League of Legends: Wild Rift announced for console and mobile

Riot Games has announced League of Legends: Wild Rift for console and mobile.

It was revealed alongside several other new titles set in the League of Legends universe during a livestream to celebrate the original game’s 10th anniversary later this month.

Riot says League of Legends: Wild Rift will offer competitive 5v5 gameplay akin to the PC game, “but totally rebuilt from the ground up for new platforms”.

It adds: “Wild Rift features 15-18 minute matches, an intuitive twin-stick control scheme, and a brand new map to explore.”

Riot will launch Wild Rift alpha and beta tests this year (register here), have the mobile version of the game “fully live everywhere in the world by the end of 2020, with console coming sometime after”.

Riot also announced Legends of Runeterra, a strategy card game based on League of Legends characters set for release on PC and mobile in 2020, and revealed it’s bringing autobattler Teamfight Tactics to mobile, VentureBeat reports.

It provided a first look at a character-based tactical shooter codenamed Project A, offered glimpses of fighting game Project L, and teased Project F, a title which will enable players to explore the world of Runeterra together. Finally, Riot said it’s making an animated fantasy series called Arcane. These projects can be seen in the following event recap video.

Riot said in September that League of Legends attracts approximately eight million peak concurrent players daily. The title reportedly generated $1.4 billion globally in 2018 and was the most watched game on Twitch in the first half of 2019.

In May, Reuters sources said Riot had been working on a mobile version of League of Legends with parent company Tencent for over a year.

It was claimed the two companies had been at loggerheads for years about how to best adapt the massively popular PC battle arena game for a wider audience, with Riot previously rejecting a proposal to create a mobile version of the title, which would be expected to be especially popular in Asia.

That led Tencent to instead launch League of Legends-like mobile title Honour of Kings, which became the world’s highest grossing MOBA game, and a less successful western adaptation of the title called Arena of Valor.