Is There Room in the Market for More MOBAs?

The MOBA market has been growing rapidly over the years largely thanks to the success of League of Legends. Several new MOBAs have been announced including Warhammer 40K: Dark Nexus Arena and Gigantic, but is there really room in the market for new MOBAs? I don't think so.

Take a look at two recently launched MOBAs – Infinite Crisis from Turbine and Sins of a Dark Age from Ironclad Games. Infinite Crisis announced its intention to shut down within a few months of its official launch and Sins of a Dark Age has a very low playerbase. Infinite Crisis wasn't a low budget game either – it's a MOBA set in the DC Universe with recognizable characters like Batman, Superman, and The Joker. The actual game was pretty good too. So why it fail and why can't Sins of a Dark Age grow its playerbase? It's because League of Legends has such a dominant grip on the market.

League of Legneds - ~90M monthly active users*

As you can see in the chart above, League of Legends is the 10,000 lb gorilla in the room, completely eclipsing every other game in the market. With 90M monthly active users worldwide, it's about 8x bigger than it's #2 competitor DotA 2, which has 11M monthly active users. The thing about MOBAs too is that these games are sticky, meaning players are typically loyal to them and resistant to change. On top of that, learning a new MOBA is never easy either as these games typically have much steeper learning curves.

The only new MOBA that I think really has a chance of breaking into the market successfully is Heroes of the Storm from Blizzard Entertainment, simply because it's Blizzard and they can afford to throw lots of money behind their marketing campaign. Heroes of the Storm is also more accessible than other MOBAs, as it's much easier to pick up and learn. The game's characters are also all recognizeable, as they're a part of the iconic Blizzard Universe (Starcraft, Warcraft, and Diablo). Even though Heroes of the Storm may succeed, I don't think it'll come close to League's level of popularity.

HotS - Blizzard's entry into the MOBA Market

Just look at every new MOBA type game that launched over the last year or two. Games like Victory Command, Games of Glory, and Prime World have gone nowhere and I don't think that's going to change. I hope it will, as I think other MOBAs like Strife and Smite have huge potential, but they can't seem to convince players to switch from League. I wish upcoming MOBAs like Master X Master luck, but it's definitely going to be a struggle for them.

Besides Heroes of the Storm, I don't think any new MOBA can really succeed in this market. The world is just too enthralled with League of Legends at the moment. Just like World of Warcraft dominates the subscription MMORPG market, League will dominate the MOBA market for the years to come.

*Chart sourced from SuperDataResearch