DeNA announced that she was working with two “desktop” companies at once: Wizards of the Coast, which helps her create Dungeons & Dragons: Arena of War, and Hasbro, which sold the rights of the game based on G.I. Joe to the Japanese. Read our material about the expansion of DeNA and its new games.
DeNA and the West
DeNA’s revenue last year was $1.8 billion. Of these, net profit is $420 million. Three factors contributed to the success: the company’s strong position in its native Japanese market, the rapid growth of the Mobage platform, including in Western markets, as well as the unprecedented endurance of Rage of Bahamut in American grossing. The game has been continuously in the box office top of Google Play US for 199 days.
This year, the company decided to strengthen its position in the west. The first step in this direction was the active development of Marvel: War of Heroes, a clone of Rage of Bahamut made in the Marvel comics universe. The project, we recall, is now in the cash tops of the App Store and Google Play. Another step indicating DeNA’s serious claims to the Western market was the recent agreement between the Japanese company and 22cans for the publication of the mobile Godus.
And now the company announces the development of two projects under large licenses at once, which are very popular in the States.
Dragons, dungeons, free-to-play
Together with Wizards of the Coast, a team from DeNA Santiago is creating a turn-based role-playing free-to-play game Dungeons & Dragons: Arena of War, which will be based on the yet-to-be-released rules of the fifth generation of D&D (or as D&D Next is still called).
They promise 15 types of characters, asynchronous gameplay, a well-developed social component (using friends’ characters as party members) and three-dimensional graphics. So far, to be honest, it resembles Puzzle & Dragons without Match3. Money will be taken for the game without restrictions (if you don’t want to wait until stamina is restored) and IAP. Plus, there is a gatcha (loot in chests will be generated).
On iOS and Android, the game is expected in the summer.
Cobra Throw
With Hasbro, one of DeNA’s western divisions is working on G.I. Joe Battleground. Judging by the first previews, the game is one-on-one Rage of Bahamut, made in the style of the original animated series “Cobra Throw” of the 80s. The player forms a team (deck) of fighters, sends them to tasks that take place in automatic mode, gets experience and loot for it. G.I. Joe Battleground will not be released until the end of this year.
In the same vein, the recent Transformers Legends, released in early May on iOS and Android, was made. It is also the fruit of the joint work of Hasbro and DeNA.
Speaking of Hasbro. The company pursues a very thoughtful policy in the mobile market, distributing the rights to its games among the market leaders. Based on her “board games”, EA and Gameloft are also working. Hasbro also has its own mobile studio. However, she can not boast of success.
Total
If Dungeons & Dragons: Arena of War and G.I. Joe Battleground are successful on the market (if the Western audience does not get tired of battler mechanics by the time the games are released), DeNA will add several more long-lived franchises to its portfolio. Another thing is that it is not entirely clear how profitable it will be for a Japanese company to do this. The Western user is much more demanding of the content than the eastern one. It is much more expensive to stamp such content, and the profit is less (ARPU in the USA is several times less than that in Japan).