The fate of PC & Console’s (HD) live-service model hangs on Q5’s ambitious lineup: Strinova, Infinity Nikki, Path of Exile 2, Supervive, Marvel Rivals, and Delta Force. Should these titles fail to gain traction, the industry faces a cascade of down rounds, studio closures, and layoffs—not to mention a wholesale reassessment of the HD live-service…
Chinese games have gone global. This week’s launch of Honkai: Star Rail and Starlight 84 marks China’s emergence as a AAA developer for Western audiences.
Previously confined to PC turn-based play, mobile free-to-play transformed 4x into sprawling persistent world MMOs. The combination was and continues to be electric; what other genre can admit to $1M LTVs? Each X, EXplore, EXpand, EXploit, and EXterminate invites an unparalleled level of feature width and depth. Its LTVs are not driven only by spend…
In 1989, political scientist Francis Fukuyama wrote an essay asking if we’ve reached The End of History? Often mischaracterized, the essay argues democracy and free markets represent the last evolution of political-economic systems. Fukuyama writes: What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War or the passing of a particular…
Eric Suffert acutely describes the dangers of extending payback windows. At every t+1 the accuracy of LTV declines while the variance in cohort profitability increases. LTV, however, is not an exogenous variable and clever design can incentivize players into revealing their long-run time horizons within a game. Consider the design of a many subscriptions: you…
Will Luton argues on the dangers and solutions to F2P inflation over at gameindustry.biz. While there are some missteps in the opening of the article, Will makes a powerful and elegant point: …a sale can only be considered profitable if the net revenue from the start of the sale until resource equilibrium, and so demand, is…