Call of Duty: Mobile will be set for launch on Tencent’s Gaming Buddy PC emulator soon after debuting on its dedicated platform sometime later this year, publishers Activision have announced.
The publisher had previously paved the way for the three developers under its wings to create a mobile version of the legendary first-person shooter franchise that would primarily serve as a battle royale simulator, itself a move taken considering the unequivocal success the aforementioned Tencent Games’ Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) has witnessed over the past year or so.
Call of Duty: Mobile made its first foray earlier this year with a limited beta that has since closed, and estimates of when the full-fledged version will debut vary from source to source, with some pinpointing a date toward the very end of August itself, and some arguing that the title will launch along with Winter’s highly-anticipated Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, marking a double multi-platform release for Activision.
Analysts within the gaming industry agree that the mobile title is a necessity for the Call of Duty franchise due the consistently growing popularity of free-to-play, battle royale shooting games such as PUBG, Day Z and others that threaten the existence of paid first-person and third-person shooting games, especially in developing countries where consoles have traditionally seen lower sales when compared to their first-world counterparts.
Of course, Activision does have a back-up to hedge their financial bets on if the experiment doesn’t work; the much-touted reboot of the Modern Warfare trilogy.
The first three outings with the MW Brandi remain the publishers’ most critically and commercially successful intellectual properties to this day, and with an industry-wide buzz about the upcoming reiteration’s general tone and direction, they can be confident on having a winner at hand.