Nordeus soft-launches Spellsouls, Twitch says "don't make a mobile eSports game", and Outfit7 is sold for $1 billion

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• 5 Is it even worth being a mobile games indie in 2017?

  

  As part of Pocket Gamer Connects London 2017, Unity's Oscar Clark led a panel of indie developers in a discussion on whether the "indie journey" is really worth it anymore.

  Joining him were:

  • Alex Moyet, Founder & Director of AMCADE;
  • Josh Nilson, Co-founder & CEO of East Side Games;
  • Michael Peiffert, Founder & Producer of Mi-Clos Studios, and;
  • James Hursthouse, former CEO of Roadhouse Interactive

  "Be more careful about money at the high points than the low points," warned Nilson, arguing that spending money like you're Facebook when you have some money in the bank can ultimately lead to your demise as you ignore your customers.

  
  

• 4 Nordeus swaps football for fantasy MOBA/CCG with soft-launched Spellsouls: Duel of Legend

  

  Where does a mobile developer go after launching just one football game and operating it for years on end?

  The answer for Nordeus is to go the completely opposite direction, as it soft-launched its CCG/MOBA title Spellsouls: Duel of Legend on January 10th 2017.

  It's aiming for AAA graphical quality, with three minute long battles designed specifically for the mobile audience and more card-collecting and deck-battling than you can shake a stick at.

  The good news is that if you live in Australia, Canada, Croatia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, or Taiwan, you can start playing it right now.

  
  

• 3 Netmarble's Lineage 2: Revolution surpasses $176 million in revenues in its first month

  

  Everyone likes to bang on about how Pokemon GO is one of the fastest games to reach $100 million in revenue, and to be fair, you can't say the game wasn't a major success.

  But now Netmarble's latest game, Lineage 2: Revolution, has stolen its title by generating $100 million in revenue in just 18 days, and $176 million in its first month alone.

  What makes this even more impressive is that Lineage 2 has only been released in South Korea, while Pokemon GO had been released in multiple countries by the time it hit $100 million.

  Where Lineage 2 will go from here is anyone's guess, but if it sees a release outside of its home country, its revenues could go far beyond that of Pokemon GO's.

  
  

• 2 "Don't make a mobile eSports title" says Twitch

  

  Pocket Gamer Connects is always a time for spectacular quotes from people across the games industry, and 2017's London edition was no different.

  One of the highlights of the conference was Ryan Chaply, Senior eSports Program Manager at Twitch, who got up on stage and said the words "don't make a mobile eSports game."

  What he went on to say was that developers should make a great game first, and think about how competitive play would work - not to go straight in with the intention of making an eSport.

  He also suggested working with the community to build the game, scale it slowly and carefully, and consider the narrative behind their game's growth and the teams that play it.

  
  

• 1 Chinese chemical firm acquires Talking Tom developer Outfit7 for €1 billion

  

  Love them or loathe them, there's no denying the overwhelming success of the Talking Tom games and their variety of chatty characters.

  The games are odd enough, but now to add to the mix the company behind them, Outfit7, has been acquired by a consortium of investors from Asia for $1 billion.

  Reports of the acquisition had been circulating around news sites in Slovenia, but it wasn't until January 20th that Outfit7 officially announced the acquisition itself.

  And now Zhejiang Jinke Entertainment Culture, which primarily deals in "the manufacture and sale of peroxides and activating agents", is one of the owners, with the group represented by United Luck Group Holdings Limited.