Shadow Cities Hit Europe
Not so long ago we wrote about Grey Area launching their first MMO game, Shadow Cities, in the US. Today the company surprised us with another big launch, this time in Europe. From now on the game can be downloaded for free in local AppStores in 13 European countries: Italy, France, Germany, UK, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Denmark and Norway. This follows-ups company's earlier promise to open up new big markets already in June.
Shadow Cities was first launched in Finland last November and it almost instantly became the most downloaded app in the local AppStore. During the spring the game was first launched in Sweden and then in the US and Canada. Why did Grey Area first go to Sweden and only then to US? 'Shadow Cities is very server-intensive so we wanted to make sure the game can scale smoothly in larger markets like the US', explains Ville Vesterinen, CEO.
US launch is a testimony to the fact that Shadow Cities can scale quite well. Though the company does not disclose any concrete metrics, it claims the game received tremendous reception in North America. Shadow Cities was quoted 'App of the Day' by Kotaku, a leading game blog, and chosen as a 'Daily iPhone App' by AOL’s The Unofficial Apple Weblog. The game also received positive recognition from Gamezebo, a mobile games website, and MMO enthusiast site AOL Massively.
Coming to Europe after such a warm welcome seems like a natural step. The company also hints that launches in other markets would follow once Shadow Cities establishes a foothold in European markets.
Being the first mobile location-based massively-multiplayer online role-playing game, Shadow Cities' biggest strength is the unique gaming experience. The challenge is then to quickly convey the game dynamics to new users and retain them as regular players.
Grey Area's strategy to achive that is simple: they target mid- to hard-core gamers and strive to create deeper engagement for users than other social games. Apart from putting a strong emphasis on gaming experience, Ville added: 'Due to a very strong monetization we are also likely to use diffrrent cross-promotion networks to push for installs.'
So far Shadow Cities went from Finland to all across the Western world in six month. This makes it all the more interesting to follow the company's progress in the following half a year. It's hard to tell yet whether it would become the next big hit from Finland but the future sure looks bright from where the company is standing right now.
Disclosure: Ville Vesterinen, CEO of Grey Area is also a co-founder of ArcticStartup.
Even with the hectic pace of the editorial work, it would be great to see more independent research into the companies (in addition to reporting the official statements given out in interviews).
A quick googling yields results such as the app ranking courtesy of App Annie: (http://www.appannie.com/shadow-cities/ranking/history/)
This shows that Shadow Cities was among the Top 1000 (all apps) in the US for a week after the initial launch, and spent about ten days in the Top 1000 for games.
Due to their business model (including in-game purchases), they've done considerably better in the "top grossing" ranking (visible here http://www.appannie.com/shadow-cities/ranking/history/#view=grossing-ranks).
I bet presenting the above information during the interview would have given some traction to Arctic Startup's questions concerning "concrete metrics".
This is not to say you guys would be doing a bad job - just a wish that we, the readers would get to read deeper (not necessary longer), objective investigations. This would make for much, much more interesting stories - and obviously more eyeballs for your future scoops!