Recently, the news broke that Supercell had cancelled its latest mobile game—Rush Wars. One of the big concerns about the title, brought up by both the developers and the players, was that it became repetitive far too quickly. Despite its best efforts, Supercell couldn’t remedy the issue and threw the game out the window.
However, there’s more to the story than that. While the game certainly wasn’t up to Supercell’s standards, recent reports indicate that Rush Wars wasn’t as profitable as expected, making the decision to scrap it all the easier.
Sensor Tower, the wonderful website that tracks all the statistics you’d ever want about mobile apps, has published data that shows that Rush Wars simply couldn’t get players to part with their cash. According to the data, the game was downloaded approximately 393,000 times and generated nearly $312,000 in revenue from in-app purchases. After doing some complex mathematical maneuvers, that comes out to $0.80 spent per download.
Compare that to the highly success title, Coin Masters, which can profit $6.20 from each user. Supercell clearly had some work to do if it wanted to reach respectable numbers with Rush Wars. This, combined with the less-than-stellar reviews from players meant Supercell had no choice in the matter.
However, what if the game was profitable? What if the game wasn’t up to Supercell standards but was pulling down an average of $10 per download? Would the company have made the same decision?
It’s hard to say. Given the high pedigree of its previous titles, we’d like to think that player opinion has more weight than finances. In fact, GamesIndustry.biz reports that the decision to kill a game comes directly from the game teams themselves, not executives up in an ivory tower.
It’s small things like this that give us hope for the mobile gaming industry. Supercell has provided us with some of the best, most polished games we’ve ever seen in the palm of our hands. So what if money played a role in the decision? At the end of the day we know that Supercell is in it for the games, even if money does do a bit of the talking.
Source: PocketGamer.biz