Blitz takes a more creative approach than its PC counterpart, aiming itself more at a Gen Z audience
World of Tanks Blitz is celebrating 10 years since global launch and over $1 billion in lifetime revenue.
Wargaming’s flagship game has reached 180 million players over the decade and has diversified from eight maps to 30. Today, World of Tank Blitz features over 500 historical tanks and offers players 11 different game modes to immerse themselves in.
At the wheel
After Wargaming first revealed a mobile spinoff of World of Tanks in March 2013, Blitz was soft-launched in Nordic countries in May 2014 and later launched globally on June 26th, 2014. It was Wargaming’s first project designed exclusively for smartphones and tablets, and originally released as an Apple exclusive.
In the decade since then, Blitz has rolled out on Android too and accumulated over $1 billion across operating systems. Speaking to GamesBeat, Wargaming general manager of MS-1 Studios Thaine Lyman attributed Blitz’s early success to being “one of the few games on mobile that was a game, frankly, and not just an alarm clock simulator”.
The 10th anniversary celebration kicked off in June and offered players brand-new Tier VIII and favourite Tier X tanks until the end of the month.
Now celebrations are continuing into August with space-themed events like Objective: Sheridan Missile, focusing around the return of the Sheridan Missile tank.
There’s also a Kobayashi Maru test and a Starfleet-themed tank on the way through a collaboration with Star Trek. After all, one of Blitz’s core appeals over the original World of Tanks is its openness to the wacky and outlandish – more than willing to send tanks to the moon if it makes for a fun gameplay experience, even if not such a historically accurate one.
This more fantastical approach comes at the cross-section of mobile gameplay and a Gen Z audience, as Blitz targets a somewhat different demographic to the standard World of Tanks Blitz recently hosted a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles crossover too.
“Over time, we’ve built out away from that historical focus and toward the joy of driving a powerful tank and blowing stuff up and having fun with it,” Lyman added. “Where PC tends to appeal to a more mature player who’s into that sort of thing, half of our audience is Gen Z on Blitz.”
Crossing the 10-year mark and making it through No Man’s Land to the mobile unicorn list, World of Tanks Blitz has certainly been through many forms to keep up with the times and adapt with the ever-evolving industry.
