Undawn is an open-world zombie survival shooter that launched in June 2023 on cellular and PC, however I don’t blame you for not understanding something about it. In line with Reuters, the sport, which seems to have been on only a few individuals’s radar, didn’t carry out effectively for Chinese language conglomerate Tencent, regardless of Oscar-winning actor Will Smith taking part in a serious function in its story.
In a March 21 Reuters report, sources informed the publication that Undawn has “flopped spectacularly.” The post-apocalyptic zombie shooter allegedly had greater than 300 builders on it and a funds of almost 1 billion yuan (round $140 million). Sadly, in line with Reuters by way of the analysis agency Appmagic, the sport has solely managed to rake in $287,000 in income. That’s about 0.2 p.c of the sport’s alleged funds within the span of eight months
There are a couple of elements that might have contributed to Undawn’s reported failure. First, as beforehand talked about, it doesn’t seem to have been marketed sufficient in order that players truly knew about its launch. Social media posts made after the Reuters story broke are principally individuals asking the identical query: “Am I the one one who didn’t even know this recreation existed?” Even the final video on the sport’s official YouTube channel was in October 2023, so it doesn’t seem to have gotten that a lot post-launch buzz. The sport at present sits at a “blended” ranking on Steam with 5,535 evaluations on the time of writing.
Plus, Undawn is an uninteresting title for a zombie recreation—it’s kinda near KNP’s zombie survival recreation Undead and Supermassive Video games’ interactive horror recreation Till Daybreak. Might it have benefited from a extra recognizable title? Possibly, at the least to differentiate it from different well-known undead shooters.
Sadly, not even well-known actor—and notorious slapper—Will Smith might’ve saved Tencent’s recreation. Smith promoted Undawn on his official YouTube channel in Could 2023, revealing that he additionally performs the lead in its post-apocalyptic zombie story. In line with IGN, Smith performs Trey Jones, a survivor who acts as a information to assist gamers navigate a world 4 years after it’s been decimated by a world catastrophe. However his star energy clearly couldn’t draw a strong playerbase with it reaching a peak of 8,531 gamers 9 months in the past, in line with video games tracker SteamDB. And within the wake of Undawn’s failure, Tencent is shifting away from large-scale, standalone video games, with the corporate’s chief technique officer James Mitchell telling traders through the earnings name that it’s turning consideration in direction of informal get together video games and Genshin Affect-like anime RPGs as a substitute.
“We’re specializing in fewer greater funds video games,” Mitchell stated on March 20 by way of Reuters. “Usually, we’re searching for to make the most important bets round video games that both iterate on a profitable IP…or video games which can be iterating round confirmed gameplay success inside a distinct segment and taking these to a extra mass market.”
Kotaku has reached out to Tencent for remark.
In line with Reuters, it’s not simply Undawn that’s struggling. Murderer’s Creed Jade, one of many many in-development sneaky-stab video games set in historic China, has reportedly been delayed to 2025 in order that the “lots of of individuals from the workforce” might get shuffled to the corporate’s just lately launched get together recreation DreamStar. That is regardless of Tencent investing tens of millions of {dollars} within the franchise in September 2022, changing into certainly one of Ubisoft’s greatest shareholders. It appears like Tencent is making main pivots that will have an effect on its enterprise technique.
