Uncharted’s first mobile game surpasses 1M downloads

While developer Naughty Dog is saying goodbye to Nathan Drake and the Uncharted series, the mobile game isn’t going anywhere for now.

PlayStation Mobile and developer Playspree‘s Uncharted: Fortune Hunter for iOS and Android has surpassed one million downloads, intelligence firm Sensor Tower shared with GamesBeat today. The publisher’s puzzler, which has hero Nathan Drake working his way through 200 stages featuring environmental puzzles on a tabletop-style playfield, is free to download. But it does feature in-app purchases that enable players to unlock certain items — like costume changes — faster. This is the latest app to launch in the $36.9 billion mobile gaming market as part of a promotional effort for a big-budget console or PC release.

We previously saw this strategy with the lucrative Fallout Shelter game that publisher Bethesda released alongside announcing Fallout 4 and PlayStation Mobile’s own Ratchet & Clank: Before the Nexus. Publishers are finding that most gamers spend money on multiple devices, and someone who buys a lot of PlayStation 4 games is likely the same person spending a lot on Clash Royale.

While Fortune Hunter has not generated as much revenue as Fallout Shelter, which reached the top 10 of the grossing charts early in its life. Uncharted has never cracked the top 100 highest-grossing games on iOS or Android. But it still has plenty of people downloading it around the world.

Fortune Hunter is most popular in the United States, which accounts for 22 percent of its downloads, according to Sensor Tower.

Here’s the entire top 5 biggest markets:

1. United States (22 percent)
2. Russia (9.5 percent)
3. France (7.5 percent)
4. Germany (5.5 percent)
5. Brazil (5.1 percent)

What’s interesting here is that Russia and Brazil are not traditionally huge console markets due to a number of factors that include tariffs, regulation, and piracy. Fortune Hunter is finding an audience, though, because these are places were people play lots of games.

Uncharted is traditionally one of the biggest blockbuster franchises in gaming as well as one of Sony’s marquee console releases. Developer Naughty Dog, which produces the core games, is now moving on from the series to something else. Of course, like Bethesda did with Fallout Shelter, PlayStation Mobile can keep hitting Fortune Hunter with updates to encourage fans to keep coming back.