Hi, my name is Kenny Liu, and I work in Revenue Strategy at Riot Games. Each week I compile a gaming industry insights newsletter that I share with other Rioters, including Riot’s senior leadership. This edition is the public version that I publish broadly every week as well. Opinions are mine.
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Kliu's Corner: Fort(nite)ifications vs. the Black(out) Swan
Epic Games made two interesting announcements this week; though seemingly unrelated, they both aim to help protect Fortnite from their most formidable competition to date
The first is their decision to bring a physical Fortnite bundle to store shelves for the holidays, in partnership with Warner Bros.
The second is their announcement of a new limited time Support-A-Creator Event, which effectively gives away up to 5% of their profit margin to influencers (assuming 100% participation of players as supporting fans)
In the short-term both of these initiatives will be margin-destructive for this quarter, but these plays have been made by Epic with the long game in mind
With a Nielsen awareness score of 99/100, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 is the most anticipated game this holiday, and Activision's big bet represents the greatest existential threat to date for existing battle royale leaders, Fortnite and PUBG
Though Blackout will likely cannibalize PUBG much more than Fortnite (due to greater similarities across art, design, pricing, etc.), I think it is still smart for Epic to strategize mitigating any potential player flight risk
Yes, Epic could have made some more revenue-maximizing optimizations on their specific tactical executions, but giving up ~5% of revenue for a quarter may not seem too steep a price to pay for an additional layer of protection from unlucky possibilities
Under a milder scenario, Fortnite might lose a subset of their players, which would have effectively cut off the otherwise very lucrative (years-)long tail of these players' total lifetime value
Much worse would be an unlikely but catastrophic black swan event where Blackout seizes Fortnite's throne
Design
Blog: The iOS Design Guidelines
Call Of Duty: Black Ops 4 devs on balancing Blackout battle royale mode
Balancing restriction and reward when designing Path of Exile’s Delve
Ben Brode's PAX Dev 2018 keynote on "little things that make all the difference"
PC/Console
Microsoft announces Project xCloud: Xbox game streaming to PCs, consoles, and mobile devices
[KL: Public trials to begin in 2019, so official announcement likely accelerated in response to Google's Project Stream
Interesting that Microsoft says their test experience runs at 10 Mbps vs. Google's 25 Mbps
Both Microsoft & Google likely have better network engineering expertise over Nintendo & Sony, but comparatively they still lack compelling content portfolios
Sony confirms next-gen hardware with similar "fundamental architecture" to PS4
Mobile
Zynga Is Drawing [Deal] Interest From Gaming Rivals
Fortnite's Android version is no longer invite-only
Mobile gamers referred through organic social channels have up to 67% higher retention
Google lets developers sell in-app purchases through Assistant
Nintendo has patented a Game Boy case for smartphones with "capacitive D-pad and A-B buttons, meaning they could be used to control and interact with the touchscreen beneath"
