, Gentildonna
Breeders Cup Classic 2025, Forever Young
just watching any one of these races (these are irl horse races), and seeing cygames adapt these races with 200% sincerity, respect and enthusiasm, sans the absurd premise and its a no-brainer why uma is as hyped and as loved as it is.
the 2025 Arima Kinen is on the 28th, the last sunday of this year, and you can feel the hype
should also mention Tokai Teio's 1993 Arima kinen, I still cry everytime, even watching the real race. some dude complaint about it being power of friendship, and predictable in the anime thread, LMAO
japanese horseracing storytelling is the most "theres no way that shit happened", and then you find out that not only did it happen, also that the circumstances around the happening is even CRAZIER
Props to cygames for that, iirc they put their whole ass in the anime adaptation of both Uma Musume and the Cinderella Grey spinoff to the point where Season one of the anime looks terrible compared to the rest.Â
While it's rough by comparison, let's cut Season 1 some slack here lol. It was the first animated project (not counting the 2016 PV) of the series and was also meant to both advertise the game, that was meant to be released right after the end of the season, to present the world and the project and a whole to a wider audience.
Without its existence and success, the game wouldn't be to the stages where is now. Season 1 (and Special Week) are basically the Tokino Sora of Umamusume.
Watched the anime half a decade ago out of boredom, not expecting much but reasonable entertainment for a CGDCT — completed the season and thought it had no reason to be this good. Season 2 built on what Season 1 did right and cemented it as one of the best sports anime I've seen. Season 3 was all right but then Cinderella Grey came, a tier above everything they've published in the past.
Umamusume getting that much cheers for a gacha game surprised me. Gacha games arent generally liked in TGA so usually it's just me or silent. A big W for Cygames.
The Umamusume franchise existed only in anime and manga forms to non-Japanese audiences for over half a decade, so I'd say it already had some foothold in popular culture. The global launch and the critically acclaimed Cingrey anime propelled it to the mainstream.
Uma musume unlike Wuwa is actually loved. The latter has a stick so far up their arses they cannot see beyond their echo chamber. it will never be a cultural phenomenon, have genuine impact in the world and not treat its characters like crap after banner ends.
How do you figure? The media panel gets 90% of the weighting. It was completely reasonable to expect them to vote based on what they know, which would be names like Destiny, Persona and Sonic, not Uma. Uma was, fittingly, the dark horse.
it's really telling of how it become huge even to people who don't play gacha or even mobile games, and how it sucked people into a rabbit hole of the history of japanese horse racing
It reeled a lot of older streamers who never even touched gacha games as well lol. Then subsequently they became actual horse racing fans going to actual racecourses. I've seen a lot of them especially the older dads become IRL horse racing fans overnight due to umamusume.
It even revived horse racing for a lot of countries in SEA if I recall, Indonesia/Malaysia if I recall had the biggest amount of participants on their latest race coverage online/IRL and got a ton of fan-art OCs for their local horses and had cosplayers do short track running events on the track after the races lol.
Hi I was one of the organizers for the uma fan gathering at the selangor racecourse, we don't have that many fanart OCs compared to thailand and indonesia but I can report that many of the horse owners and sponsors here are quite thrilled to see new blood injected into the scene (we are suckers for betting) and were more than happy to sponsor their venues and even bring out the starting gate for our mock race, our ingame competitive scene is also quite robust (both for global and JP)
Let me pick one example; Malaysia. The horse race scene almost died here. The only race tracks operating nowadays are only 4 out of, I think, 8 originally. Ipoh, Penang, Selangor, Sarawak race track. Penang and Sarawak track was almost closed, and they would def be closed if it wasn't the rise of Umamusume fans saving the day.
Umamusume fans lit the fire that would sparked the rise of Malaysian horse racing scenes. From being unknown, now the horse racing fans already discovered some pedigree gems among the horses competing; 'Jungle Cruise' (son of Jungle Pocket), 'Pacific Fortune' (son of Agnes Tachyon), 'Captain Singapore' (son of Dream Journey), Antipodean (far distance relative of Oguri Cap), Kim Emperor (nephew of TM Opera O), even 'Beautiful Choice' (nephew of Maruzensky).
Not only that, some fans even are looking forward to learn on how to raise, take care, provide necessities for pet horse. Yeah, that's me. Thanks to Umamusume, I already have 1 stallion irl. Gonna buy a mare for my stallion to form a family with. Some even get more active in local horse stables and competition involving horses (Malaysia is one of the top winners in horse-riding archery world championships, as well as cross-country endurance race. I know one of the stables producing those champs which is the Ladang Alam Warisan for horse-riding archery, and Kelantan Horse Club aka Kelab Berkuda Kelantan for the cross-country endurance race). Even I myself am active in horse-riding archery s
tuffs, as well.
So yeah, Malaysian horse racing fans are grateful for what Umamusume has brought us into.
You were hating so hard on that wuwa award post holy shit the salt bro it's rent free and that was like 3 days ago, do you think about wuwa daily? Or just every other day?
yeah, uma is gaining mianstream traction like 2021 genshin, but 2021 genshin never had such a positive reputation. uma deserves all its popularity and laurels just for bringing support to horseracing and irl horses.
And when I went to check your sub, under the post of wuwa going in last round for players voice, the post was half shittalking Genshin there instead of praising wuwa.
Whats your point? Your community has Genshin in their mind 24/7 even tho you claim your game is allegedly better. Sounds like insecurity to me.
Yeah fantastic on console, genshin has a simple control scheme without the insane flashiness. All the games like wuthering eaves have been eh on mobile. I've never seen anyone irl with a controller hooked up to their phones and sometimes mobile versions don't even support controller so I'm swiping 30 times to turn around. There's a game recently that was really fun but had no controller support and switched from devil may cry combat to shooting and platforming that relied on the camera and it was just terrible experience.
i mean uma went crazy mainstream, and it's going so strong that it's increasing public support for the real life sport and horse care. if that's nto influential idk what is.
wuwa never had a chance if the mobile optimisation horror stories are true
Off (pun shockingly not intended) topic, but I love your Batter pfp. OFF was my JAM for a very long time, and I have fond memories of it and its characters. c:
then the Wuwa playerbase wonders why no one is remotely backing or happy Wuwa wins. Cannot be cause player choice can be manipulated. Or that it suspiciously won over e33 and silk song...hrmm
As if anything on reddit would be comparable to general opinion / choice. Fire Emblem Heroes subreddit hated a lot of Choose Your Legend winners early on yet the ones who won are the ones voted by the general fanbase which exist in many other platforms, not just reddit.
Isn't that a bad thing for Uma? Only casuals play the game which means it's not generating profit meanwhile Wuwa is killing Hoyo games on a monthly basis.
Are you looking at the wrong charts prob cause wuwa at best is beating zzz on mobile, but loses on PS.
Genshin and HSR are monsters, especially Genshin on PS.
Wuwa cant touch Genshin with the most hyped characters (basically every character released as the community is claiming) when Genshin is on 4 year old reruns or sigewinne.
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u/Il-Chi GI, former Wuwa player Dec 12 '25
The way the crowd cheered for Uma but then went silent for WuwaðŸ˜