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MZ’s Final Fantasy XV: A New Empire surpasses 20 million downloads

Marketing campaign with influencer Alexis Ren proves fruitful

MZ’s Final Fantasy XV: A New Empire surpasses 20 million downloads
By , Senior Editor

MZ's latest mobile 4X strategy game Final Fantasy XV: A New Empirehas racked up more than 20 million downloads.

The title, developed in partnership with Square Enix, was launched earlier this year and since then has been a consistent top grosser on app stores across the globe.

According to App Annie, the game was the 14th top grossing game on the US App Store on October 18th.

Influential campaign star

Much like its previous titles Game of War and Mobile Strike, MZ recruited the services of a celebrity to lead its marketing campaign for Final Fantasy XV: A New Empire.

In August 2017 it brought in Instagram influencer and model Alexis Ren to star in its new TV and digital ads. Ren has more than 11 million followers on Instagram and over one million on Twitter.

MZ and Square Enix were both recently named in PocketGamer.biz's Top 50 Developer list for 2017.


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Craig Chapple
Craig Chapple
Senior Editor

Craig Chapple is Senior Editor of PocketGamer.biz and InfluencerUpdate.biz. He was previously Deputy Editor at Develop and Online Editor at Nintendo of Europe.

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I. C. FOOLS Tech
I think the more interesting news (if that's is what you all actually report) would be that after download, 19,999,000 deleted the app because it was quickly realized by those with average intelligence that app was just another Pay 2B Loser scam being deceptively marketed as something its not by the smoke and mirrors sweatshop named MZ. The good news of it all is MZ has played a huge roll and given a EPIC boost to the click farm/review mill industry - where valuations for those top notch consulting firms that provide that type of service has gone through the roof. I hope the day that MZ collapses (predictably coming soon) this publication gives such prominence to how all these "top grossing" & rated apps that were produced by MZ suddenly failed. Now that will be an interesting read.
Reply
Ben D Director
MZ makes roughly $50m worldwide grossing a month across 3 games through IAP only (not ads).

You're asserting that a click-farm is generating the majority of those IAPs? Do you have data to substantiate those claims?

Are they using a click farm to boost to those downloads? Its possible, but downloads have nothing to do with top grossing numbers.

It's true that their D1 / D7 / D30 retention is far lower than industry average. D1 average is around 40% (across all genres), MZ games are around 20%. By gamer standards, the game isn't "fun" and focuses heavily on cultivating and pressuring whales to spend in the meta-game.

But low retention, boring game design and greedy monetization practices (which I think everyone knows and agrees with) are outside the fact of the amount of money that the mobile stores report they make.

What's their profitability? We don't know their operations and marketing costs to know that.
Reply
Craig Chapple Editor at PocketGamer.biz
There's little chance of MZ collapsing, they run some of the most highly successful games in the world and have kept them all going, profitably, for years. You may not like how they do it, which is fair enough, but you can't deny their success. If anything, they've expanded their business further into tech in and out of games with Satori.
Reply
I. C. FOOLS Tech
The assertion of them being profitable is just that, an assertion coming from a talking point memo that's propped up by some "top grossing" and other stats such as downloads that are highly manipulated by the click farm/review mill industry and other questionable consulting and PR services. I predict the question of profitability would never pass a legitimate sniff test to substantiate that claim. Success is defined in many ways... some of the most notorious of figures in history were successful at their illegitimate schemes until they were exposed for what they really were... The truth is within the games themselves - not what some unverifiable stat tells you.