On paper, Pokemon Unite was a slam dunk. It’s a MOBA done by Tencent’s TiMi Studios. The same studio that is responsible for the biggest MOBA in the World, Honor of Kings. And while Arena of Valor, the Western version of Honor of Kings, failed in the West. For sure a MOBA with the beloved Pokemon IP would succeed.

MOBAs are very difficult to make, they are costly to operate and the monetization requires a massive audience with great long-term retention. Yet they are not that difficult to get greenlight because of the multi-billion-Dollar success of the Honour of Kings and League of Legends (PC).

And it’s also not that difficult to get the talent to build these games as we developers want to make MOBAs because we love playing them on PC. But what is confusing is that MOBAs continue to get greenlit despite no evidence that these games could succeed in the Western markets.

MOBAs struggle in the Western markets. Even League of Legends: Wild Rift. As you can see, 62% of all revenue comes from China. The US accounts for less than 10% and this number will continue to dramatically decrease over time as the game was only recently launched in mainland China.

While it’s proven that the MOBA core has not resonated in the Western markets on mobile, both League of Legends and DOTA2 are highly popular with the PC audience in the West. So there’s a clear audience for these games and the assumption is that you’d need to make a game with lots of very familiar characters. That’s where Pokemon IP comes in and the player research team has a field day proving that this is a sure hit! After all, it’s an IP that resonates extremely well with a global audience.

And while the IP is very expensive to both acquire and operate, what further supports the business case is the assumption that Pokemon games should in theory drive organic installs while offering low CPIs. Not to mention that MOBAs are very streamable, so in addition to all the free installs, the game will also grow with support from influencers - and perhaps even esports.

So what happened to Pokemon Unite? Pokemon Unite had a strong start. After initial Nintendo Switch launch, the game bursted onto mobile with 30M installs in the first week. Yet the installs quickly dwindled and the revenue dropped. It seems that after a roaring start the game quickly faded. It wasn’t able to connect with existing MOBA audience, since that really doesn’t exist in the West. Nor was it able to keep players new to MOBAs.

But that’s only the high-level picture. And we don’t do high-level at Deconstructor of Fun.

Psst! Make sure to listen to the podcast or watch the YouTube video where we dive deeper into the deconstruction of Pokemon Unite.

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Launch: Insane Downloads, Poor Grossing

When a household name like TiMi (Honor of Kings, Call of Duty: Mobile…) builds a MOBA based on one of the most powerful IPs in gaming today, it’s a potential instant hit.

Back in July 2021, Pokemon Unite was released as a free-to-play game on Switch. And a few months later, in September, it hit the mobile market. Since then, it has accumulated more than 30M downloads, enough to soar above some of the most popular games in the category.

Pokemon Unite has been downloaded a whopping 50M times in just two months. Or to be more concrete, downloads have fropped from 30M a week to under 1M a week in the span of 8 weeks.

Weekly revenue was promising after one week but since the has declined to around $4M gross a month. Which is inline with Wild Rift’s run rate after it launched globally (prior to big udates and China launch).

The same thing can’t be said about revenue, though.
So far, the game has behaved poorly in grossing terms, cashing in around $10M in mobile. This is particularly concerning if we take into account that rather than growing, the daily revenue went down fast as the downloads diminished, and the Revenue per Download (RPD) remains flat.

The downloads and revenue have been relatively stable for the last two weeks, so if the trend continues it would mean that Unite is stable at the lower range (in terms of revenue) of the major titles of the MOBA category in mobile:

Downloads/revenue of Pokemon Unite vs the other titles of the category. We chose the date because it was the most recent week when the article was written. Please keep in mind that other titles are long in the tooth with their live service optimization.
source: Sensor Tower

Being able to rank among those games - and their heavily consolidated payer user bases - in such a short time, especially on such a hard-to-enter market space as MOBA, is no small feat.

But the disparity between downloads and revenue, the fact that revenue is not seeing constant growth, and that seem so closely linked to downloads is quite concerning. It hints that the game is having trouble transforming the huge flow of installs into loyal payers.

Pokemon Unite is expected to surf a wave of massive downloads for quite a while. But presenting a real challenge to the top contenders in terms of grossing requires more than installs. It requires building a big LTV through strong retention and effective monetization.

This article discusses why that will be very challenging for Pokemon Unite.

