What you need to know
- Game of Thrones: Beyond The Wall will launch on Huawei's AppGallery at the same time as the Play Store.
- Huawei worked with the developer team to ensure compatibility with Huawei Mobile Services.
- It's a strategy that's been tried before on different platforms with varying effects.
Game of Thrones: Beyond The Wall is coming to Android smartphones, including the Huawei P40 and P40 Pro on April 3rd. In addition to the Play Store, game developers Behavior interactive will be bringing their game to the AppGallery for a day and date launch with the other two mainstream mobile app stores.
As per Tech Advisor, Huawei worked with the gaming company when building their app, ensuring that the Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) could seamlessly fill in for Google's missing Play Servies. This includes things like handling in-App Purchases, Account Kit to replace Google Play Games and so on. The end result is that the gaming experience should feel very similar to that of iOS and the Play Store variant.
More important than the game however is what this means for Huawei's nascent platform-building efforts. A same-day launch with larger platforms makes it more likely that Huawei will be seen as a viable platform for users and by extension developers.
Of course, while this does give Huawei's App Gallery more credibility, it's hard to say if this tactic will be sustainable. Other third-platformers like Microsoft made the same efforts to boost their own services in the past, employing similar actions like working with app developers directly. It never quite paid off for them and remains just as risky for Huawei. If the users aren't there, then the developers aren't likely to return.
For Huawei, the company already has consumer loyalty that could pad time between AppGallery becoming viable and/or Google restoring access to the Play Store. More importantly, with consumers already using Huawei's phones (at least for now), AppGallery has a chance that the others never did.
Huawei claims AppGallery is now the third-largest app store in the world
