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Final Fantasy's Sakaguchi first F2P game Terra Battle hits 500,000 downloads

Pushing the social aspect

Final Fantasy's Sakaguchi first F2P game Terra Battle hits 500,000 downloads

Perhaps it's no surprise given this is the first free-to-play game from legendary Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi's Mistwalker studio but Terra Battle has had 500,000 downloads across iOS and Android.

After one week, you could argue this isn't actually a large amount, although - of course - that depends on how much user acquisition is happening behind the scenes.

However, what is interesting is Mistwalker's overt social campaign for Terra Battle given that download total is key element of what's effectively a Kickstarter-style stretch goals campaign, only based on user downloads not users' cash.

Stretch to win

Playing to its hardcore fanbase, the stretch goals unlocked by 500,000 downloads are:

  • 100,000: new music from Final Fantasy composer Nobou Uematsu
  • 200,000: new characters from FF9 and FF12 art director Hideo Minaba
  • 300,000: new characters from manga artist and writer Nakaba Suzuki
  • 400,000: new characters from Phantasy Star cover illustrator Hitoshi Yoneda
  • 500,000: new characters from Panzer Dragoon artist Manabu Kusunoki

But the point of stretch goals is to encourage further activity, which in the case of Terra Battle top out at 2 million downloads with the start of development on a console version.

"We didn't anticipate Terra Battle eclipsing the 500,000 mark this quickly, so that's a testament to the passion of our players," said Sakaguchi.

"We're activating the initial five rewards from legendary artists and we'll continue to leave it in players' hands to determine what Download Starter Campaign rewards are on the horizon."

You can see details of the full campaign here.


Contributing Editor

A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.