The MOBA that anyone can play

It’s no secret that generally MOBAs have a significant entry barrier for new players:
They are very demanding and complex games where what is good and bad play isn’t evident at first: For example, a player roaming through the map instead of focusing on a single lane can compromise the entire team, like a soccer player that would be chasing the ball instead of keeping a formation.
They are games that take some time to learn how not to suck and a lot of effort to become good at them. But when mastered they are immensely fulfilling.

That adoption barrier is particularly problematic in mobile, where players generally have less commitment to games and less patience to learn. So far, the games that have successfully brought the core MOBA experience to that platform (Honor of Kings and Mobile Legends primarily) have followed a similar modus operandi:

They streamline the core mechanics of League of Legends and simplify them to present a more accessible and arcade-ish experience.
They accelerate the pace of the game to make it shorter and more intense, which suits better the short session span of mobile. This also includes decreasing the “time cost” of switching lanes by making characters faster or decreasing the map size.
They emphasize action-based combat, which has a broader appeal. And remove weight from match planning and team strategy.

Pokemon Unite double downs on that approach by presenting simplified gameplay that is even more approachable to inexperienced players than the rest. While also trying to be innovative enough to feel like a breath of fresh air for veterans.
This is achieved by reshaping several core mechanics of the genre in unique ways inspired by the foundations of the Pokemon franchise (i.e. hunting wild pokemon, learning new skills, equipping items...).

But the concept of presenting a hardcore game for a casual audience it’s a dangerous gamble. Making a deep game for the masses is one of the biggest challenges in games because it messes with the delicate equilibrium between accessibility and depth.

In its effort to make mechanics more manageable, games often remove the magic ingredient that generates depth and engagement.

It’s hard to make a final judgment if this is the case in Unite. We guess that the casualization has created a game that’s interesting at first, but will have problems engaging in the long term.

To better understand this, let’s check the major changes and their gameplay impact:

1. Score-based victory condition

In most other MOBAs, the goal that players pursue is to destroy the enemy base building.
To get to it, first, they need to destroy a series of defense turrets by supporting waves of friendly minions that spawn regularly.
The concept of “turrets vs minion waves” is well understood by seasoned MOBA players but can be hard to grasp for newbies, as it lacks a clear real-life referent.

Pokemon Unite drops all that for a victory condition more akin to ball sports: The winner is the team with the highest score when the time ends.

To score points, players first need to kill wild pokemon that roam the map to collect their Aeon energy. That energy is then scored (after a small timer that allows enemies to block the scoring) over a series of enemy “goal zones” that are progressively destroyed as they receive enough score. There are no minions.

Unlike in typical MOBAs, Pokemon Unite doesn’t have minions nor defensive towers on the lane.

Having to collect the energy by defeating wild enemies makes Pokemon Unite much more dynamic than classic MOBAs, where except for the jungler, the rest of the team members have fairly static positions based on their role.

Contrary to that, in Pokemon Unite the players are expected to switch roles many times during the match: They must roam around for energy, switch lanes and assemble and disassemble regularly to attack and counter-attack. That gameplay is closer to basketball, while the strict positions of classic MOBAs would be more akin to soccer.

Additionally, the goal-scoring mechanic creates dynamics that are both innovative and easier to grasp, such as players “stealing” the energy from enemies and using it to score on the opponent’s goal zone.This is much more approachable and intense for casual players than staying out of range waiting for minions to gather the aggro of turrets in a slow process of damage erosion.

2. Compressed side objectives (only Zapdos matters)

Another key component of MOBAs is the side objectives that teams can pursue to get key bonuses that are often decisive for the match outcome, and typically get the shape of neutral bosses that several members of a team need to collaborate to defeat.
They’re extremely important mechanics since they:

Require team decision-making and team coordination (“Do we go for the Cloud Dragon or do we keep pushing on the turrets?”).
Create windows of opportunity (“They’re busy with the Baron, it’s our chance to ambush them!”).
Foster memorable clashes and situations (teams often clash on those areas, and can be opportunistic and steal the kill from the other).
Act as the main comeback mechanics (We’re about to lose, but we can turn things around if we get the Baron!).

But like most features in this genre, due to their complexity, their benefits and underlying strategies may not be obvious for the ignoramus. Players may be left clueless on why they’re suddenly losing when they were nailing it on the main gameplay loop.

