PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, one of the most popular online games of these days, partnered with the Mission Impossible franchise on its mobile version.
The survival game showcased new missions and challenges that connect directly with the movie Mission Impossible: Fallout on its next big update. The update will also include a campaign mode that will last a month to promote the movie. The game will add the official soundtrack of the movie, parachute customization and, eye-catching costumes including Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt suit used in the movie along with his parnters clothes to give users the full Mission: Impossible experience.
The Reign of PUBG and Mobile Gaming
Since the last quarter of the year, PlayerUnknown’s Battlgrounds (or PUBG) has been the most downloaded game of the year, even after a half-May launch it reached 60 million downloads on Android and iOS. According to Games Industry, PUBG has more downloads than SnapChat, YouToube, Netflix and Spotify. The game didn’t get to the top 20 downloaded apps on Android, but it did get to the second position on iOS with around 40 million downloads. Talking about mobile gaming, we cannot forget to talk about FortNite, while in the same genre of PUBG it generated 3 times more sale than the latter with $3.7 million USD on its first week against PUBG that got $1 million USD.
At the beginning of 2017, apps ang games had reached 90 billion downloads on Google Play and Apple’s App Store. In China, mobile gaming went up 15% from 2016 and contributed to 80% of Apple Store’s growth. In 2016, mobile gaming generated 37% from the videogame market share and it appears that today it’ll occupy a third part of the industry, leaving behind more classic ways of gaming like PC.
The Future of Partnership
We must keep in mind what the users are looking for in these partnerships. Many brands have made the mistake of making content for gaming that feels rather forced, making a bad experience for the user which then reflects on the brand. The most important part of a gaming partnership and before we start to even think about the content is to dive into the game and reaching the audience to understand the kind of content they will enjoy. As long as the list of gaming titles that have been utter failures in the industry, there are also great examples of success, such as Goldeneye for the Nintendo 64, based on the James Bond movie the game was critically acclaimed and continues to be a fan favorite to this day.
Then, what is the user looking for? Simply put: an extra. The specifics of the extra depend on the game; a game like Overwatch added a pink armor to a character to raise money for cancer research, a game like FIFA 18 adds players and team brands from all over the world. In this particular case, Mission: Impossible adds content to the game that the player otherwise wouldn’t have access to. The videogame industry is growing fast and evolving constantly, the future may hold all new partnerships and ways to experience the brand like we have never seen before.
Sources
www.gametyrant.com
www.mediakix.com
www.newzoo.com