How is Heroes of the Storm currently performing in the MOBA market? Is it a serious competitor for LoL and Dota 2?
The Data Analysis
Since the launch of Heroes of the Storm, 4 months have passed. It’s about time to draw a first conclusion and see how Blizzard’s MOBA is performing in the market. Joost van Dreunen from SuperData asked these very questions and analyzes the success of the title based on current revenues and player counts. We have translated and summarized his key statements for you.
Doubled Since Beta
In February of this year, Heroes of the Storm was still in beta, but already had over 9 million players. This number has more than doubled now, reaching a proud 22 million registered accounts battling it out in the Nexus. This is not the only success – the two competitors Heroes of Newerth and SMITE have already been left behind.
The Comparison with Other MOBAs
In direct comparison to other MOBAs, Heroes of the Storm is still just a small fish in the sea of the whale League of Legends and the shark Dota 2. In summary, the MOBA market seems to be more than saturated, as the number of players in this genre has only increased by 3.9% since April.
Nevertheless, the most popular titles are still able to generate significantly more players. LoL grew by 8%, Dota 2 by 11%, SMITE by a whopping 14%. How this is possible in a market that is hardly growing is easy to explain: The smaller, less significant games are losing customers, and players may be playing multiple MOBAs simultaneously. This is also demonstrated elsewhere: While in April the 4 largest MOBAs still accounted for 59% of the entire market, that number is now 67% – here too, the slow death of smaller games is evident.
The Future – Just the Beginning?
According to van Dreunen, it is still far too early to compare HotS with all the other MOBAs. After all, LoL and Dota 2 took a long time to build their player counts after their launch. With its 6 million monthly players, HotS, after 4 months, is not a major player in the genre’s sky, but has already gathered as many players as LoL after over 21 months or Dota 2 after more than 33 months.
In summary, it can be said that Heroes of the Storm is currently performing very solidly in the market – the big leap is still missing, and whether it can be expected at all remains questionable.
