Wargaming has been very successful with World of Tanks on the PC, notching up over 100 million registered subscribers and a huge amount of revenue. Now, though, the company’s success has spread to other games and other platforms. World of Tanks has done well as the first free-to-play game on the Xbox 360, and now on the Xbox One. World of Tanks Blitz is generating good numbers on mobile. World of Warplanes is out on PC, and World of Warships launches soon. Now, CEO Victor Kislyi has announced at the Tokyo Game Show that World of Tanks is coming to the PlayStation 4.
Keith Anderson
GamesIndustry International interviewed Keith Anderson, Wargaming’s marketing and communications director for Europe, about the company’s latest moves. Anderson is particularly keen on the possibilities for World of Warships. “What we’re also looking at is opportunities to bring new players into the WarGaming family, and there’s many countries that didn’t have strong tank battalions during World War II, but had great navies, and we’re seeing uptake from these players,” said Anderson. “There’s something about images of the big ships from World War II that is just so iconic. The Warspite, the Bismarck, the Tirpitz, that’s attracting a new audience in too, so we’re really excited about that.”
Asked about how Europe performs when it comes to ARPU (average revenue per paying user), and Anderson has a ready answer. “We find that we have very healthy ARPU rates across Europe. World of Tanks as a game has been great for four years now,” he said. ” He went on to comment on Wargaming’s marketing approach to Europe. “For us Europe’s a very, very healthy market, it’s a vibrant market… What we’re definitely not doing is resting on our laurels. We’re driving growth very aggressively. We’ve engaged in two TV campaigns across Europe already this year, in twenty countries and in seven languages. We’ve got a massive Q4 TV campaign for Tanks planned. We’re working with YouTube Gaming right now, and investing very heavily in their new channel. And that’s not to say we’re not investing in the other channels at the same time, like Twitch, for instance. We are. It’s just that we’re always looking for new areas to grow, we’re looking for new areas to acquire new audiences.”
Anderson also talked about World of Tanks coming to Sony’s PlayStation 4. “As always, we will be adapting the game to meet the platform. So, in addition to making the most outstanding visuals on Playstation 4, we’ll have platform exclusive features, including complete dual shock controller integration,” Anderson said. “It’s a pretty awesome announcement for us to make, we’re very excited to do it. It shows our commitment to bringing our games to multiple platforms, to audiences wherever they’re going to be. In addition to that, World of Tanks on Playstation 4 will be free to play to all PSN account holders. So you will not require a Playstation Plus account to play World of Tanks.
“We’re doing exceptionally good business on the Xbox, on both the 360 and the Xbox One, but for us it’s really exciting to be engaging with Sony, to bring the game to the PS4,” Anderson continued.. “We will be having a few very good deals for PlayStation players when we make the announcement, they get a free premium tank with PS4 exclusive camo, they’ll get premium time if they’re a PlayStation plus holder when the game launches, all that kind of thing. Then for an exclusive limited time, we’ll also have two new maps on the PlayStation, which players on the PlayStation will be able to jump into and play first. So we’re very excited about this new partnership with Sony.”
