Final Fantasy XV: War for Eos, Machine Zone’s latest collaboration with Square Enix, has passed $2m revenue and 450k downloads in its first month, according to Sensor Tower data.
The new strategy-battler was debuted through a technical soft launch in mid-2022, followed by a limited release in Q3 2022 and full global launch on February 16.
In a brief email Q&A, we asked Machine Zone CEO Thomas Wells about the difficulties of targeting and launching in the current climate:
“ATT has had an impact on the marketing side of the business for everyone,” he told us. “I think fundamentally our mission remains the same, which is that we are here to deliver a compelling experience to our players in a game that will be around for many years.”
“If we can deliver on that experience and provide value to our players over that long term then our games will be successful.”
We also asked Wells if, having been best known for making this type of game for many years, market forces might push Machine Zone into making different types of games. “Mobile strategy MMOs are at the core of Machine Zone’s DNA and what we are truly passionate about,” replied Wells.
“That said, we believe there is a tremendous amount of design space left to explore. Machine Zone games will always be about large groups of players cooperating and competing in real time in a living world but the expression of that may take on different forms.”
“We’re always in development and open to exploring new opportunities but mobile strategy MMOs are at the centre of what we do,” he continued.
“We believe we have the right team and the right technology in place to push the genre forward again. Final Fantasy XV: War for Eos is significant for us because it represents a leap forward from our previous titles with respect to game and economy design. You can expect future Machine Zone titles to continue that evolution.”
The game underwent significant tweaks during its soft launch, said Wells, who added after several years in development he believes War for Eos shows Machine Zone is “modernising gameplay systems” by adding “a fully featured hero battling system.”
“Hero battles are a new and core component of War for Eos and our soft launch players have been endlessly creative with their strategies,” he added. “We saw our players’ feedback and agreed with them that the game is more fun when it’s more offensive so we made a lot of balance changes there. Particularly buffing some of the more aggressive abilities while toning down the turtling strategies.”
