Splinterland vs Axie Infinity: Which is Better?

Play to Earn is sweeping the world! Let's look at two of the big ones head to head. Which is better, Axie Infinity

or Splinterland?

My friend Ron and I both invested roughly $2000 USD in June 2021. Ron bet on Axie Infinity, I bet on Splinterlands (read my previous blog on why I chose Splinterlands.)
It's one month later. Which one made more? And which will be worth more a year down the road?
(PS: This article is not financial advice)

AXIE INFINITY: Here's what's going on right now. All this information was gathered, from Ron, and obviously this isn't going to be the case for everyone......
June his initial cost was $1800. League 4 or 5 is where he's sitting. Just like in most games the better the league the more he will make. In Axie Infinity, you cannot really advance past a certain level without buying more powerful Axies, so his level is stuck there.
How much is he making? At first he was making about $50 a day! Woot! Happy face! Now he's making about $30. Sad face

The reason for this was the devs changed the formula to combat bots and all earnings were halved .....toooo many bots cleaning up the lower levels.4

Here's another thing .... he's not making that $30. He doesn't want to play 3 hours a day to make this cash. So he's hired some 3rd world people to play for him. This is a super common practice in Axie Infinity. A lot of investors don't want to play the game.
He made a 50/50 deal. So he's making about $15 a day and $15 a day goes to his farmer. For his farmer it's a great deal. Average wage in Cambodia is about $200 a month. These guys are making $600.

Sooooooo his total investment? $1800 total cash, Total Value $2400. Total Gain. $600 (On average $40 a day).

One sad point is his Axies now only are valued at $1300 based on market conditions.
Total investment? $1800....If he sold his Axie Infinity team right now he would have made a grand total of $100 (after the loss of value in his team).
It's still a good deal, and he definitely could make more if he wasn't paying someone to play for him. But for him 3-4 hours of his time daily is worth the $20 payout.

Splinterlands
I bought $2000 worth of cards, quest potions and a spellbook. According to PeakMonsters that collections is worth $3256. (Seriously if you haven't used PeakMonsters you are going to have to create your own giant database, then manually update each card value manually. Gross. Just use PeakMonsters, they are great.)

Battles in Silver/Gold I made roughly $200 in battles.
SPS I've gotten an additional $140
Total initial investment $2000. Total gained after month 1: $3600. Total profit if everything was sold and I cashed out $1600.

MONTH 1 CONCLUSION.
Splinterlands destroyed Axie Infinity. The main reason? Collection value. Most of the cards have seen massive growth (which I missed....but even from June to July I've seen a big jump in value for most of the cards).

What about the future?
Here's my prediction for the future. Splinterlands will keep on aggressively climbing, while Axie Infinity will hit a huge cliff.

Here's some big reasons why Axie Infinity is NOT a good buy.

1. WHALES AHOY! Most of the players of the game, don't have anything invested in it. The accounts are mostly owned by investors, and they all have multiple farming teams out working for them. So, If one whale decides his investment is worth more elsewhere? Then instead of 1 person leaving, it might caught a deactivation of 100 teams.

1. NO APP. Unlike Splinterlands, Axie Infinity doesn't have an easy to onboard app.
2. NOT FREE TO PLAY. You literally cannot even try the game without kicking in money, and again the entry is roughly$1300
   4.NO IOS/APPLE. That's right, if you don't own a PC? You can't play it. Seems crazy right? Especially if you look at how Axie Infinity is basically a mobile game worth of action. It's not Fallout.
   5.WESTERN ADOPTION. If you look at the player base for Axie Infinity you can clearly see most of them are from the 3rd world. Why? Because they aren't playing for fun. They are working for investors. Without Western adoption, that's a huge chunk of the world missing.

WHAT ARE MY PLANS?
Keep on rolling in Splinterlands, staking SPS, getting my airdrops, and buying a ton of Chaos legion when it comes out.
I'll give you all another update in a month.
But feel free to follow me for daily splinterland posts!