Yesterday, NetEase revealed its mobile edition of Bungie’s flagship game, Destiny. But big-brand shooters like this have had mixed fortunes when making the jump to iOS and Android.
So let’s take a quick look at how the likes of Call of Duty and Apex Legends have fared on mobile so far, and what it might tell us about Destiny: Rising’s launch, which is still some way off – NetEase says the game is “quite early” in development. There’s no release date yet, but a closed alpha begins on November 1 in the US and Canada.
We’ve used Appmagic estimates for all of the insights below. The quoted revenue figures do not include Apple and Google’s 30% cut of all IAPs or webshop income.
The big hit: COD Mobile
With nearly $1.7bn earned to date from around 390m downloads, Call of Duty: Mobile is the example NetEase will be looking to follow.
Its monster launch in October 2019 benefitted from several factors: it was the first ‘proper’ Call of Duty shooter to be released on mobile, benefitting from huge pent-up demand. It will have also been boosted not long after release by COVID and the increased demand for gaming in early 2020 and beyond.
But perhaps most importantly it is developed by Timi, the Tencent subsidiary that also makes regular top grosser Honor of Kings. This is a developer that really understands how to most effectively monetise mobile players through battle passes, cosmetics and consumable perks.
Appmagic estimates that 54% of COD Mobile’s nearly $1.7bn lifetime revenue comes from US players, with 12% of the total from users in Japan. Mexico, Brazil and the UK are way back on around 3% of lifetime revenue, with markets like Australia, India, France and Canada behind that on around 2%.
The above figures do not include the China and South Korea edition of Call of Duty: Mobile, released on December 2020. That game has made Activision/Tencent around $262m in total since launch, with players in China representing 94% of that figure. Overall: COD Mobile is a smash.
The misses
Look beyond COD Mobile, however, and other big-name shooters have struggled on iOS and Android.
Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile, released in April of this year, has so far failed to gain meaningful traction, despite being part of the biggest shooter franchise on the planet. Developed by Activision, and not Timi, it is the game that’s closer to the console editions. It features cross-progression and the same content roadmap as the console and PC edition of Warzone, but it has yet to catch fire with mobile players.
Appmagic estimates suggest it has ‘only’ generated ~37m downloads since launch in April, with around $13.4m in revenue to date. For comparison, COD Mobile earned Activision around $153m from 151m downloads in the same timespan after its launch.
Warzone may be suffering from having to effectively compete with itself – COD: Mobile is already out there, and its millions of players appears perfectly happy with what they have already. Warzone Mobile’s launch was also beset with technical issues that dented its reputation with the exact kind of players who might be interested – core shooter fans who want top notch performance. Battle royales like Warzone also typically have much longer play sessions, not a great fit for mobile players used to short, sharp action.
Compare the two titles’ revenue in September and the difference could not be more stark: the western version of COD: Mobile, not available in China or South Korea, earned Activision around $21m; Warzone Mobile earned under $1m (or ~$960k, according to Appmagic).
EA’s woes in the mobile shooter market are well documented. It launched Apex Legends Mobile in May 2022 but by January 2023 EA had announced its closure. At the same time, EA halted development on soft launch game Battlefield Mobile, and closed its developer Industrial Toys.
By the time the game was shut down for good, Apex Legends Mobile had earned around $36.9m from a roughly similar number of downloads, 36.8m – which is actually not bad for most games, but clearly not enough for EA.
We can only speculate on what went wrong here, especially given EA’s solid choice of Lightspeed Studios as its co-development partner. Lightspeed is a developer with years of proven success with top grosser PUBG Mobile, so it seemed like a perfect fit.
Again, this is speculation, but Respawn’s presence as co-developer may have constrained the game’s potential to monetise; broadly and bluntly speaking, Chinese developers like Timi, Lightspeed and indeed Destiny: Rising maker NetEase are very experienced in generating large amounts of money from a small group of hardcore players. Respawn may have neutered these efforts assuming that what works on console and PC also works on mobile.
How Destiny: Rising could play out
Chinese developers dominate the shooter space on mobile. Above, you can see Appmagic’s revenue estimates for mobile shooters for September – the top seven titles are all developed by Tencent, NetEase and Singapore-based Garena International.
So yes, Bungie made the right call licensing the Destiny brand out to NetEase. It also bodes well that yesterday’s announcement implies that NetEase is in complete control of all development and publishing. Bungie is a phenomenal developer of high-end console and PC shooters, but mobile is practically another industry. It requires deep institutional knowledge to get a new game launch right.
NetEase has plentiful experience in making mobile shooters, having previously released Knives Out, Blood Strike and Lost Light. Being China-native also means it will likely launch in China at some point too, pending government approval – potentially a hugely lucrative and untapped market for Bungie.
NetEase’s handling of Diablo Immortal may have got quite a fiery response from some fans, but it has been a success overall. The fan furore around Destiny: Rising’s monetisation is perhaps inevitable, but ultimately this is how mobile games need to monetise to succeed and pay back the enormous – and increasing – development and marketing costs associated with launching a game like this.
