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 figuring out something about it. Based on Reuters, the sport, which seems to have been on only a few folks’s radar, didn’t carry out properly 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 advised the publication that Undawn has “flopped spectacularly.” The post-apocalyptic zombie shooter allegedly had greater than 300 builders on it and a finances of almost 1 billion yuan (round $140 million). Sadly, in response to 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 % of the sport’s alleged finances within the span of eight months
There are a couple of components 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 avid gamers really knew about its launch. Social media posts made after the Reuters story broke are principally folks asking the identical query: “Am I the one one who didn’t even know this sport 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 “combined” ranking on Steam with 5,535 critiques on the time of writing.
Plus, Undawn is an uninteresting identify for a zombie sport—it’s kinda near KNP’s zombie survival sport Undead and Supermassive Video games’ interactive horror sport Till Daybreak. May it have benefited from a extra recognizable title? Perhaps, a minimum of to tell apart it from different well-known undead shooters.
Sadly, not even well-known actor—and notorious slapper—Will Smith may’ve saved Tencent’s sport. Smith promoted Undawn on his official YouTube channel in Might 2023, revealing that he additionally performs the lead in its post-apocalyptic zombie story. Based on 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 worldwide 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 response to 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 the direction of informal celebration video games and Genshin Influence-like anime RPGs as a substitute.
“We’re specializing in fewer larger finances video games,” Mitchell mentioned on March 20 by way of Reuters. “Sometimes, we’re looking for to make the largest bets round video games that both iterate on a profitable IP…or video games which might 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.
Based on 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 “a whole bunch of individuals from the crew” may get shuffled to the corporate’s not too long ago launched celebration sport DreamStar. That is regardless of Tencent investing tens of millions of {dollars} within the franchise in September 2022, turning into one in all Ubisoft’s largest shareholders. It appears like Tencent is making main pivots which will have an effect on its enterprise technique.
