Kate Upton will give up her status as the face of the popular mobile strategy video game “Game of War: Fire Age” and the 23-year-old supermodel-turned-actress believes that she is leaving it in good hands.
Reports have it that song diva Mariah Carey will be replacing Kate Upton as the new image model of “Game of War: Fire Age,” cites Just Jared.
The model only has praises for the 45-year-old singer, citing that Mariah is going to be awesome as the new face of the popular mobile strategy game developed by Machine Zone.
While the game developer did not explain its decision, it has something to do obviously with the cost of maintaining Kate Upton, who is serving as the goddess Athena, for the game.
Still, it is important for the game developer to use a big name celebrity endorser to find new players to the “Game of War: Fire Age” considering that it is tapping into the $30 billion mobile gaming market. The challenge for developers is to keep users playing while getting them to spend money too, notes Venture Beat.
Accordingly, the new commercial for the game will be directed by Alan Taylor, who also helmed the upcoming film “Terminator 5.” It shall also feature the music of Mariah Carey naturally.
Costly to maintain
While Machine Zone is not saying it directly, it seems like tapping Kate Upton as the face of “Game of War: Fire Age” and the company’s subsequent massive advertising campaign for the video game including the famous Super Bowl ad, has taken its financial toll on the company that now it was reportedly planning to raise $500 million funding.
Apparently, the game development company based in Palo Alto in California is seeking to raise $500 million at a multibillion-dollar valuation, according to another report from Venture Beat.
But the recent move of Machine Zone has been met with skepticisms and people now want to know the financial status of the company to determine why it decided to initiate fundraising efforts.
Gabe Leydon, CEO of Machine Zone, responded on a query via e-mail by saying that their company refuses to dignify rumors and speculations about fundraising or valuation by answering or commenting on it. He added that Machine Zone does not need any additional investment and that they are 100% focused on “Game of War: Fire Age.”
Experts believe that if Machine Zone will scale down its very ambitious advertising campaign to just enough or appropriate, the company may no longer require additional funding as latest rumors put it.
This early, many are predicting that Machine Zone will not get its desired new round of investments because deals of such magnitude are quite rare for private game development companies.
One perfect example of buy in investment is the recent acquisition of Japan’s SoftBank of the 23% stake in Supercell, which owns the No. 1 mobile game “Clash of Clans” for $1.2 billion. The sale of the 23% stake in Supercell has raised the value of the company to $5.5 billion despite having only 150 employees and a staggering $1.7 billion worth of revenues in 2014.
Kate Upton stood by her man
Kate Upton was among the victims of the hacking of the stars’ social media accounts in the so-called ‘The Fappening’ that happened in September last year.
More than 500 pictures of celebrities who were in their nudes were leaked to the internet with ‘The Fappening’ and that actually included Kate Upton and her boyfriend Justin Verlander, a pitcher for the Detroit Tigers.
Unlike Kate who took everything in stride, Justin disclosed that he actually grinded through it. It was tough for him and he thought that it was part of the price that they have to pay for being famous.
Wow
Congrats to Mini
She still manage to compete with youngsters!!!