Mobile soft launches are increasingly becoming the real development laboratory

The current wave of soft launches from Blizzard, EA, Fingersoft, Garena, Century Games, Miniclip and others underlines how thoroughly mobile development has shifted away from the idea of a single finished launch day. Players in selected countries increasingly encounter games months before global release while publishers test onboarding, progression, monetization, server design and even the fundamental genre. Overwatch Rush is testing whether Blizzard's hero roster works in a top-down shooter; Plants vs.

Zombies 3 is rewriting its tutorial; Hill Climb Racing 3 is learning how real-time multiplayer changes a physics classic; and Garena Free City is testing whether an ambitious open world can survive lower-end Android hardware. Some of these games will change substantially before release and others may disappear entirely. That is not necessarily failure. Soft launch allows publishers to kill weak ideas before global marketing costs become enormous.

For players and industry observers, it also provides a rare view of game design while the decisions are still being made.