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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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.