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Clash of Clans developer Supercell may not launch a new game in 2017
Finland-based mobile game developer Supercell had a pretty busy 2016. In March of that year, it launched Clash Royale, a spin-off of sorts of its hit strategy game Clash of Clans. It is only the fourth game released from Supercell, which was first founded in 2010. In June 2016, China-based conglomerate Tencent acquired 84 percent of Supercell for $8.6 billion, which means the company has a total value of over $10 billion. That’s a ton of money for a developer that still has just over 200 employees.
However, if you thought that we might get an all-new game from Supercell this year, you might want to hold off on those expectations. Reuters reports that, as part of Supercell’s annual financial report, while the developer might test a new game in selected markets later this year, there are no immediate plans to do so. In other words, don’t expect a new full game from the company to launch worldwide until 2018 at the earliest.
Supercell said it generated €2.1 billion in revenue for all of 2016, which was about flat compared to 2015. However, earnings came in at €917 million, which was much higher than its earnings of €848 million in 2015. Clash of Clans, which launched in 2012, was the number two top-earning app for 2016, according to the mobile research firm App Annie. Clash Royale ended up as the fifth top-earning game of the year. Supercell’s other two mobile games are Boom Beach and Hay Day.
The company did admit that its revenue didn’t grow last year due to competition from other titles, including Niantic Labs’ AR game Pokémon Go. In fact, Supercell’s CEO Ilkka Paananen commented on the Pokémon Go phenomenon:
In the summer, when Pokemon GO was a huge hit, a taxi driver asked me what would be our counter-attack. I said there’s no point in doing something against a competitor, we must only focus in doing what we do best, improve our games further.
The truth is that Supercell’s games, particularly Clash of Clans and Clash Royale, continue to be popular worldwide, and they still generate tons of revenue from in-app purchases. In 2016, it reported that 100 million people play its games every day. There’s simply no need for the company to rush out an all-new game because it sees what it may believe to be threats from competitors. They can afford to take their time to make a good and popular game that can be as successful as Clash Royale has turned out to be.