Blizzard announced today that its free-to-play MOBA Heroes of the Storm will be going live June 2 after a highly successful beta period, and observers expect it will quickly become one of the top MOBAs in the marketplace using the many iconic Blizzard characters featured in the game. Blizzard is building on the free-to-play success it’s found with already in the past year with Hearthstone. After being on PC and tablets for months now, Blizzard’s Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft finally made its way to Android and iOS smartphones this past week – and it’s making an incredible impact on the mobile market.
VentureBeat is reporting that Hearthstone has already become one of the biggest grossing games in various markets, according to data provided by App Annie. It’s number one on the iOS charts across eight countries, including South Korea, and in the top 25 for others, including Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. Meanwhile, over on Android, it has become number 43 overall in the U.S., a reasonable number for its debut.
With the debut of the highly popular game on smartphones, Blizzard should have no trouble contributing to the success of mobile games, which reached $30 billion in revenue last year and is estimated to top that number with ease. Blizzard has already debuted two new adventure packs, as well as a major expansion, which players have been eating up.
With heavy spending already reported in the game’s most popular regions – being the United States, Canada, China and Japan – it’s still bound to be a hit in this year’s mobile market. And who knows, Blizzard could introduce even more expansions to stretch its appeal even further. It has the kind of simple “pick-up-and-play” elements to bring in new players with ease, while at the same time packing in the kind of tactics that true masters can indulge when battling their friends.
Clearly Blizzard has found success with free-to-play games, and it seems logical that its recently announced Overwatch game may follow in the same monetization path, though that has not been announced yet.
Players can get their hands on Heroes of the Storm during an open beta beginning on May 19. Hearthstone can be downloaded by interested fans can here for iOS, and here for Google Play {links no longer active}.
