Battle royale games have been the most popular multiplayer titles for a long time. The leaders by audience among them are Call of Duty: Warzone, Apex Legends and Fortnite, and the novelty is unlikely to move the giants of the genre (at least for now), but it has already managed to get its, albeit small, but loyal audience. Last August, 24 Entertainment introduced a new third-person oriental-inspired "battle royale" Naraka: Bladepoint. The game immediately broke into the Top 10 most popular games on Steam, and by May 2022 it ranked sixth in the list of games with the largest concurrent player count.
What makes Naraka: Bladepoint unique?
The new title is beloved by many fans of the genre, and its current player count is steadily above 60K. More surprising, Naraka has become extremely popular, although it is not distributed for free like the most popular games of the genre: you will have to pay $20 if you want to play it.
The game is a mix of classic battle royale mechanics, ready-to-play character classes from Apex Legends, and Blade & Soul-style edged combats, as well as a fascinating acrobatic spectrum of moves straight out of Assassin's Creed or Mirror's Edge. The unusual style and mix of different mechanics appealed to gamers, which ensured the success of the novelty from 24 Entertainment.
In May, 2022, the developers announced the mobile version along with the new character's release. Now Naraka: Bladepoint Mobile will try to draw the audience from the top "battle royals" on mobile phones such as Free Fire and PUBG Mobile.
Esports in Naraka: Bladepoint
NARAKA: BLADEPOINT World Championship Recap
Naraka: Bladepoint authors began to develop the esports scene of the game as well. In November and December there were several amateur tournaments in the new Battle Royale, and on January 24, Entertainment together with NetEase organized a World Championship with a prize pool of $1.5 million. The tournament was streamed on Twitch, Facebook and Nimo TV in multiple languages, and was watched by 16K Peak Viewers. These broadcasts accumulated more than 143K Hours Watched in 27 hours of airtime.
The game is very popular with the Chinese audience, as it has become one of the games with the highest sales rate. By the end of 2021, more than 6 million copies of the game were sold In China alone. No wonder that 12 squads from China attended the last world championship, the same number of squads from Europe, America, and Southeast Asia combined.
Last month, NetEase also announced an entire ecosystem of tournaments. Koi Cup, a Chinese online tournament, will be held twice a year, and what’s more importantly, the newly created Naraka: Bladepoint Pro League is planned, which will also have two seasons a year with a total prize pool of $800K. In addition, in January and February there will be a World Championship — Naraka: Bladepoint World Championship.
The first season of Naraka: Bladepoint Pro League will start very soon. So far only 20 of the 24 teams have been announced: surprisingly, besides big names from China (like Weibo Gaming and Jing Dong Gaming), Wolves — a team owned by a famous English football club Wolverhampton Wanderers — is also listed as a member of the league. And recently it became known that the Swedish team Alliance will also take part in a new league. We should remind you that Naraka: Bladepoint Pro League will be the second franchise league from NetEase after the successful launch of the league based on the horror game Identity V.
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The overwhelming start of sales and the stable community of gamers in the future can seriously push the game ahead of competitors in the genre in China. However, the situation in other regions is much more complicated: European servers are dominated by players from China, which does not suit all fans of the game from Europe. Another serious problem is a huge number of cheaters that use, which greatly worsens the quality of the game for other players. Overall, we can conclude that Naraka: Bladepoint has found its place as a non-trivial battle royale for those fans of the genre who are bored with automatic weapons and constant landings. But for now the game is not ready to compete with the classic "battle royale" games in the West.
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