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Zynga will finally release Dawn of Titans during the Christmas holidays after 20 months in soft launch

Publisher gears up for big UA push for long-awaited title, but doesn't expected significant impact on Q4 financials

Zynga will finally release Dawn of Titans during the Christmas holidays after 20 months in soft launch

Zynga will finally release its long-awaited midcore strategy game Dawn of Titans during the Christmas holidays after 20 months in soft launch.

Developed by NaturalMotion, the title was originally scheduled to be released by the end of 2015, having first been announced during March of that year.

There’s not been much more updates on the game since then in what is one of the longest soft launch periods for a big title.

Dawn finally breaks

But in Zynga’s latest Q3 financial report the publisher finally announced the game would be released during the Q4 holiday period and before the end of 2016. It didn’t provide a specific date, however.

In the meantime, it will continue to expand its soft launch territories and release further updates to the game. Players have been reporting connection and resync issues in the past week affecting gameplay, which Zynga will be looking to fix before a global release.

Dawn of Titans has been in soft launch since March 2015

While a lot seems to ride on a successful launch for Zynga, particularly in light of its $527 million acquisition of developer NaturalMotion in January 2014, the publisher says it is not expecting the game to make a big impact during Christmas.

“We expect Dawn of Titans to be a positive contributor in Q4 but to have minimal impact due to its holiday release,” the financial report noted.

This could suggest a mid-to-late December launch for the title, with the Q4 period to end on December 31st.

Great expectations

Speaking in an earnings call, Zynga CEO Frank Gibeau elaborated more on the expectations surrounding Dawn of Titans and how it plans to market the game.

He said he felt the title would have a lot of “talk factor” between players and other potential consumers, which he hopes will drive a lot of organic interest in the game.

“In addition to that we believe it’s got a lot of anticipation with our channel partners and others, so we’re hopeful we’re going to get good placement with the game at holiday,” said Gibeau.

“We did try some new things on CSR 2 in terms of trying out the new user acquisition teams that we put in place. So we’ll balance that initial launch and organic positioning with some really sharp paid acquisition behind it.

“We think that we have a really good window we like. The fact there’s going to be a lot of new devices opened up on Christmas, and we’re going to have a game that’s going to show off the capabilities of those devices in amazing new ways, so we’re very excited about the reception.”

Gibeau added that Zynga aims to build Dawn of Titans’ potential success over the long-term, and is looking beyond its Q4 release.

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Craig Chapple is a freelance analyst, consultant and writer with specialist knowledge of the games industry. He has previously served as Senior Editor at PocketGamer.biz, as well as holding roles at Sensor Tower, Nintendo and Develop.