Appmagic data suggests that Blizzard’s Warcraft Rumble is off to a good start, with over $8m earned a week after its global launch.
The data, which is based on developer payout and does not include Apple and Google’s cut, suggests Blizzard has already earned over $8.7m from the game since it launched worldwide on Friday November 3.
The game has around 3.3 downloads to date, according to Appmagic, which gives it a healthy cumulative revenue per download figure of $2.61.
As ever Apple devices are driving more of the spend, with iOS revenue to date at $4.7m and Android revenue at around $4m, though the majority of downloads are through Google Play, with 1.96m compared to 1.4m through the App Store.
US players are responsible for most of the revenue with $3.6m spent to date. Germany is the second biggest market with around $800k spent to date, followed by South Korea ($500k), Canada ($470k), Taiwan ($460k) and France ($400k).
The market split by downloads shows the US way ahead on 835k installs, followed by Germany (212k), France (207k), Brazil (169k) and South Korea (162k).
As several industry experts noted last week, Warcraft Rumble takes Clash Royale’s action-strategy formula and expands it out with bigger maps, a rich single player campaign and a deep squad upgrade system.
Which is great for its dedicated fanbase, but there are some questions over whether it can break out into the mainstream, a thought shared by Tom Froud of game design consultancy Ludoforma.
“The arena battle system is great fun, it’s snappy, intuitive, looks great, exactly what you’d expect from a mobile Blizzard game,” he told us. “I think it will mainly appeal to existing players though, I don’t expect it to have a very broad reach, it’s not casual enough in terms of complexity, onboarding and the sheer number of systems to consider in the early game.”
And as some noted last week, Froud agrees that the onboarding could explain the gameplay a little better. “The PVE map progression is nice, it’s keeping me coming back, but after a few hours I don’t really feel like it’s taught me a lot about how to actually play the game.”
And there’s also the looming shadow of Clash Royale to consider. “I think the first difficulty for Blizzard is the perception that they are going after Supercell’s lunch,” Froud tells us. “Clash Royale is now so sophisticated and mature that it could be hard to prize players away from. Having said that, Clash has declined over the last few years and Rumble is different in lots of ways so maybe it’s time for a new kid on the block.”
“If Blizzard can make this more accessible and effectively grow their audience I think they’re on to a winner,” adds Froud. “But right now it feels like the strategy might be to build that out over time and focus on core audience first.”