*Much like in traditional MOBAs, Pokemon Unite has team objectives, which can help to turn around the game or seal the victory.*

Pokemon Unite presents three side objectives, which aim to create two different dynamics:

Rotom and Drednaw grant small bonuses (Rotom can score ~20 points for the team that defeats it, and Drednaw grants a small shield). They appear early in the match in the top and bottom lane respectively (where most characters are supposed to be anyway since there are no goal zones in the center lane), and can generally be defeated by a single player.

So they act as a reinforcement of the common behavior, and can even be ignored by newbies without major consequences.

And then there is Zapdos, which appears near the endgame in the center of the map.
Its bonus is insanely powerful (~220 scorable points and the ability to instantly score in goal zones), and it has so much health that it requires the entire team to kill it.

Because so many points most times mean winning the match, it strongly pushes teams to abandon temporarily the main gameplay loop to pursue this objective instead. This makes matches end up with a huge epic clash in the middle of the map.

This revamp of the side objectives aims to compress all the feelings and dynamics of bosses in League of Legends into a single game-changer event.
But while it makes it way easier to understand for newbies, it also removes a lot of the strategic depth that fosters team synergy: There’s only one valid strategy, which is to pressure enemies on the lanes and then abandon everything when Zapdos appears.

Lesser relevance of team play

The previous points (smaller presence of side objectives, less amount of side strategies, more dynamic positions, and more versatile roles) ultimately mean that other than delivering joined attacks, teammates don’t need to interact with each other that much.

Coordination is made even more irrelevant by the Pokemon Unite’s subpar team communication tools: In similar games, players can easily send commands and waypoints anywhere on the map. But in Pokemon Unite they are limited to the position that the player is currently at, which makes it impossible to send orders to the team.

This is a significant difference from other mobile MOBAs, which are extremely social. On them, bad team coordination equals defeat even in the beginner stages, which incentivizes establishing a regular team and builds powerful loyalty bonds. The low focus on team play could prove problematic if the game ever tries to build a layer of eSports.

3. More straightforward character builds

Finally, one of the core concepts on LoL, AoV, and Mobile Legends is that during the match characters level up, upgrade their skills and buy equipment/items using gold looted from kills. Out of those axes, the most problematic is the equipment, which grants passive bonuses (i.e. +40 armor, reflect 25 damage…). It is also the only one that offers choices, the others are just linear.

By buying the right combination of items players can tweak the character builds (for example, a tank can improve its survivability by life-stealing, or perhaps become better at crowd control by decreasing the damage of nearby opponents).
This can be very impactful for experts but is both subtle and too hardcore to manage for early players, especially because the decisions have to be made while the match is going on.

In their attempt to be more intuitive, Pokemon Unite drops the concept of item customization during the match and replaces that with choices around the skills: As the pokemon levels up, the player will have to make choices on which skills to learn, which alters the role of the pokemon in a much more evident way.

For example, based on skill decisions during the match Venusaur can become a sniper slowing enemies with the poison and gunning them with the beam; or a short-range damage dealer using the damaging aura and lifesteal.

Items do exist in Pokemon Unite and are extremely powerful and relevant to the character build. But they are assigned before the match, which allows the player to take carefully meditated decisions and not to be overwhelmed by their complexity.

There are two kinds of them: The Battle Items (an extra skill, similar to League of Legends’ runes) and the Held Items (that grant passive bonuses and which can be purchased and upgraded using a soft currency to increase its effects).

*Held items have been very criticized by players as a pay-to-win mechanic.*

Ultimately, we consider that the concept of moving choices to skills is a great way to make simpler yet very impactful build customization during the match. And it opens the room for interesting adaptations mid-game to counter the specific team of the opponents.

But we have mixed feelings about the upgrade system of Held Items, which generates huge friction among players and may become a reason not to commit to the game in the long term.

We think Held Items could have been introduced more subtly and become a better instrument for monetization without having so many problems (more on this later).

Content 101: Less depth = More pressure on quantity

In this case, Pokemon Unite has maxed out its ability to be adopted by new audiences, but by diminishing the mechanics that keep them hooked in the long term.

We already mentioned how the bottomless mastery depth makes a MOBA so engaging for those that dare to enter: Players can play with a character for years, read guides and watch pros, and still find that there is more to learn and polish.
This doesn’t happen in Pokemon Unite, where each character requires way less time to master than in other games.

There are several reasons for this: the skills have simpler mechanics, items are assigned out of the match and the core rules of the game have less complexity.

