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Mobile Games News Recap | Week of March 28 to April 3, 2022
Discover it weekly recap of mobile gaming news on Android and iOS from the week of March 28 to April 3, 2022! We let you read all about it below. ⬇️
On the program this week: the death of E3, a new Russian Playstore, a animated film Sky Children of Light and lots of news on new mobile games.
Updates for a good start to April
1️⃣ Let’s start this recap with a few updates that bring a little freshness to the beginning of April. After the sabotage of its servers in the US and Europe by a DDoS attack, Among Us offers a new update. With this patch, the famous game of betrayal sees the arrival of a list of friends, Halo, Ratchet and Clank cosmetic items and more ! Something to recover from last week’s server downtime with a Spartan skin.
2️⃣ On the MiHoYo side, the title Honkai Impact 3rd Reveals Update 5.6 Titled Elyos Reverie. This update brings a new character, Pardofelis, manager of the Elyos store. A chakram fighter, she plays hand-to-hand with a companion and an IMG type of ice. The game interface is also optimized as well as the weekly challenges from the launch of the update on April 7 which will open the doors of the Elyos Kingdom to explore.
Genshin Impact was entitled to a nerf heroine Yae Miko in its update 2.6 as well as the exit from the Gouffre and the arrival of Kamisato Ayato in the main greeting banner. Players can also look forward to the return of Teyvat Times, the newsletter full of statistics on the adventures of all Travelers around the world. In the first issue, for example, we learned that 14,875,242 players had died falling from extreme heights, running out of stamina. If you like fun facts, we discover in the March 29 edition that more than 12,000 players drowned while trying to reach Inazuma. These are the risks of the job!
Cancellation of E3 and new Russian Playstore
3️⃣ Not everything is rosy in the world of video games since when powers emerge, others return to the shadows. This week, we learn a further cancellation of the E3 show, which was an industry benchmark, although in decline for a few years. With an official announcement, E3 declares to be well and truly dead for 2022. However, it must be recognized that IRL and online events such as Nintendo Direct, State of Play or dev updates studios have multiplied since the start of the pandemic and have ended up taking over long-established events, such as E3.
Immediately, Geoff Keighley hurried to announce the return of the Summer Game Fest in Junethrilled to be able to steal the spotlight at E3, as he originally did by kicking off his event when the previous E3 was canceled.
The news was greeted with humor by tweeters, although some found its tone a little too cheerful on the sidelines of the cancellation of E3.
4️⃣ To continue on the industry side, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine continues to affect the market. Developers and large companies have gradually withdrawn from the market and have preferred to support the humanitarian associations present on the spot. Unfortunately, this has deprive Russians of access to the Playstore and other app stores. This has made life difficult for Android users but also for developers who can’t find a perfect way to sell their apps there.
As a result, the Russian digital development organization Digital Platforms will soon offer a alternative store called NashStore (meaning “our shop” in Russian). All developers will be able to request the inclusion of their app on the NashStore via the platform’s official website.
Japanese games news
5️⃣ The presence of the Sky: Children of Light mobile game at AnimeJapan 2022 surprisingly. The agreement mainly relates to animation projects and therefore to the cinematographic field. However, players were surprised to discover the teaser of an animation format for Sky Children of Light at AnimeJapan 2022, all smooth and soothing splendor. Thatgamecompany also featured Eren Jaeger’s Japanese voiceover as its mobile game ambassador in Japan. In any case, we can’t wait to watch the Sky: Children of Light full movie !
6️⃣ Let’s continue with another news on the Japanese market. the famous Japanese publisher Shueisha announces this week the creation of its Shueisha Games branch. For those who do not know this publisher, it has built a solid reputation by publishing the weekly review Shonen Jump or One Piece and Jujutsu Kaisen, having already had their mobile game. Being strongly anchored in the world of paper manga, and therefore present upstream of anime trends, the company intends to give life to its popular manga in video games and board games.
Even if we do not yet know all the projects of the firm, it has already planned to release 4 titles: ONI, The Tower of Children, Ukiyo and Captain Velvet: The Jump+ Dimensions. We don’t know much more about these games or on what platforms they will be available, but the mobile market has become almost unavoidable for several years.
