Diablo Immortal shows mobile remains a dirty word in triple-A, My Talking Tom 2 launches, and Rovio's Sophie Vo on the user experience

The hottest stories from the mobile games industry over the past week

• 1 Diablo Immortal backlash shows once again triple-A publishers are afraid of their audiences

  

  Mobile gaming may be the world’s largest games market, but it remains a dirty word in triple-A.

  Blizzard’s announcement of Diablo Immortal during Blizzcon was met with anger and disappointment from some fans and internet trolls. What the core fans seem to want is a PC game, not an ‘inferior’ mobile one.

  The publisher had taken steps to play down expectations prior to the show, but that was not enough.

  We analysed the way the announcement was made and what that and the backlash says about the status of mobile amongst triple-A publishers keen to make moves in the space.

  
  

• 2 Outfit7 gives its billion dollar cat a true sequel with My Talking Tom 2

  

  My Talking Tom is one of the most popular mobile game franchises ever, generating more than eight billion downloads.

  The success of the series led to developer Outfit7 being acquired for a cool $1 billion in 2017.

  Now the company has dropped another big announcement: it’s launched an official sequel for its billion-dollar cat: My Talking Tom 2.

  With a movie also on the way, Outfit7 is not slowing down in its expansion of the franchise for the long-term.

  
  

• 3 Speaker Spotlight: Rovio's Sophie Vo on making the most of user research in early stage development

  

  Pocket Gamer Connects London 2019 (January 21st to 22nd) is just a couple of months away.

  Ahead of the event, we’ve been conducting interviews with speakers set to talk at the show.

  This time we caught up with Rovio Entertainment executive producer Sophie Vo, who will host a session discussing how the company makes the most of user research at the early phases of development.

  “In my talk, I will share the takeaways on the new game I am developing: how user research revealed that we were going in the wrong direction at very early stage, and which methods we used (PlaytestCloud, face-to-face live interviews, beta tester groups...) that any developer can decide to use tomorrow, at a low cost,” said Vo.

  
  

• 4 Activision Blizzard labels Diablo Immortal fan reception as "muted"

  

  The backlash to Blizzard’s new mobile game, Diablo Immortal, has resulted in numerous headlines across the games media and a sharp rebuke from some fans on Twitter.

  Activision Blizzard COO Collister Johnson played down the reaction however, labelling it “muted”.

  “While fan reaction was muted to the announcement, players' hands-on experience this content confirmed what we believe, which is that Diablo mobile will be a very well received game when it releases and players around the world will love it,” he said.

  
  

• 5 Weekly global mobile game charts: Command & Conquer Red Alert Online fires up China's top grossing list

  

  Our weekly global mobile charts in partnership with Sensor Tower once again proved popular amongst our readers over the last week.

  For the week commencing October 22nd, Tencent’s Command & Conquer: Red Alert Online moved down the download charts slightly. But importantly, it rose up to third in the top grossing rankings.

  That means it’s making serious revenue in the country, with Asia well known for game sales that can far eclipse anything seen in the rest of the world.

  Elsewhere, Supercell’s Clash of Clans worked its way up the US and Great Britain and Ireland charts, while Fortnite, Candy Crush Saga and Pokemon Go remained the top grossers.