Miracle on Overwatch Ice
For all the grumbling about the East's inevitability in the West, Overwatch seems to have struck back, and this may become video games' modern Miracle on Ice story. When considering Blizz.net active users, OW is on top for the first time since Rivals launch.
As I've written about previously, the Stadium mode perks, improvements to Live Ops, and Narrative Focus have all maximized game productivity relative to their content costs. Now, a single character maintains a strong volume of retentive units and a stream of servicable content. The cosmetic system has improved with a wider economy array. Something that even the original Overwatch did well, with things like sprays and voice lines on player banners, and also by modularizing weapon cosmetics relative to proprietary character-only single equip cosmetics.
Marvel Rivals is still a Western IP, but it's built by a Chinese team that also fired its Western support studio. It's hard to ignore the project's core supply-side thesis: releasing characters every 4 to 6 weeks is a sustainable content volume, and, by and large, Marvel Rivals has proved it. That hasn't led to compounding gains, with DAU stuck between 1M and 2M. It's hard to know if the game is generally considered successful, considering scope and IP fees. Prior analysis I've done suggests it's kinda meh, not far and away a smashing success (why this game never released for mobile is puzzling).
Mobile may be susceptible to copying, and ad auction economics may strip the price down to CPI. On the other hand, the markets are not nearly as fluid on PC console, and the Chinese will struggle here. So far, Delta Force and Genshin remain strong breach heads, but that's not nearly the pace of something like 4x growth.