Evening Digest: Pixowl bought, Toon Blast has $200 million, Streets of Rage 4 Announcement
Business news (and not only) of the gaming industry for August 27.
Transactions
The creators of The Sandbox were acquired for $4.8 million
Madrid studio Pixowl, famous for the pixel sandbox The Sandbox, in which the player assumes the role of god, attracted the attention of Hong Kong Animoca Brands. She bought it for $4.8 million.
The interest of Animoca Brands can be understood. The Sandbox alone has 40 million downloads. Her MAU, despite its advanced age (the project was released in 2012), still holds at a decent level of 1 million.
But in commercial terms, this series is not the flagship of the studio. The studio’s younger titles — Peanuts: Snoopy’s Town Tale and Goosebumps HorrorTown — feel much better. According to DataMagic, they earn around $40,000 a month on IAP alone.
Now the studio, consisting of only 47 employees, is working on a new part of The Sandbox. In it, players will be able to sell their creations for tokens. It is assumed that part of the money from sales will be taken by the developer.
Progress
Toon Blast earned $200 million in a year
Since its worldwide launch on August 19, 2017, three-in-a-row Toon Blast Turkish Peak Games has earned $200 million (combined earnings from the App Store and Google Play). This is the assessment of the analytical company Sensor Tower, which has recently been actively sharing who has earned and how much in the mobile industry.
Toon Blast is one of those three-in-a-row in which the player does not swipe, but removes blocks of the same color with a tap. This mechanic was popularized by King, releasing Pet Rescue Saga in 2012.
A distinctive feature of Toon Blast is the unwillingness to conform to either new or old trends regarding meta casual games. There is no map, plot, or construction in the project. Instead, the player is greeted each time by a large button with the sequence number of the next level.
Announcements
The authors of the Wonder Boy remasters are developing Streets of Rage 4
A very sudden and pleasant announcement. The console series of beatemaps of the early 90s Streets of Rage will have a fourth part. For reference, the third one was released 24 years ago on Sega Mega Drive.
Streets of Rage 4, like other games in the series, will be a two-dimensional bitmap in a comic style.
The new part is published by the French Dotemu, which in 2015 was fiercely criticized for the controversial adaptation of Heroes of Might & Magic III for high-resolution screens.
Two teams will act as the developer of Streets of Rage 4. Lizardcube, which distinguished itself last year with a very beautiful remaster of Wonder Boy 3 (1989), will be responsible for the art. Guard Crush Games, distinguished by an ironic bitmap, will be responsible for the rest Streets of Fury.
Published publications
The following materials have also been published on our pages today:
