PokerStars Duel Poker App Scrapped in Beta Stage

On February 11th, PokerStars rolled out the test launch of its new heads-up mobile poker app called DUEL. The turn-based real-money game was designed to appeal to people without the time to spare playing long games, and the innovative app enabled players to make a move, and leave the game for a period of time until their opponent eventually made their move, and an accompanying notification alert was dispatched.
Finding players to “duel” with was a simple affair, too, with a further possibility available to compete against friends using either play or real money by having the game app connected to social media, including Twitter and Facebook.
PokerStars had hoped that despite the time, effort, and money it had spent developing the app, the experience gained would help pave the way for it to produce similar apps in the future. By the beginning of June, however, DUEL was pulled after few players seemed interested enough in the product to download the app, with a PokerStars representative subsequently explaining at the time that it was scrapped “after reviewing usage data from the beta launch and determining that it was not commercially viable at scale.”
Needless to say, PokerStars failed to create a poker variant with the potential to attract a new audience to the online game, with some of the criticism levelled against the product being that it did not offer enticing cash or non-poker prizes that might appeal to non-poker players. In addition, questions have been raised about a lack of advertising spend to accompany DUEL, or an appealing enough face to be associated with the product.
As a result, it’s back to the drawing board for PokerStars, with much work ahead for the brand if it is ever to realize its goal of producing a must-have mobile app capable of grabbing the attention of a new, wider audience.