Zombie Survival Game Undawn Has Crashed And Burned According To A Reuters Report
The world of post-apocalyptic survival shooters is an extremely competitive and saturated market where only the best and most unique titles succeed. Unfortunately, that doesn’t include Tencent’s Undawn which Reuters reports has “flopped spectacularly” despite making waves when it casted Will Smith to play the part of an NPC.
Personally, I thought it was a perfect fit since the game already looked and played lot like I Am Legend, a zombie movie that also starred the iconic and now-infamous actor. Casting an A-list actor, however, wasn’t enough to impress the gaming community and get them hooked on the actual game.
Research firm Appmagic reports that Tencent only earned $287,000 from the game last month, which would have been fine for an indie game with a dozen or so developers, except Undawn clearly isn’t an indie game. Tencent reportedly spent ¥1 billion, or roughly $138 million on the game and had 300 developers working on the it throughout its development.
Tencent has since shifted its manpower and resources away from big budget titles and major IPs to work on smaller and more casual arcade-style mobile games. It’s already cancelled a game based on Square Enix’s NieR franchise and reportedly moved a chunk of Assassin’s Creed Jade’s development team away from the mobile game to focus on its mobile party game DreamStar.
