'And we know esports really, really well. 'I think the gameplay totally caters to it,' he told us. lead designer Brian Grayson spoke excitedly about its design and how he was sure the game's eventual community would help push it into the world of esports. And it also threw in a third lane to liven up the action.Įverything seemed to be going well. For one, it had the Smite IP behind it, with its own set of characters and worlds. Revealed in January 2017 at Hi-Rez's expo in Atlanta, the game shared a lot in common with Supercell's smash-hit Clash Royale - players battled in 1v1 real-time PvP fights and sent units down lanes to battle and destroy the opponents' tower. So, join us as we explore the games that sadly didn't make it out of soft launch this year and what exactly happened that led to their demise.Ģ017 started out with a pretty interesting announcement, as PC-focused developer Hi-Rez Studios announced it was bringing its popular MOBA, Smite, to mobile in the form of Smite Rivals. Whatever the reason, five games we tracked stood out for us this year as significant titles that were sorely missed in 2017 and we'd like to shed some light on them once again. And some of them aren't quite dead yet and are instead waiting for the perfect time to make their appearance. The games themselves might even have been good, though we'll never know just how good they could have been.

There's any number of reasons why, such as the early data doesn't show much promise, the developer chooses to take their future in a different direction or the studio just shuts down entirely. One of the things we're best known for at is our Soft Launch list - a huge, though not exhaustive, list of the biggest games currently being tested in select mobile markets.Īnd while the vast majority of games we track do eventually see the light of day, there are also a not insignificant number that fall at this hurdle and never make it to the wider world.

Smite rumble race