In 2012 if you were planning to develop a mobile game, life was simple just choose from 3 genres Casual, Mid-Core or Hard-Core, come 2016 it seems this is no longer the case.
You may wonder, really? What's the need of newer genres?
What's wrong with the existing textbook trinity?
Before we go any further down the road with the statement above let's try to see what evolving circumstances, consumer patterns and market forces might be leading to disruption of the existing order.
Sizing up mobile gaming Titans
There are many top Devs. in mobile gaming, but when it comes to titans there are only 3, Machine Zone, Supercell, King.com, Let's see how are they faring
Machine Zone : continues to dominate and grow with release of it's second title 'Mobile Strike' clone of GoW in a modern setting, pulling on all it's strings from aggressive user acquisition to super bowl advertising campaign.
MachineZone's ultra aggressive UA strategy, monetisation tech. and deep player analytics seems to be constantly eluding other developers who fail to breed a stallion that can compete with MZ in the Hard Core gaming space
There were many cloned attempts by other devs. to parallel GoW, in 2015, but MZ is still holding the fort...at least for now.
Supercell: With it's hat trick of 3 top grossing established hits ( CoC, BB, Hayday) and constant soft launch testing is sitting tightly on the mid-core throne, and with Clash Royale it seems future is going to be even brighter.
King.Com Has delivered an array of graphically impressive match 3 puzzle games,tried to repeat the success of Candy crush saga with Candy crush soda saga, gone public and undergone acquisition at whopping 5+ BillionUSD evaluation...
...But the fact remains it has shown marks of slowing down marginal fall in revenue, and shrinking player base, King has been under scrutiny by the pundits, for past 2 years as being unable to find a new successor to CCS and sustain it's growth rate, it's new games have met some success, but nothing matching the original franchise
King is hard at work finding a worthy successor to it's flagship Candy Crush Saga genre & arrest year on year shrinking casual player base.
Even though the marginal fall in revenue and player base is not a major bump for King at the moment, but a top dev. like King knows being proactive is the best way to stay at the top. Zynga's debacle has taught Devs. to be wary.
Obvious Solution? KING is looking at diversifying and enter the lucrative Mid-core market.
But why mid-core and not hard-core? King's experience historically has been with casual games, so is it better to naturally progress towards mid-core, rather than hard-core, right?
The other strong compelling reason is many Devs. are now wary of competing in Hard-Core space with MachineZone even Kabam whose hard-core games originally brought the gameplay on mobile which GoW & Mobile Strike are built on, recently let go off the reigns of it's Hard-Core franchise ( kingdom of Camelot, Hobbit etc.) and is solely focussing on games like Marvel Contest of champions or what can be called Casualized Mid-core.
Over past two years King has repeatedly stated:
"The sequential and year over year decreases in MAUs and DAUs were due to decreased activity, primarily in Candy Crush Saga as well as in our other mature games."
(Reads an excerpt of the company's earnings report.)
Nothing new there, King knows the problem, Zynga faced this too.
But are we sure that is the CRUX of what is happening? what if we rephrase the statement.
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