Tag: activision

Activision Blizzard acquires King Digital

Activision Blizzard, a leading publisher of games and parent company of both Blizzard and Activision, has successfully purchased King Digital, makers of the massively popular Candy Crush franchise of mobile games. The company purchased King Digital for $5.9 billion, which is more than Disney paid for the rights to the famed Star Wars franchise. Mobile games are becoming a prominent focus for many companies involved in the game industry, as these particular games have proven to be quite lucrative.

Mobile games market expected to reach $55 billion by 2019

According to Activision Blizzard, the mobile gaming space is expected to reach $36 billion this year, growing to $55 billion by 2019. This explosive growth is creating a great deal of interest among investors, as mobile games could represent a major return on investment in a relatively short amount of time. Investors have been pressuring Activision Blizzard to enter into the mobile games market for several years, but the company has only done so in a limited capacity, focusing its efforts on its more popular franchises for consoles and PC.

Mobile games are very simplistic and do not appeal to the core audience of Activision Blizzard

One of the reasons that Activision Blizzard has been slow to enter into the mobile games space is because its most popular games are not suited for mobile devices. The attraction of these games are their graphics, immersive experiences, and interactive multiplayer options. Mobile devices have very limited capabilities when it comes to providing an expansive and immersive experiences, but they excel at offering consumers access to easy-to-play and simplistic games, in both style and mechanics. Moreover, Activision Blizzard’s core audience is not incredibly involved in mobile games, as they prefer to play their games on consoles and computers.

King Digital could help Activision Blizzard break into the mobile gaming space

The purchase of King Digital may allow Activision Blizzard to begin establishing a strong presence in the mobile gaming space. In the past, King Digital saw major success with its mobile games, but has struggled to replicate this success after 2014. The company has developed some 200 mobile games, but only its Candy Crush franchise has done well, both financially and in terms of player adoption.

Skylanders Trap Team from Activision has gone mobile.

The complete console game, which is the latest in the Skylanders series, will not only be coming to Xbox, PlayStation, Wii consoles, and Nintendo DS, but will also enter the mobile gaming world and be made available for tablets when it is released this fall on October 5, 2014.

This game release is a notable first for mobile.

The full Skylanders Trap Team game and all of the console version’s content will be available for tablets, which make the new game one of the largest to ever be played on a mobile device. It will be playable on Android, iOS, and FireOS devices when it launches in October.

The game’s start set, which works with all three mobile operating systems listed above, is $75 and will include a game controller, a Portal of Power designed for tablets, a pair of Trap Stones, and the Snap Shot and Food Fight Skylanders figures. It is essentially just like the console-specific starter kit, with the exception that the game controller and Portal are battery powered and will only function with the game’s mobile version. Players only need one set to be able to play on all operating systems, which is a fabulous bonus for mobile users and extremely rare for mobile games.

Mobile gamers will also have the chance to download a free version of Skylanders Trap Team at their preferred app store, which will provide the player with a demo experience that relies only on Trap Stones and virtual characters, so the Portal isn’t needed. Currently, details regarding this demo version have yet to be finalized, but players will still be able to try the game for free using virtual controls.

Mobile gaming meets NFC technology.

One of the reasons why the console versions of the Skylanders games are so popular is they come with the Portal of Power, which contains a near field communications (NFC) transmitter that allows the player’s figurines to interact with the game. However, what makes the Portal designed for tablet mobile gaming so unique is not only does it work like the ones for consoles, but it also can be used as a tablet stand and underneath the Portal is a small Bluetooth controller that features all of the same buttons as an Xbox controller.