Call of Duty Mobile is off to an explosive start
HONGKONG: Tencent Holdings Ltd’s Call of Duty Mobile has attracted 20 million gamers within the first two days of its worldwide debut, a big boost for the company’s ambition of adapting top-tier titles with global name recognition for smartphones.
Based on Activision Blizzard Inc.’s marquee PC and console franchise, Call of Duty Mobile generated a quick $2 million in player spending after rolling out in the US, Europe, India and Latin America, researchers at Sensor Tower said. Its downloads rivaled those for Nintendo Co.’s Mario Kart Tour over its first two days, one of the most successful mobile game launches ever, according to their findings.
Call of Duty Mobile is the highest-profile project to emerge from Tencent’s effort to convert established gaming franchises to mobile, priming a pipeline that already stretches to 2022, Thomson Ji, vice-president of Tencent’s TiMi Studios, said in an interview. “We’re committed to developing games to target global markets,” said Ji at TiMi, which became the largest of Tencent’s four main creative studios off the back of breakout success Honour of Kings. “Call of Duty is very influential globally and we hope this game can help us reach hundreds of millions of mobile gamers overseas.”
Tencent, operator of the WeChat social media service, is developing new avenues for growth as uncertainty grips its home market. In May, the internet giant reported its slowest pace of sales expansion since going public in 2004.