Another big factor is because, in other MOBAs, a lot of mastery comes from skill targeting, a component that is almost missing in Pokemon Unite: Most character skills are homing projectiles, use auto-target, or have area effects. In other words, skills are very difficult to dodge, so they don’t require accurate targeting.

The ultimate consequence of this is that to keep players hooked for the same amount of time, it will need more characters than its competitors, as well as mechanics in place to foster that no piece of content is ignored.

In terms of total characters, Pokemon Unite is not far away from its competitors when they were released, and they seem to be releasing new units fast to compensate for the lesser depth per character and keep players hooked.

Champions drive monetization and engagement. When it comes to champion count, Pokemon is trailing behind from its competitors.

The biggest problem is that they could’ve optimized much better the playable value of the content they have if it wasn’t for the chosen approach in several systems...

The Game’s Mechanics fail to foster content exploration

1. Ranked Mode: Stick to your main pokemon

The Ranked mode is the ultimate goal for most players, the place where they can show the world how good they are. But for devs, it’s one of these features that can present hidden challenges: they appear simple to design (just match good players against each other), but the specifics are tricky.

Pokemon Unite rank system complies with the standard: It presents several ranks and sub-ranks, and players are promoted when accumulating enough victories (or demoted if accumulating defeats). And the latest rank uses a different incremental rating system instead.

*Despite being simple, the rank system is hard to grasp due to the wording of Rank and Class and the counterintuitive Performance Points.*

*Instead of Class, why not Veteran I, Veteran II, Veteran III? That’s what others do.*

The only deviation from a textbook implementation of a league system are the Performance Points. But on top of increasing complexity, Performance Points don’t seem to add anything valuable: They’re just a soft reinforcement to the natural player behavior and a safety net to progression loss.

The biggest problem with this system, though, is not that it has unnecessarily and confusing elements, but that it punishes defeat, while rewarding victories regardless of which character was used.

This means that competitive players are more likely to stick to the main character that they’ve mastered. If they acquire a new pokemon, playing with it on ranked would be a bad move, as it would likely mean losing progression.
The same thing happens with playing different roles, trying different combinations of held items, or strategies. Players are incentivized to focus on what it’s already proven to work, rather than risk trying new things and losing.

By delivering such an old-school rank system, Pokemon Unite misses alternative mechanics which could help to make players attempt to master several pokemon. For example:

Combined Character Trophies

In Brawl Stars, the rank of the player is the sum of the individual trophies of each brawler. And the higher the trophies on a character, the harder it is for it to win more and avoid losing them.

This generates a big pressure on acquiring and mastering every single character since content exploration is the mandatory way to progress. And ultimately means that acquiring a new unit is something to exploit due to the sheer amount of trophies it will bring, and not something to ignore as it happens in Pokemon.

Additionally, this model decreases the risk of failure, because it allows adding a purely incremental stage on the progression of every character; and it isolates the effect of a loss with one brawler to its score, keeping the player’s main progression more protected.

*The combined trophies system in Brawl Stars is a superb design for a rank system in a competitive game with multiple units because it pushes to acquire and master all characters.*

One of the issues of this approach is that players can feel pressured to acquire new content, but we feel that incentivizing monetization through a system like this might have been more acceptable for Unite players than the blunt P2W of the Held Item upgrades.

And if the big amount of new Pokemon to be added was the problem, it could’ve been made less pushy and manageable for players by making the sum be based on different character types or roles.

Pick & Ban mechanics

In League of Legends (and many other MOBAs), one of the reasons why players are incentivized to master more than one champion is the fact that a specific character may not always be available to play.

Generally, in the ranked mode of those games, there can only be one instance of a character in the match (i.e. if someone else picks your desired champion, bad luck!).
And on top of that, both teams ban several champions, making them ineligible to play.
This means high chances of the first and even second picks being blocked

*In LoL, the pick and ban system forces players to master multiple characters and creates team strategies for the optimal order of character selection and banning.*

Contrary to that, Pokemon Unite has much softer rules on character selection: A pokemon can’t be repeated in the player’s team, but it can be present in both teams. And there’s no ban system.
This means that the actual variety of pokemon in the matches is fairly reduced. Most teams are focused on just a small group of units favored by the current meta.

Another key difference is that there’s no “order of picking” within a team: The first player of a team that selects a character locks it. It’s just a matter of being quick.
So ultimately there are few chances that the player can’t play with her first pick.

2. Straightforward Pokemon Acquisition: Skip undesired content

Hating loot boxes it’s been somewhat of a trend lately. But excluding the negative anti-consumer consequences related to monetization, adding a degree of randomization to the acquisition of content can be positive:
One way how randomized acquisition can be positive is by making players use the content they own, rather than the one they want. And while doing it, discover that this content they didn’t desire originally is actually quite enjoyable.

(That is not too different from the linear lock system that most games have, but which can be problematic in competitive games because devs want to push for more variety early on).

Maybe the randomizing mechanic didn’t have to be a loot box per se. One of the core themes of Pokemon is exploring different areas and capturing rare pokemon (gotta catch’em all, anyone?), which opened the door for many possible ideas related to time-limited events.

For those reasons, the chosen primary method of acquisition of Pokemon is a huge missed opportunity: The player buys them in an in-game shop using either soft or hard currency (~5-10$).
And the entire roster of Pokemon in the game is there at all times which means there is no sense of urgency to get a certain character now.

A few Pokemon are also obtained early on in the different progression systems (Trainer Level, Beginner challenges...), but this seems to happen just during the early onboarding as a method to discover those features.

*Turns out Ash Ketchum wasted his time traveling around the world just to avoid a few IAPs…*

The direct purchase model can be disappointing to the fan expectations and definitively leaves money on the table compared to a more engaging approach that opens additional monetization opportunities or even a gacha model.
And it also allows players to skip characters and go directly for the one they care about at a first glance, decreasing the actual playable time value of the whole game content.

In summary, by not exploiting the capacity of those systems to foster diversification, Pokemon Unite is now limited on how they can push for it.

One of the most obvious ways left, which is also present in most MOBAs, is to regularly rebalance the game to make sure that the selection of the most powerful characters varies over time. This acts as a kind of soft rotation system: It never completely removes characters from the game, but it strongly encourages playing with the ones dominating the current meta.

But given that Pokemon Unite doesn’t have yet a big roster of Pokemon, and that it appeals to a less hardcore demographic, it’s unclear if this method will be a good enough incentive.

Ultimately, the lack of incentives to play and master multiple pokemon contributes to the already strong pressure of adding more Pokemon and Events to keep players engaged long enough to build high LTVs.

Monetization and cosmetics

Held Items: Is there a good way to do pay-to-win?

MOBAs are games where competition is key, so much that this genre and the mainstream idea of eSports have been almost synonymous for a long time.
So obviously, players want to have matches that are fair, meaning that they don’t have factors outside of pure skill and game mastery mingling with the outcome.

In other words, pay-to-win is perceived by the community as fun-breaking and even morally unacceptable.

This is a huge point of friction between players and developer interests. Because successful monetization strategies focus on selling what players care about. And players care about winning...

This doesn’t mean that there aren’t pay-to-win mechanics in the genre, particularly on mobile:

Brawl Stars has character upgrades and even collectible perks, which puts it much more evidently into the P2W territory than the rest of the genre. And it is one of the reasons why it’s the highest-grossing mobile MOBA in the West.

But their approach is subtler than it may seem:
Each upgrade changes the stats little (5% per level), which keeps skill as the main factor of success, and allows skilled players to overcome differences of levels (as long as they’re not extreme). So upgrades become critical only when players face opponents of similar skill, but can’t be beaten by bad players with a big wallet.

The star powers and gadgets, which are bigger P2W advantages, as well as big differences in player levels, appear quite late in the progression when players have already made a buy-in into the game.

And finally, to be the MOBA that is the least close to League of Legends (which famously presents their rejection of P2W as one of their key selling points) in terms of design and audience also helps a lot.

*Brawlers have a max 40% stats growth, way less than in Clash Royale where cards grow +200%. This allows players to overcome higher-level opponents with pure skill.*

And Mobile Legends (2nd top-grossing mobile MOBA in the West) has several mechanics in the P2W territory:

There are Emblems, which boost stats and provide Talents that grant further stat boosts and passive effects; they are upgraded through grindable soft currencies that can be bought with real money. And character skins also grant small stat boosts too.

Still, the consensus among players seems to be that the ML is fairly FP2 friendly.
In no small part, this is because the effects aren’t very noticeable and can be surpassed through sheer skill, so they only matter when players face a team with a very similar skill level.

Additionally, most Emblems are unlocked at level 10, when the players have already made a buy-in to the game. So any P2W pressure is mostly noticed by high-end players.

