Pubg The Hype around the game, How did it begin?
The game where 100 combatants fight out with amazing guns, travel in unique vehicles and hope to be the last man standing to get the coveted “Chicken Dinner”. Yes, you guys guessed it right. This post is dedicated to the success story of the widely growing game in today’s world- PUBG
The person behind PUBG- Brendan Greene, was initially into making Game “Mods” (Small modifications which were made to exisiting PC games), but later, he made the PC version of the last man standing, battle royale version of PUBG, which gained traction among a lot of gamers. That led to Greene — who went by the online moniker PlayerUnknown — connecting with South Korean game publisher Bluehole Studio.
In September 2017, PUBG Corp. was formed as a subsidiary of Bluehole Studio. For expansion to China, and for the mobile app , Tencent Games acquired the publishing rights in October 2017
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBg) is one of the best-selling and most-played video games of all time, selling over fifty million copies worldwide by June 2018, with over 400 million players in total when including its free-to-play mobile version.
Addiction Coefficient of PUBG:
What sets games like Pubg and Fortnite apart is that, people don’t just enjoy the gameplay with the lastman standing concept, but they also like to watch the ongoing games. .This has led to a lot of online streamers streaming their games live on various streaming sites, with some of the top streamers earning even millions in a month.
Even though on a global basis, Fornite might be the preferred game compared to PUBG, both in terms of hours spent playing the game, and the revenue earnt,the situation in India is the other way round:
Nearly 62% of the 1,047 Indian respondents in a survey said they played PUBG, which is about three times the next most popular game, Free Fire.
The survey was conducted by free internet provider Jana on its mCent browser app exclusively for Quartz in the first week of December. Most of the respondents were males (92.1%) in the 16 to 24 age group (83.1%). In some cases, totals exceed 100% because respondents could select multiple options that apply.
Business model :
Revenue from the PC version of the game:As mentioned above, they have a high sales count. With $30 per copy of the game, they are able to get more than 50 million purchases, which allows them to rack in a billion. Game sales already account for the majority of the revenues earned by the game but that’s not all.
In-app purchases:These constitute a big chunk of their revenues when players want to buy stuff while they play. This would include accessories such as armor, weapons, and other unlockable features that you need to buy.
Revenue from Ads:Like all online entities, ads revenues also play a big part of the revenues. While revenue from ads is not that big, the flow of money is pretty consistent and also adds up to the total income of the game company.
Cross Marketing was done extensively during the release of:Mission Impossible: Fallout- where the background music was changed to that of fallout, and there were a lot of Mission Impossible based merchandise available in the store
Oppo- where the backdrops had marketing content of Oppo Mobiles and the landing parachutes sported the logo of Oppo
Real life Merchandise: PUBG also makes a lot of money through sales of merchandise like shirts, accessories, and other cool stuff. As there are a lot of loyal gamers, there are bound to be people who want to express their love for the game. You can find a lot of PUBG merchandise on its online store and through independent distributors.Tournament Fees:There are the PUBG tournaments that the gaming company hosts. If the player turnout is big, then there is a lot of money to make for the company.
Royale Pass (New source of income since its debut last year) :“PUBG Mobile’s” revenue have tripled since introducing its premium Royale Pass last month, according to market intelligence company Sensor Tower. Players are now spending about three times as much per day in “PUBG Mobile” as they did before the Royale Pass launch. App Store and Google Play users are spending an average of approximately $650,000 per day worldwide, compared to the $220,000 per day they spent in the preceding period. Sensor Tower said “PUBG Mobile” revenue rose 365% the week the Royale Pass debuted, reportedly earning $6.1 million gross worldwide on both iOS and Android. The game earned an average of $1.3 million in the three weeks before that.
Comparison with Fortnite in terms of absolute numbers:
PUBG Mobile was the second most-downloaded mobile game of 2018, with nearly 300 million downloads worldwide. The game’s largest market was China, which accounted for 29% of the game’s downloads, followed by India and the United States each with about 10% (30 million) of its downloads. It was the most-installed battle royale game of 2018, with about 200 million more installs than Fortnite, which received 82 million installs on mobile devices.
By March 2018, the game had sold forty million copies across all platforms, which had risen to over fifty million by June, averaging over 87 million players daily with over 400 million players in total. The mobile version in particular had over 100 million downloads by August 2018 and exceeded 225 million by October 2018, a figure higher than the combined player base for Fortnite at nearly the same point in time. The bulk of these players are in Asian countries such as China and India, where PUBG Mobile was released before Fortnite and can run on lower-powered mobile hardware.
PUBG’s Future in India:
“The launch of Jio services brought this revolutionary change and the makers of PUBG couldn’t have asked for a better time to launch in India than in 2018,” GURUGRAM-BASED VIDEO ANALYTICS FIRM VIDOOLY
The game is available for free only on smartphones, the device most Indians use to get on the game. Nearly 80% of data consumed in India is via mobile phones, and the number of smartphone users in the country is set to double in four years.
The Indian mobile market is scaling at 23% year on year according to a Morgan Stanley report and India’s total mobile market has crossed 340 million smartphone users according to Groupe Speciale. Moreover, in 2017, the Indian mobile gaming market made a total of $338.4 million and will hit $1.1 billion in revenues by 2021 according to a report by Frost & Sullivan.
Over a third of the respondents in the survey even make in-app purchases on the wildly popular game.
For a country where internet users are extremely cash-conscious, most of the PUBG users making purchases—72%—spent up to Rs350 ($4.91).
PUBG if it stays relevant in the gaming industry by adopting the strategies it’s already following, with some minor tweaks in them, will be able to capitalise a lot on the Indian Market and make big bucks out of it.
Problems:
Data consumption:Introduction of Lite version of the app
App and Update size: Atleast updates must be kept <1GB since about 80% of the high mobile data users have <1.5 GB/day plans
Gender disparity:Maybe a little less violent and a more strategic map or a version of the game
Strategies and solutions ahead:
Game updations (Not so frequent, but updations to keep itself relevant to the gaming industry and ensure that the players aren’t bored from playing the same thing again and again):New Maps,New Modes (with lesser time)
PUBG Lite in many countries (to decrease the data consumed per game)Explore the option of an offline variant of a Battle Royale game like GTA and use the sale of the offline game copies as revenue sources
Advertisements can be increased to increase the source of income atleast during the loading times, could potentially bolster the revenues earnt
Regional Marketing and the in-app shops selling accessories customised to the regional tastes might increase the sales in the in-app stores
Follow us on LinkedIn and Facebook for more interesting and engaging articles:
Comments