Good news for idol fans!Global release date Love life! School Idol Festival 2 MIRACLE LIVE! has been revealed.But before you get too excited, the game’s global shutdown date has also been announced In the same Twitter post. The game launches in February 2024 and will receive support for up to three months before shutting down in May 2024.
What this essentially means is that starting next month, you’ll be able to download and play the game if you wish (an exact release date is TBD), but when May 31st rolls around, you’ll no longer be able to download and play it . Download it or purchase any in-app purchases. By the way, this is a gacha game, and new idols are obtained through in-app purchases.
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This is likely the first time ever that both a launch and closing date have been announced simultaneously. But what is going on and why does this happen? Well, love life! School Idol Festival 2 MIRACLE LIVE! It is a relatively new version of the popular idol IP. Despite its popularity, the 2023 movie released in Japan didn’t make much of a splash. The global version has been MIA for the entire last year, even like its predecessor Love Live! School Idol Festival 1 is offline, and there really isn’t a game for idol fans to play (or more importantly, a game for publisher Bushiroad to spend money on).
Fast forward to today, and the game finally has a global release date. However, we can’t expect the game to do well financially, as in-app purchases were shut down three months after global launch. This is a bold strategy. On the one hand, you could argue that this is probably the biggest source of FOMO in gacha – getting the idols you want before they’re gone forever! On the other hand – and most gamers would probably side with this – why spend money on a game that’s going to shut down in three months?
As you can imagine, this caused a lot of confusion for casual viewers and gacha fans alike, with neither party able to see the potential benefit of releasing a shiny new video game while also attaching an explosive collar to its neck. I thought, if nothing else, this would be an interesting case study. One wonders how much money, if any, School Idol Festival 2 will make when it finally releases in February of this year.
What do you think of all this? Let us know below! If you’re interested in other gacha games – namely those that show no signs of shutting down any time soon, why not check out our Genshin Impact codepage and Honkai Star Rail codepage.