Capcom Japan revealed that its free-to-play mobile RPG Rockman Xover has crossed 1.5 million downloads as of the end of 2013. The number comes from a recent franchise retrospective hosted at Capcom's 30th anniversary hub.
As the game continues to prove popular on both iOS and Android platforms, it won't be long before it overtakes Mega Man 2, the highest selling title in the franchise at 1.51 million units. Sure, that may sound a little unsettling... but we're still left to wonder how much revenue Xover has brought in (based on in-app purchases). There's no publicly available data on that. It's hard to say which of the two current best selling Mega Man titles have brought in more dough.
Nevertheless, Xover is a success. The game set out to do exactly what it was meant to do and Capcom seem pretty pleased with the results. At the very least, that 1.5 million proves there's an audience in Japan still invested in the franchise. Hopefully, in the long run, that will help give credence to future developments. Preferably not mobile.
Source: My Capcom
lol I know why this game has so many downloads. It doesn't take a genius playing the game to make alt accounts on another device so they can farm Master Bosses at low EP costs (since the cost is relative to the account's level). The game has tons of events that expects the player to kill upwards to 500 bosses within 3-4 days, and the most efficient way is to keep on making mule accounts to fight cheap low-level versions of these bosses.
ReplyDeleteA person who uses this method may burn through roughly 50 accounts, and to make a new account, all one has to do is delete the game and re-download it. Considering all the boss kill events this game has, tons of people probably created hundreds of thousands of alt accounts that were used simply for farming.
Well this is an interesting bit of information.
DeleteI'm not sure how big of an impact it had if each alternate account requires a different device, but I'd say it's something that would definitely be worth noting on Capcom's side of things.
Even on the Capcom-Unity thread, some people are doing this. They make an alt account, kill as many bosses on that alt until the alt becomes too high level or runs out of E-Tanks, and then they delete the app and redownload it. You don't even need a social media/e-mail to create alts. You just have to delete the game and redownload it to make a temp account on the device. I've done one of these events before because they hand out OP exclusive cards to people who reach 500+ boss kills, and I swear I made at least 100 fake accounts just to meet that quota in four days.
DeleteWhile there's no way I'd begin to compare a free app to MM2's sales, so I get where's you're coming from with your comment, that is a bit of an embellishment, anon. I totally agree that additional downloads skew it big time, and from playing frequently, I guarantee there's only like a few thousand active players, if that. However, most of the Master Boss events go for nearly 2 full weeks, not 3 or 4 days. They don't 'expect' you to kill any, it's just the lure of better prizes, the more you beat.
DeleteAnd after doing this for the first time myself this past month, there's no reason for 50-100 accounts; more than 3 would be overkill and counterproductive to your time doing it. There's no need to level up with the alt account, you just go cardless and die before clearing a stage after getting 2-3 map parts per play. You never lose EP on the alt, never burn an E-Tank on an alt, bosses never cost more than 8 EP, and your main should gain an E-tank every 20 kills, so there would be no need to keep making more accounts. If I can reach 250 with just one spare account and only playing a good hour and a half a day for bosses, I'd say burning through 50+ accounts is doing it wrong. And I learned that from your above mentioned Unity thread.
I know some people will make 20 accounts to get the referral bonus cards, but even those aren't worth getting for new players, with all the easy-to-win, more powerful community event prizes.
Also gotta remember that those of us not in Japan, who are blocked from downloading apps from that region's app store and who have made multiple accounts, aren't necessarily contributing to that 1.5 million total, either...and there does seem to be a decent amount of us worldwide players.
Actually he was right, the master boss promotions used to be about 4-5 day long and they didn't run one every week. Capcom has been changing the system every so often. They just changed it again this week so that Master Bosses had a little less HP. Also, they changed the EP rules on master bosses quite a few times. For a while Master boss EP cost the same as your character's Level and maxed out at 99. Back then a Master Boss at level 2 would cost only 2 EP. That made things a lot easier, but at the same time new accounts didn't have infinite EP up to level 15 yet either. They added that so that people would stop abandoning accounts once they stopped leveling up and ran out of EP, just like they made the base cost on the Master Bosses your level +6, to discourage all the E-Can farming.
Delete@Rock Miyabi: I haven't played Xover in almost a year, so I'm not sure if they changed the rules or something. Back then, even if you did suicide runs for Map Parts, you would't get enough EXP to level up and refill the lost EP, hence having to level up to get the EP back. A friend told me something like now, low level players don't even lose EP until they reach a certain level, so that may be why there's no need to make so many alts. The event I'm referring to was one for a card called VS Forte Cross. It was an SR+ with Shock, so lots of people wanted it. The catch was you had to kill 500 Sigmas in 4 days. It was overkill.
DeleteWell, my apologies then. I've been playing since the Android version came out, and while I know things have been tweaked often, including the boss EP cost, I guess I just never realized way back when that they were that short. Probably because I never focused on them, and I didn't have a second device to try. Nor did I realize the lack of infinite EP, because...well, I never had any reason or excuse to ever die in this game before I tried farming. LOL
DeleteI'm not sure calling a free to play game the "highest selling" makes sense, even if it does pass Mega Man 2's sales in downloads.
ReplyDeleteHeck, Street Fighter x Mega Man got downloaded over a million times, and that wasn't nearly as easy to access as a game like this that's available on some kind of app store.
I'd personally call Xover a success only if the people playing it actually enjoy it though. A lot of downloads doesn't equate to a lot of play time necessarily. Nor does it equate to in app purchases as this article points out.
Of all the games to be popular....... WHY
ReplyDeleteWHERE WERE YOU WHEN ZX ADVENT NEEDED SALES, JAPAN
ZX wasn't free and didn't get the same promotion as this game.
DeleteCan't really compare the two.
I was going to say something, but Sure beat me to it.
ReplyDeleteLOL mainstream fans thinking they're cool for raging on XOver.
ReplyDeleteI've said it before, and I'll say it again: If it weren't for the fact that it was free, most people wouldn't have even entertained the thought of downloading that piece of garbage.
ReplyDeleteCan't say I'm surprised.
ReplyDeleteIt's a free app and mobile phone games are extremely popular in Japan. I would have been more surprised if Xover was downloaded even less.
One thing I have noticed playing the game is that if you check other players profiles it's quite rare to run into anyone who has the one of the super powerful premium exclusive battle memories (the thing I would most expect people to spend money on since it basically circumvents half of the game's grind) or anyone who has a noticeably expanded battle memory stock. Of course there's other ways to spend money ( like buying items or retries on boss fights), but I get the impression people aren't spending a lot of money on the game, unlike some other games I've played like Gunbound or Ragnorok online where I ran into people with premium items all the time. Also the fact that Capcom always mentions downloads and not revenue is a bit suspicious.
ReplyDelete