The new game by the authors of Talking Tom has not yet fired?

What should I do if the game “didn’t fire”?

Supercell believes that it needs to be closed. The authors of Talking Tom – Outfit7 studio – have a different opinion.

This summer they released a great bubble, designed exclusively for PvP battles. It was called Mars Pop. Despite the fact that we liked it, we felt that the game would not become popular: hanging competitive mechanics on the female genre is a controversial decision.

Mars Pop
Unfortunately, our predictions have come true.

For example, in the American box office top, the project did not rise above the 1427th place in the iPhone App Store.

Outfit7, apparently, it became a pity to quit the game. Or, which is also possible, they saw the potential in the metrics available only to them. For this reason, they decided, in fact, to restart the game: to release Mars Pop under their crowned brand Talking Tom, adding a single, bonuses, collections, as well as advertising. The output turned out to be Talking Tom Bubble Shooter.

Talking Tom Bubble Shooter
The game has been in the world stores for almost a month, but, like its predecessor, it does not demonstrate either high downloads or high box office figures in Western markets.

In the USA, for example, the game reached the 170th place in the iPhone App Store by downloads as much as possible. Her record for the position in the cash top of the States is 853rd place.

In other words, perhaps Outfit7 shouldn’t have entered the same river twice.

But there is a nuance. The game shows good results in terms of installations in developing countries. In particular, in the Congo, Russia, Uzbekistan, Moldova and so on. In more than 90 similar markets, the game was in the Top 10 for downloads among games.

The highest Talking Tom Bubble Shooter scores for the first month in the App Store (data: App Annie)
So it can be assumed that Outfit7 prefers to bypass Western markets, spending money on promotion in developing countries in order to earn advertising there.

Given the constant rise in prices for mobile traffic, which is especially expensive today when it comes to buying an English-speaking audience of stores, this approach seems reasonable. But it is not entirely clear why such a “bother” company, whose total game downloads amount to 3 billion, and MAU – 250 million?

Anyway, because of such an assumption, it is difficult to make an unambiguous verdict (went / did not go). If the company really earns according to the scheme “we spend on promotion in developing countries, we earn on views, we pocket the difference between the cost of acquiring users and advertising revenue,” then the project may turn out to be a box office hit for Outfit7.

And what do you think about the project and what it earns?