Naruto Blazing was 1 of the most popular gacha-manner mobile games for 4 years. What happened?

Prototype Courtesy of Shonen Jump

On December seven, 2020, the developers of Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Blazing announced they would be shutting downward on February 9, 2021. GREE released the game on July 14, 2022 — making Blazing i of the well-nigh long-running Naruto mobile games. Yet, with the release of Naruto 10 Boruto: Shinobi Tribes, some in the anime mobile gaming community have been predicting this shutdown for months. Looking dorsum, Blazing shutting down is not that big of a daze.

GREE'southward Evolution Downhill Slide

GREE hasn't exactly been the most pop developer team throughout the history of Naruto Blazing. While the subreddit for the game is currently flooded with players sharing images of their favorite units and mourning the end of the game, threads have not always been and then kind. For years, redditors have flooded the subreddit with posts discussing the failures of the game.

Players critiqued GREE, calling them "GREED," for ignoring quality of life issues in favor of adding more than "subtle" pay walls. GREE did not add together any Story Mode missions for over two years. Yet, they pushed out new units constantly. This meant veteran players had well-nigh no way to earn new ninja pearls but needed them more than than ever.

Prototype courtesy r/NarutoBlazing and GREE

I played Blazing for virtually three years. I don't disagree with the complaints coming from the community. I've felt the game has been going downhill for some time at present. The shutdown declaration did non surprise me, though it saddened me.

Here's the thing – GREE very clearly cared about only i thing: money. The PvP function was broken and accessible but to people willing to swipe their credit card. PvE was not much different, with increasing "difficulty" artificially introduced to force players to need to summon on every single new banner if they had any chance of keeping upwardly. No ane tin pull out their wallet two to iii times a month for years on end. GREE added seven star units to Blazing in a last-ditch attempt to rescue the game, but it only put it on life back up.

The Blazing Community's Response

As I touched on earlier, the Blazing subreddit is largely filled with posts mourning the game right now. Of course, at that place are other gathering spots for players of Blazing — namely Twitter and Discord. I of the pillars of the Naruto Blazing community, Nordax, posted a farewell to his audience on December viii. For years, Nordax posted update leaks for the game. With the end of it, the future is uncertain (but hopeful!).

Epitome courtesy NordaxBlazing/Twitter

Another popular place to discuss the game is the Discord server. The creators of the server announced that they will non be shutting it down despite the terminate of the game — at least until activity dies down. Even then, the server will probable be kept around as an archive. All the statements and posts to come from the Blazing customs itself reverberate a player base that knows the flaws of the game but is still saddened by its death. I find myself fitting into this category as well, and my good day to Naruto Blazing is a bittersweet i.

Support From Other Communities

Communities for other anime gacha-style games take voiced their support for the Blazing community in droves since the shutdown declaration. Players have posted memes, expressed their condolences and welcomed Blazing players to other games. Most notably, Dokkan, Bleach: Brave Souls, and Seven Deadly Sins: Thousand Cross players have extended the proverbial olive branch to players now lost in the gacha body of water.

Image courtesy r/NarutoBlazing/Reddit
Image courtesy r/BleachBraveSouls/Reddit

Nevertheless, information technology is players of the other Naruto games that have expressed the most support (to no ane'southward surprise). The communities of Naruto x Boruto: Ninja Voltage and Naruto x Boruto: Shinobi Tribes have rallied around the Blazing community, hopeful these games won't get down the aforementioned path.

Blazing's Competitors: Did They Lend to its Downfall?

Undeniably, the reply to this question is yeah. Particularly Naruto x Boruto: Shinobi Tribes. The game came out earlier this year. While it is non the most popular Naruto game, it represents the change in management Bandai Namco is taking with the Naruto franchise's mobile games. Since the stop of Naruto: Shippuden, Boruto: Naruto Adjacent Generations is the new content for the series. Voltage and Tribes don't really place emphasis on this in game. Withal Boruto remains in the title. The era of Naruto specific games appears to exist over.

Image courtesy Bandai NAMCO Amusement

Tribes in particular offers much more than Boruto content than other Naruto gacha games. It features developed versions of the beloved Naruto characters alongside Boruto characters such as Mitsuki and Sarada. Another betoken in favor of Tribes is the developer'southward willingness to listen to feedback. While Bandai also releases story missions at a snail'due south pace in this game, they provide players with lots of premium currency just for playing. This undeniably makes Tribes attractive — more attractive than Blazing in a lot of ways. Sure, it suffers from some of the same issues. Still, they are easier to overlook in a game that treats its players more kindly.

In the end, fans of Naruto still have options available to them if they want to play a mobile game based on the serial. Voltage and Tribes have different play styles than Blazing just feature the same characters and more content. It'south lamentable to say farewell to Blazing, but in the finish it dug its own grave. It'south time to move on to ameliorate anime games.