Many don’t like War Robots when it comes to its monetization and balancing, including the author of this article. However, one cannot deny that WR offers refined gameplay, wide range of maps, imminent capability to play across different platforms and that it is competitive – even though Pixonic is yet to give love to its players back (but then, the Asian WR Hangar X tourney and the open competition by Mr Bulgasari seems to be the start of a new trend this year).
Thus, when Pixonic released their article on having 150 million installs, this might have come as a surprise to many people.
Here are the well-known facts about War Robots, according to their infographic:
First, 150,000 of the game’s current players come from January 2017 or earlier. This corroborates the anecdotal evidence that many of the game’s veterans have left the game for greener pastures or real-life adventures (I am sure that Pixonic will never publish those bounce and retention statistics).
If we consider an industry standard report from 2015 that places retention rate after a year at 0.5-1 percent, we are still talking about 750,000-1.5 million current players. Let’s turn this into a conservative estimate and say that WR could have 900,000 players at any single time (basically 1 veteran player for every 5 new players). That’s still a respectable number for a game which is polarizing amongst its players.
The same report from 2015 also mentions that only 2.2 percent of an app’s users (read: 19800 players) buy something significant, with another 0.15 percent (read: 1620 players) contributing to around half of the entirety of the yearly income that a mobile game company earns from a title. The report does not talk about the one-time buyers or the street smart buyers, so you can push the total figure to 30-45 thousand, give or take! I also know that even in my clan, there are a couple of buyers. (Well, if you think about it, earning tens of millions of dollars per year at least is very possible for this game if you look at it from this perspective).
If you think about it, WR has more or less the same number of top clans, in addition to solo players who buy up big time.
Second, the fact that War Robots has survived for more than five years shows how resilient War Robots is. Yes, having 150 million downloads is no mean feat – not even for big companies. If WR was dying, it would see lesser numbers as the years pass.
But then, the game is alive, at least for now. The fact that Pixonic is going for cross-platform can mean that they are actually interested in it (due to large player influx) or that it wants to consolidate its numbers (which means that it is on a tightrope and that it might rise in the near future).
I do not defend Pixonic from its failures to address balancing and in-game economic issues in the past. However, one should see the fact that War Robots is still going and growing strong – and as such, it is still firmly at the top of the mobile mech food chain!
Take note that all of this is mere speculation and not based on any insider information – but it is intended to give the average playing readers an idea on how broad the world of War Robots is.
Cheers and see you on the battlefield!
1 robot = 100$