Heroes of the Storm will attempt to re-create that kind of success by attracting a huge audience - something it’s already started doing in the beta test - and selling them cosmetic items and additional characters. Hearthstone is free to download on PC, Mac, iPad, and Android tablets (but we’ve figured out how to get it running on Android phones, too), but players can pay to purchase card packs and entry into a special Arena mode that awards wins with packs and crafting items. It’s coming off a strong earnings report that was led in part by its digital card battler Hearthstone, which made around $800 million in combination with Activision’s new shooter Destiny. This is Blizzard’s second big free-to-play release, and it represents the company’s transition away from the premium-priced and subscription-based payment models that have made it and parent company Activision one of the top-earning publisher’s over the last decade. Heroes of the Storm has a chance to thrive, however, because Blizzard has a built-in group of dedicated players - and reputation for making great games. The perception is that developers have flooded the market with MOBAs and no more room exists. But some have pulled back from those ambitions in recent months.
As League of Legends’ popularity grew to unfathomable levels over the last few years, many studios looked to get on the MOBA bandwagon. League of Legends is the clear leader in the sector, and Dota 2 is the runner-up with other games like Smite carving out a niche behind those two. While Heroes of the Storm won’t reach that level of spending for some time (if ever), with $10 million in revenues every month, it could potentially catch up to or even surpass Valve’s Dota 2 (a game whose name and genre comes from a mod from Blizzard’s Warcraft III strategy game). That game, from developer Riot, has made around $1 billion each of the last two years. It is an obvious response by Blizzard to the phenomenally popular and lucrative League of Legends. Heroes of the Storm is a team-based strategy game where players must work together to destroy the opposing team’s base. “After a month of beta-testing, Activision Blizzard’s Heroes of the Storm has garnered 9 million players, positioning it to become the second- or third-highest grossing game of its kind at launch.” “Heroes of the Storm is ready for prime time,” SuperData founder and lead researcher Joost van Dreunen said. The total size of the gaming market has grown to nearly $100 billion when looking at console, PC, social, and mobile, and service-based games that are free to download and feature in-game purchases are making up a bigger and bigger piece of that market.
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