Events (Issue #4)
A little bit about the rumors from Gamescom, about Zynga and King money, as well as about the first mobile game about “Pokemon” — in our news digest last week.
“Ah, the red summer, I would kill you if it weren't for the connection of times and the criminal code,” Dmitry Gromov and Oleg Ladyzhensky wrote in the ”Firecracker". And we are happy to join their dreams, because the previous August week was scant for delicious news. We really hoped for Gamescom, but in terms of mobile news, it did not please us in any way. Perhaps the fact is that they stayed late at one of the parties, which turned out to be really a lot.
The editor-in-chief of ign Germany sent us a list of all Gamescom industrial parties where you can drink. There are twenty-five of them!
— Konstantin Govorun (@litewren) August 11, 2014
Somewhere towards the end of the week, thanks to Ilya Ovcharenko, the head of Gmbox, there was a timid hope for big news, the announcement of some as yet unannounced project from Nival.
But its development / non-development has not yet been confirmed, so it remains to be guessed at this point, and in the event that you played in the early noughties in a domestic turn-based card strategy engine “The Cursed lands”, fingers crossed.
As for the confirmed facts.
Other people's wallets
Zynga and King told how much they earned and how much they lost from April to June. Both companies are doing poorly, judging by the fall in shares. Indeed, sales of one amounted to $175 million (instead of $191 million), while the other had only $593.6 million (only 30% more than a year earlier). Company executives are tearing their hair out and assuring shareholders that things will get better in the future. And at this time, most mobile companies do not share such disorders, since they do not earn even $1 million per month from their games.
Let me remind you, not so long ago, Wooga calculated that successful games in the store are less than 0.1% (they have a million—dollar criterion: $1 million plus profit per month - this is success).
And King has gone crazy
More precisely, one would think so if one did not know the details of the one hundred million deal between the candy company and Nonstop Games. In fact, King paid only $6 million for the creators of not the most successful, but one of the most well—publicized “ideological followers” of Traviana - Heroes of Honor. Another $10 million, however, had to be paid for loyalty so that people would not leave the company immediately after the purchase. Nonstop Games will receive the rest of the money if it achieves certain (I wonder which ones?) indicators.
The main feature of the Nonstop team so far is the fact that one of its founders is Juha Paananen, the brother of Ilkka Paananen, the head of Supercell. Oh yes: Katkoff also praised Heroes of Honor on his blog.
Nintendo will still publish games on mobile platforms
The company was stubborn for a long time, but still took this step. But not at all in the way that was “expected" of her. No ports of classic lines. The entry into the market will be carried out from an unexpected side: Nintendo is going to release the Pokémon Trading Card Game Online, a collectible card strategy (hello, Magic The Gathering and Hearthstone) on iOS.
It looks like Pokémon TCGO is in works for the iPad! Should be a huge way to expand the game. #PlayPokemon pic.twitter.com/SPlx3QZaTC
— Josh Wittenkeller (@TheJWittz) August 15, 2014
The news was confirmed to GamesBeat by an official representative of The Pokémon Company, wholly owned by Nintendo. The game will be released before the end of this year and, most likely, will be an electronic version of the physical collectible card game of the same name. However, the latter appeared digitally on DS, PC, and even Mac. So it's too early to shout “revolution".
We, in turn, hope that there will be enough reasons to shout about something positive this week. Have a good week!
Photo: Jay Wennington
