Niantic and Capcom’s Monster Hunter Now has lastly reached 15 million downloads, and to have a good time, Niantic is providing gamers free Hunt-a-thon Tickets in a intelligent commercial of its net retailer – out there to say solely by way of the exterior store.
Celebratory paid objects packs are additionally out there to coincide with this “monster milestone”.
Nevertheless, contemplating Monster Hunter Now reached 5 million installs in its first week and hit 10 million in 35 days, taking six months for an additional 5 million demonstrates a dramatic slowdown.
Working at a crawl
As a geolocation-based, Pokémon Go-esque Monster Hunter recreation designed for cellular, Now had fairly the excitement round it within the buildup to launch and thru its launch interval, changing into Niantic’s second-biggest hit virtually instantly. The title generated over $30 million in its first month however as 2023 got here to an in depth, income and downloads began to gradual.
New monetisation techniques have been carried out since and the frequency of latest monster spawns was elevated in March of this yr, however installs have nonetheless been trickling as a substitute of pouring. In response to App Magic estimates, solely 235,000 downloads have taken place up to now month – roughly 2.5% of the obtain charge final September.
Regardless of this crawl in downloads, Now could be actually a hit as one of many 5 greatest location-based video games in Japan, its key market. It’s additionally outperforming Pokémon Go in its income per participant and its retention charges, be they at D1 or D30.
In hopes of additional rising its downloads, Now lately launched a Monster Tracker to empower gamers to hunt a monster of their selection, and has began giving gamers in-game foreign money in alternate for discarded supplies – incentivising hunts even when they don’t seem to be serious about a selected monster that spawns in. Group Hunt Rewards have been carried out to encourage multiplayer.
The sport’s subsequent steps are to introduce an occasion constructed across the devilish Deviljho and to launch the wolf-beast Zinogre on the sphere for a restricted time; as the preferred monster within the franchise, the Zinogre occasion particularly ought to result in an inevitable surge in gamers – or on the very least give the sport’s $150 million income one other increase.
