Reliance Games has successfully taken the Real Steel franchise to astronomical heights and the latest offering from the franchise ‘Real Steel Champions’, which saw a launch on the iOS platform last month has now phased its way to Android.
A sequel to ‘Real Steel World Robot Boxing’ – ‘Real Steel Champions’ gives one the opportunity to build a robot and dominate in different arenas. With close to 1000 unique robots to choose from, the objective of the game is to smash your way through boss fights in the quest to become the undisputable champion. The tournament has 20 fights and 4 bosses to battle and over 30 challenges to play and clear. The game is free for download with some in-app purchases with real money.
Reliance Entertainment – Digital, CEO, Manish Agarwal got chatting with AnimationXpress.com about the game and his expectations on Android after the success on iOS: “The first week of launch on iOS, saw close to a million downloads and we are now tracking close to over two million. Typically, Android should be around 3-4 times of what iOS does in the first week. Real Steel Boxing has roughly 25-30 million downloads on Android, testament to the fact that the franchise is an instant hit. The one thing which we have learnt and have been successfully implementing is listening to consumers and fans which continues to pay rich dividends in terms of download numbers.”
Action games have done really well for the company, leading to the success of games like Pacific Rim, but the market is getting a little cluttered. “When we were launching Real Steel Champions, we had two questions in mind: Is there juice in the IP because the movie came out four years ago, plus we already had three games on Real Steel. Secondly, has this mechanism of robot boxing lived its day? I think numbers speak for themselves. Beauty of the game is the players don’t have to learn game mechanics, but simply adapt to the added features. We believe the Real Steel franchise will continue to do well for us. But, there is always the need to stay relevant and keep delivering quality and engaging content as game developers, with consumer feedback coming handy as well,” explains Manish on taking the franchise forward.
On Reliance Games, also experimenting a single franchise with different genres, taking Real Steel characters and putting them in a strategy game or a match three game, Manish responds, “We aren’t pulling off an Angry Birds model. We are not expanding it into other genres as of now. We believe, at this juncture we still have five more concepts in same game mechanics that can be milked from the current Real Steel franchise. We need to figure out how to give a complete unique experience in each game.”
Boasting a line-up of games like Total Recall, Pacific Rim, Hunger Games, which other movie franchise will the company target. “Pacific Rim looks like a strong name we can explore further, as we had launched the game 15 months back and it still packs a punch without any marketing, leading to plans on Pacific Rim 2. We are in discussions with IP owners at present; beyond that, we have signed couple of IPs, which I can’t disclose currently. But we are expanding into other genres like Builder, RTS, Match 3; though Action will continue to be our strength. We plan to launch 11-12 big games this year,” Manish signs off.
