Square Enix has agreed with the French game streaming service Blacknut to distribute its mobile games of the Go series and Hitman Sniper. The company made this decision after the premium distribution model of these titles did not justify itself.
Recall that the puzzle games of the Go series, made according to popular franchises (Lara Croft Go, Hitman Go, Deus Ex Go), received good reviews from critics, but sold poorly. Each game cost $5, but, as Square Enix themselves admitted, mobile gamers are used to freeplay and do not want to pay for a product that cannot be pre-tested.
Now Square Enix has found a new platform for distributing these games – Blacknut, a subscription-based cloud streaming service. For $17.5, Blacknut provides instant access to any game from its database, without additional downloads. The service supports Amazon Fire TV, Android TV, PC, Mac and Linux platforms.
There are more than 160 premium games in the Blacknut catalog, but mostly these are indie games (Out There, Beholder, Shelter) and old titles (Syberia, Another World, Gun Force).
The partnership with Square Enix is certainly beneficial to the young service that appeared just two years ago. And the company, in turn, found an interesting way to distribute games that, due to the premium model, could not find their audience. However, so far Blacknut operates only in some European countries and is only going to enter the North American market and the rest of Europe.
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