Last June, Tencent introduced the world to Undawn, a mulitplayer survival RPG for PC and mobile that tasked players with trying to make it in a post-apocalyptic world full of zombies. The title was likely most notable for casting Will Smith as an NPC or for having a surprising musical number when we watched a reader’s recorded gameplay for Backseat Streaming.
Unfortunately it looks as if the game will now be cast in a more infamous light, as reporting from Reuters classifies Undawn as a game that “flopped spectacularly” for Tencent, earning the company only $287,000 last month according to data from research firm Appmagic. For context, Undawn had a ¥1B ($138M) budget and 300 developers who worked on the title.
The bombing of Undawn underscores an overall strategy shift at Tencent as the megacorp moves toward releasing more casual and arcade-y mobile games and away from mobile games tied to major IPs – the company has already cancelled work on a title based on the NieR property in December and has reportedly moved developers away from the mobile action game Assassin’s Creed Jade towards the mobile party game DreamStar. “We’re focusing on fewer bigger budget games,” said Tencent chief strategy officer James Mitchell during the company’s Q4 2023 financial presentation earlier this week. The company told investors that its 2023 revenues were up a solid 10% over 2022.
