MarketWire: The Finals has arrived with a bang!
This innovative new team-based, multiplayer FPS game hits over 240K CCU in its first week out of beta
Well, GameMakers,
I am in my last week here in Bangalore, India, before returning to the US to spend Christmas with my family. It's been a crazy trip of game development challenges filled with crazy moments, ups and downs, and even a wedding.
Anyway, I am glad to be heading back, and I believe more content should be on the way in the New Year!
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We got a bunch of Gaming x AI content coming up next week!
In today’s Marketwire, I quickly discuss The Finals, perhaps the most innovative new FPS shooter game to come out in a while. It’s a game that has impressed and I don’t know a single person who’s played it who hasn’t loved it.
Top 10 Charts
OMG, enough of Spider Fighting in top 10 WW downloads, keep dropping and die already!
Black Clover M still holding strong in top downloads.
Fate/Grand Order cracking top 10 WW revenue again. The strength of Japanese Manga IP!
I wonder who Scopely is mad at more? Dream Games for leapfrogging them to #1 WW global revenue or Matej Lancaric? Lol.
Americans are lame. Wild Rift should be top revenue in US too! Chinese have great taste in what games to spend money on.
Top 10 Mobile Publishers
It’s still crazy to see Dream Games ahead of Take Two and Roblox with a single game.
Top 5 Mobile Trending
Huge swing for Honkai Star Rail last week increasing revenue by $4.2M!
That Super Slime game downloads is no joke. Damn.
Top 10 Steam Games
Well Lethal Company finally starting to slow down, but great job by Zeekerss to hold #1 for 2 weeks as a solo developer!
And THE FINALS jumps into the Top 10 with a bang at #6. More info on this awesome new game below.
🔦 Spotlight | Embark Studios’ THE FINALS blasts off hitting over 240K concurrent users on Steam
The Finals is one of the most exciting new FPS games to have launched in a long time. Developed by 80+ person, Stockholm-based (owned by NEXON), Embark Studios, the game has been in development since November of 2018.
Some highlights of The Finals:
Three teams of three try to acquire cash and bank it out of the game to win.
Fully destructible environments that can be used to block off other players and create choke points in the game.
Three different character classes (light, medium, and heavy), each class has different weapons and abilities.
Season 1 contains 4 maps
Fully server-side authoritative.
Platforms available: PS5, Xbox Series S/X, and PC (Steam).
Lessons Learned
A couple of interesting lessons came up from the launch of the game.
Lesson #1 (PC Gamer): FOV settings had a pretty significant impact on players’ perception of game speed.
Default FOV (field of view) settings shifted from 100 FOV (Open Beta) to 71 FOV (launch) resulting in many players believing that the game speed slowed down a lot.
This led to many negative reviews and complaints: “Revert the speed cowards”
Lesson #2 (Steam): Players want sweaty matches!
“We've made some changes to our skill-based matchmaking to ensure better-quality games. This means matchmaking times are likely to be ever so slightly longer, but you should find yourselves in slightly closer matches.”
The Future
The future for The Finals looks bright!
Since launch, the game has hit over 240K concurrent users:
Don’t let the mixed reviews fool you! Many whiny players who don’t know about adjusting FOV skewed the reviews.
While I do think the game will need to continue to innovate and add new features/modes in order to sustain players beyond the next 3-4 months, this game is likely the most exciting shooter game we’ve seen in years.
Good luck to the Embark team!