Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s made a strong debut on mobile this week, earning $1 million in gross player spending on iPhones on its first day out in China.
The colorful shooting game, first released on PC in 2020, is one of Tencent’s big mobile launches this year, closely watched as an indicator of the company’s strategy to sustain what it calls evergreen franchises. It had roughly 170,000 downloads on day one, about as many as Tencent’s a year earlier, and remains No.1 in downloads among all iPhone apps, according to Appfigures data.
Co-developed by Tencent’s Riot Games and Lightspeed Studios, is available only in China so far, with no clear launch date for global markets. The game is free to play, with in-app purchases and character cosmetics making up the revenue. That’s the same monetization method as , though that game earned roughly five times as much on its release, whereas is currently sixth on the charts for highest-earning games, Appfigures said.
“It’s within expectations. Tencent is probably playing the long game and not rushing to monetize up front,” said Zeng Xiaofeng, vice president at market researcher Niko Partners.
Tencent is a global leader in shooting games, having previously adapted to smartphones. Its executives have said they aim to offer a diverse range of options to gamers, though it remains an open question whether these games will cannibalize each other. On mobile alone, Tencent runs shooting franchises including , , and its in-house and .
The company said last week that attracted more than 70 million pre-registrations across all platforms. Appfigures does not track spending and downloads on Android, which has several app stores in China.
The original PC game is known for its unforgiving speed, where players can be eliminated very quickly. It remains to be seen whether such gameplay will be as much of a hit on smartphones, where touch controls make precision more difficult. Last year, one of Tencent’s studios tested , a mobile game with similar gameplay to , but the title was shut down soon after launch.