You can find visuals of upcoming games on the publisher’s official website.
When the real and the virtual mix
7️⃣ Last week, Krafton signed a multi-year deal with Solana Labs to ddevelop blockchain and NFT systems in future video game productions. Today, we learn more about the South Korean company’s upcoming content for PUBG mobile. Following the success with the players of the map Santoriniit seems that the studio behind the title has chosen to integrate new exotic real places in his virtual world. Many players have submitted suggestions, but the names that stand out the most are Los Angeles Downtown, Istanbul Airport, Rio de Janeiro, and the Temple of Heaven in China.
8️⃣ Since November, fans of Rovio’s iconic mobile licenses have tried to convince the studio to revive its anthology titles as a remaster. Indeed, some games, in particular the very first Angry Birds of 2012, no longer have possible compatibility with the latest generation smartphones. In recent years, the hashtag #BringBack2012 participated in a push for a new version of these classics in order to make them compatible with recent OSs. And this campaign on the part of the players ended up paying off, with the release of Rovio Classics: Angry Birdsnow available on Android and iOS for 99 cents a version of the original game from 2012 refurbished on Unity10 years later.
Speaking of decades, Forge of Empires turns ten since it was put online with a board game event.
9️⃣ In parallel, Utomik plans to launch an Android cloud gaming service around mid-2022. We will have to wait to test it so that we can give you our opinion, but in the meantime you will find a solution in the development phase at Bluestacks since the company already offers a free cloud gaming service with Bluestacks X which emulates Android on all your devices. Just watch an ad and you’re ready to play. According to our tests a few months ago, the experience was smooth on mobile but struggled to prove itself on larger screens, so business to follow during this beta!
New mobile games and releases announced
🔟 At this point in the recap, it becomes difficult to avoid NFT news. In short, Ubisoft has decided to invest around 12 million dollars in Cross the Ages, an NFT TCG while one of the most popular games in the play-to-earn category has had its loot stolen. Axies Infinity: Hackers is a title that offers NFTs on its blockchain platform and brings together nearly 2 million players. So far, trade on its platform has reached $3.6 billion. This week, the platform was stolen not far from 625 million US dollars in cryptocurrenciesmaking it the second biggest crypto heist to date.
1️⃣1️⃣ To wrap up this week’s news, let’s take a look at mobile game releases. First of all, three new Brave Nine games are planned for this year. Their developer Neowiz announced Brown Dust Story (based on the original name of the license), a visual RPG, but also Brown Dust & Puzzle a mixture of RPG and match-3 with guilds and ranking leagues, and finally Brown Dust 2, the sequel to Brave Nine, a 2.5D strategy JRPG. However, we do not know more about the release date of these titles.
1️⃣2️⃣ Anime-RPG dungeon crawler Soul Tide makes its mobile debut this week alongside Ninja’s Dungeon. New game announcements also include Counter:Side, an action-RPG title previously exclusive to Southeast Asia slated for release soon as well as the worldwide release this summer of Ni No Kuni: Cross Worlds as a mobile MMORPG.
Furthermore, the Dragon Raja developers, Archosaur Gameslaunched the first beta test of their title Life Makeover, a mix between RPG and fashion which offers you to lead the life of a trendy top model, outfits to the tips of your nails and role-playing in the events of the character’s life. This marks a significant change of style for the studio, but we can understand the interest of the developers in such a project given the success of titles like Love Nikki. However, let’s not lie to ourselves, even if this clip is pleasant to watch, we would have preferred to have news of a worldwide release for Noah’s Heart…
In the midst of these announcements, we are forced to note the chaotic launch of Brave Soul: Frozen Dungeondespite the popularity of Brave Soul, because the latter title lag and bug until the end of the earth shows the first players.
But as the metaverse continues to trend up, there’s nothing like a Link Start SAO to get back to basics. You can now pre-register at new mobile game Sword Art Online Variant Showdown on the game’s website. Bandai Namco presents this title in a trailer on the occasion of ten years of the SAO universe. Finally, the Japanese firm has announced that it is working on a video game metaverse in the world of GUNDAM. This recap is definitely placed under the sign of the great anniversaries to celebrate and the revival of manga universes in video games.
Thank you for reading this week’s news to the end, and see you next week!
