The Missed Opportunity – New State Mobile: A dead game tell no tales

New State Mobile entered the gaming scene by creating massive hype among the fans. The new charming title was thought to run parallel with PUBG Mobile, its predecessor from the same origin. But the dream was shattered after being followed by some decisions. Now, the game exists with little acceptance from the players. What could have been the next stakeholder of the PUBG universe, is now waiting for an early death. So in this article, I’ll try to break down why we feel that New State Mobile is a big missed opportunity in the mobile gaming industry.

New State Mobile failed from the beginning to meet the fan demand

Developed by PUBG Studios, New State Mobile is published under KRAFTON’s flag. It was released on the 11th of November 2021 with a prior announcement made in February of the same year. It surpassed 50 million pre-registrations soon and was raising the expectation bar. I followed it closely as a battle royale enthusiast. Honestly, I was expecting the same. I installed it quickly after its release but was disappointed after trying it for a few months. A series of events marked its fate as it has now.

The first thing that went wrong, I think, was the name of New State Mobile. The game was promoted as a successor of PUBG Mobile, thus it was given the name “PUBG New State“. People took it as a PUBG Mobile update in a shell of a new title. And, you can’t blame people for this. The controls, firing systems, in-game experience, mechanics, etc. are the same as PUBG Mobile. Though the game would survive with these, it couldn’t due to the lag, bugs, and poor optimization.

Thus, the game failed to generate a distinct appeal as PUBG Mobile was already introducing continuous updates to feature a diverse theme, ranging from ancient era to futuristic modes. New State Mobile is accepted as just another PUBG Mobile game.

The developers quickly realized the factor and changed its title to New State Mobile. But the damage was done. But what they couldn’t fix was the bugs and glitches. Players were facing these optimization issues from the beginning and subsequently started developing a negative view of the game.

The game had gyroscope issues. As a tier-1 lobby player for PUBG Mobile, I know how important gyro sensitivity is for a game. And when you make something quite similar to PUBG Mobile, and publish it under the same banner, the players expect the same in-game mechanisms. But the sensitivity settings worked differently in both games and players weren’t ready to shift wholly to New State Mobile by adapting to a new muscle memory.

Besides, it has graphical issues as well. The maps and futuristic locations were complex and blended easily with the outfits of players so it was difficult to find the opponents. Thus, camping became easier for some while running the fun for others.

New State Mobile is a futuristic game that missed the current adaptation opportunity

New State Mobile arrived with so many bugs. But we took them for granted because the game was new and with so much attention to detail that the developers were trying to build, it was acceptable to have bugs. Even on high-end devices, the game crashed and failed to load. However, the problem was raised only when it couldn’t introduce sustainable fixes through updates.

I saw several gamers waiting to taste the game and fight in squads. Since the game required a nearly high-end device to run it properly, it was a barrier for most of the players. Even I couldn’t have a decent experience with high-end devices. On the other hand, PUBG Mobile and its Indian version BGMI were running quite smoothly by adapting to lower to high-end devices.

Because of these issues, the player count for the title has decreased severely. Now, the game is filled with bots and it looks like a dead game. As of December 2024, it has an average of 100k players per month. On top of it, the game now barely makes $30k a month. Once the hope started with a lot of positivity, is now a challenge for the existing community.

The game was in its peak time after its release. It lost almost half of its monthly income in just four months (Dec-Apr) in 2021. And it continued. Now, it is nothing but a failure. But it failed to meet the player’s expectations and I saw some posts on different social media channels and community groups where the players expressed their expectations and frustration. Player sentiment was high after the magical performance of PUBG Mobile and they thought New State to be the next flagship. But, the opposite thing happened.

The game could have built a solid community backed by its content and benefits. I spotted several players with a primary focus on this title but they lost hope as well. A player even claimed the game would remain closed for a year as it took more than a year to launch a new season!

KRAFTON built too much hype but paid little attention to player experience

The second thing that the game did wrong was over-promoting it without paying enough attention to the experience. It pushed the marketing and became successful. New State Mobile created a massive hype but the developers never seemed to be a caregiver to the title. The scale of promotion it had versus the effort to provide a gameplay experience are two entirely different things.

Now, the game is dead, just existing for the sake of its existence. I recently logged in to check if it had players, but I was too positive to hope so. The game is no longer a compilation of bots hovering over every map. Yes, there are players indeed, but only in high-ranking lobbies. But some people showed genuine love for the game despite it being a failure from the makers. I found some who claim it is a “better” title than other games in the PUBG Mobile universe.

The game is dead in its socials, the last time it used the Twitter handle was about a year ago in April 2024. What is more surprising is the consistency of social posts. While games are always trying to hype the players and always come up with trendy ideas, New State Mobile was far behind in doing that. However, it kept the official website running though which publishes patch updates and maintenance notices each month. I mean, what else it can do?

Despite such negative things, there are bright sides as well. Some passionate players are still keeping hope like the game has still potential but KRAFTON just not seeing it. The demand for the title is still up. New State Mobile is a missed opportunity despite the hype and attention it got. They could have been the next flagship of the PUBG universe.

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