Sea’s ‘Free Fire’ becomes highest-earning mobile shooting game in US

[HONG KONG] US gamers are spending more on Sea’s Free Fire than Call of Duty Mobile, with anime and Netflix tie-ins helping the title surge in sales this year and rank as the highest-earning smartphone shooting game.

Free Fire jumped seven spots to sixth place in mobile game sales in July, helping push overall US mobile spending up 7 per cent, according to market tracker Circana. Sea’s collaboration with Japanese anime Naruto Shippuden is credited with helping drive user attention to a game that was first released in late 2017.

Anime interest in the US remains at an all-time high, with a large fan base for the Naruto series, telling a ninja coming-of-age tale.

Earlier this month, Singapore-based Sea reported a strong rebound at its Garena gaming division and raised its full-year guidance, with chief executive officer Forrest Li lauding the effect of integrating content from Naruto and also Netflix’s Squid Game into Free Fire. “Initial response from gamers has been extremely positive,” he said.

Bringing in fantasy characters from other popular entertainment franchises has proven a reliable way to fire up excitement for long-running multiplayer titles, with Fortnite from Epic Games doing it most regularly. Its latest Fortnite Festival features British virtual band Gorillaz.

Beyond mobile, Circana reported that American gamers have now bought more of Nintendo’s Switch 2 in two months than they have of Sony Group’s PlayStation 5 all year. The Switch 2 has sold more than two million units in the US.

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Sales of incumbent consoles cratered in July, with spending on the PS5 down 47 per cent, Microsoft’s Xbox Series down 69 per cent and Nintendo’s original Switch declining 52 per cent year on year. Americans instead gravitated to the Switch 2, which drove overall console hardware spending to US$384 million, the highest July total since 2008. BLOOMBERG