*Emblems, as seen in Arena of Valor (Honor of Kings) can have a bit of pay-to-win design, but they’re easy to grind and limited in terms of power, which has made them acceptable by the player base.*

With these antecedents, it’s not easy to answer if Pokemon Unite should or should not have a system that had a degree of P2W. Probably it should have it, based on the fact that the top 2 top-grossing MOBAs in the West do…

But also learning from them, to be less traumatic for the audience, the p2w mechanic...

Should not be very evident in the early game.
Should be relatively easy to grind it.
Should be subtle in terms of gameplay effects.

This already raises some concerns about the Pokemon Unite approach, which doesn’t comply with any of these softening conditions.
As we already mentioned, players can equip a Pokemon with up to 3 Held Items that grant passive skills and boost stats which are upgraded through a soft currency (Item Enhancers). These Held Items…

Are there from the early game? All pokemon have one Held Item slot available since the beginning of the game, and in a few days, players unlock the other three slots. Held Items can be upgraded to the max level right away.
And because the matchmaking system is less granular than in Brawl Stars, it’s fairly possible that in lower ranks a player already finds others with maxed-out items.

Are not easy to grind. Instead, most Item Enhancer sources are non-renewable or take a lot of time to reset (like the Battle Pass). So while players may max out a few Held Items at the beginning of the game, they eventually feel that the acquisition stagnates.
Based on our estimations, an ultra-engaged player focused on maxing out Item Enhancer currency acquisition would be able to max out ~2 items per month.

Note that each Pokemon can carry out up to 3, and based on the gameplay of the specific Pokemon, each may suit different combinations of them. So it’s a huge pressure and time investment.

The player can accelerate this process by spending gems in Aeos Tickets, and then Tickets to buy Item Enhancers. The estimated cost of maxing out a single Held Item like this is ~30$.

*: 550 are given as Item Enhancers. The rest is obtained by trading other rewards for Item Enhancers in the shop. **: 20% chance of getting 10 enhancers multiplied by the maximum 56 rolls allowed per month.

The effects are very noticeable. A Held Item grants three effects at the same time, which can be very disruptive to the gameplay and may increase a lot based on the upgrade level of the item.

*And each Pokemon carries three Held Items like this…? Yikes!*

*The Super Item Enhancer automatically maxes out a Held Item. Three are given. Why? So that non-paying users can max out at least one pokemon and can compete…*

Cosmetics: Good ideas, strange execution

One of the strongest monetization tools in MOBAs are cosmetics, which suit very well with their core audience because of two reasons:

They’re non-intrusive to the gameplay, which means that mastery and skill are the only keys to win, and the game competition is perceived as fair. This also means that the game doesn’t exclude young players who may not have a lot of money to spend.
Cosmetics are perceived as valuable because youngsters value fashion and style expression due to the process of construction of a unique identity in the transition between infancy and adulthood. In other words, teens and young adults care a lot about being cool.

So in Pokemon Unite, cosmetics are a key area for monetization.
And they are divided into three main categories:

Pokemon skins (Holowear), which are by far the most attractive cosmetic product and are closely linked to monetization. Most of them can be purchased for premium currency or through the scarce Holowear tickets, as well as obtained as rewards in the premium track of the Battle Pass and some event challenges.

Pokemon Holowears look very cool and get the job done in terms of monetizing and being goals fostering player activity. But don’t add anything new to the industry standard, and the fact that they can be bought directly diminishes the collection factor.

Trainer customization is the most innovative area when it comes to cosmetics:
The player can customize an avatar by mixing different cosmetics over 9 item slots (head, shirt, pants, etc…). This means a HUGE pool of cosmetic items which are given constantly as rewards and can also be bought in a shop.

The biggest issue is that the Trainer is barely visible in the game: It appears on the main menu, on the friend’s lobby, and the player profile (which is not the most visited screen...). So it’s really weird that so much effort is put into a fragmented, deep cosmetic system that players can barely see.

So rather than a valuable innovation, it seems a bit of a missed opportunity: The cosmetic system fragmented into slots would have been way more valuable for players if it was around Pokemon, extending the goal of customizing their looks.

*The Trainer has TONS of cosmetics, but it’s visible on just a few screens so it may not be very valuable for players. It would’ve been a better addition to Pokemon skins.*

The last cosmetic element is the Trainer Profile picture, which can be customized by changing the pose and expression of the Trainer and changing the frame and background of it. These elements seem not to be monetized and the Trainer Profile pic doesn’t have a lot of visibility.

Sadly, custom emotes are missing from the list of cosmetics, which would’ve been an interesting element, based on the popularity they have in Wild Rift or Brawl Stars. Maybe they’ll be added eventually.

Energy Rewards: An unrewarding gacha system

The game does feature a random reward side system (Energy Rewards). When gathering enough energy points by playing matches, it drops random prizes.

The Energy Rewards system is monetized through a set of boosters, but so far only grants low-value cosmetics (few of them are pokemon skins) and some currency, which doesn’t make it worth paying for, especially being able to buy that directly at the game shop.

*The Energy Rewards system has cool monetization ideas, but the low value of its rewards doesn’t justify any kind of investment. Perhaps they will develop it more in the future…?*

We think it is strange that this system is now wasted by the lack of rewards. So maybe the plan is to add some Pokemon and Held Items in the future so it gets some spotlight...?
The problem with that approach is that the huge disparity of value between rewards would make most rolls very frustrating, as most rolls would grant unrewarding garbage.

This system is strikingly similar to Brawl Stars Token Boxes, but Supercell’s model is much better because the boxes always grant something that’s more or less valuable: Brawlers, Power Points to upgrade them, useful gold, or gems. It never feels unrewarding.

Perhaps TiMi should consider breaking down Pokemon into shards, and focus Energy Rewards around granting shards and currency, which will feel more rewarding for players than Trainer cosmetics and act as a better incentive to pay for boosters.

LiveOps: The missing area

With such a low focus on Pokemon diversification, the pressure for LiveOps to generate a strong long-term engagement is enormous: More Pokemon and Held Items are needed to keep providing players things to master; and events need to keep player engagement high through unique challenges to obtain and upgrade them.
So far, however, Pokemon Unite seems to be lacking in that department.

Currently, events are buried in a sub-menu and act as an appointment system to grind some minor currency rewards and Trainer cosmetics.
This is significantly below the standard set by Arena of Valor or Mobile Legends, where events have a huge spotlight, grant meaningful rewards, and have a huge impact on the game.

While now it seems a missed opportunity, this is one of the areas where we expect to see the most improvement in the future, as it offers many possibilities:

Events could focus on the acquisition of new Pokemon and contribute to accelerating the item upgrade system, in a similar fashion that games like AFK Arena do.
Clans and team-based competitions could foster strong competition and make the game feel more social than what it currently is.
LiveOps could also encourage players to play with different Pokemon (even let players try Pokemon that they don’t own), or boost its internal progression through the usage of skins. And capitalize this through appropriately timed offers.

In conclusion, we believe that Pokemon Unite will quickly be pressured by its limited content to reorient its events into more impactful ones.

Conclusions

Given the current revenue, it would be unfair to claim that Pokemon Unite is a failure. But it clearly doesn’t seem to live up to what “could have been” given the huge volume of downloads it had.
Several of its decisions made it unable to stand up to the leaders of the category:

Pokemon Unite has casualized the gameplay to bring MOBA to the players that are not into MOBAs, and those decisions may alienate the core fans of the genre. Time will tell if the tradeoff is worth it and the game can transform the tourists into a loyal player base. But so far, it doesn’t look good.
Several key monetization systems seem to miss opportunities: The Pokemon shop turns into something shallow when it should have been one of the key player goals, cosmetics focus on a superfluous trainer instead of in the starring characters, and the Held Items are a not too subtle way to ask for money… Many problems partially explain the difficulty of Unite to convince the players to spend.
Both the unit depth, the systems that don’t push for diversification, and the misaligned monetization mechanics create a lot of pressure on Unite to be a content treadmill.
And it’s not very clear yet if the game’s flow of new content will keep engagement high and boost the revenue, or just be enough to keep it alive.

On the good side, Unite’s downloads will act as a catalyst for any steps that the game takes in the good direction. So it has a huge potential to make comebacks, despite the fact that some of the problems are linked to the core gameplay and may be challenging to improve.
By tackling them, it may stand a chance against the leaders of the category.

Ultimately, the game still has time to polish and improve what doesn’t work before a potential release in China, which in terms of mobile MOBAs it’s the place where the real money is.
That is Pokemon Unite's next big shot to the crown.

Categories

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