12 Game Industry Predictions: The Numbers Don't Lie!

I'm putting my neck actually.
Can you say Roblox?
Roblox.
Okay, that's better.
That's better.
Yeah, Roblox.
He speaks like four languages. This is not a good argument for Americans, Eric.
Exactly.
Oh, no. Anyways,
no. This is the perfect argument for, you know, egocentric, [laughter] ethnosentric Americans.
What are you talking about?
This is the [laughter] argument. Hello everyone and welcome to this week in games 363 the predictions episode. As we wrap up the year we're going to tell you what we think about next year. I'm Jen Dano. I play the marketing and publishing role on the podcast. Today we have
Eric Crest strategy and investing. Philip Black is the season to monetize.
Mish Katkov the oracle of Athens since we're talking predictions now. So let's go. or I would like to say the magic eightball. So, we're going to pull that out [laughter] and we are going to make our 2026

predictions. But first, it was a very, very sad week in the game industry. Vinceella, uh we just got the news yesterday, passed away, just absolutely horrific. So, he was the co-creator of Call of Duty and the founder of Respawn Entertainment. Uh he died on Sunday, December 21st. It was a single car crash in Los Angeles. He was 55 and a passenger sadly also passed away. Zampella began his career in QA in graphic design before co-founding Infinity Ward with Jason West and Grant Collier in 2002. The studio created Call of Duty as rival to Medal of Honor. Those stories are pretty interesting. I think I heard I read that the code name of Call of Duty was uh Mo or Mo Killer or something like that for Medal of Honor.
Oh my god. Okay. So, Medal of Honor was originally created by DreamWorks Interactive. That was my first acquisition in the industry when I

worked at EA was that we acquired DreamWorks Interactive and then they started working on Allied Assault in which they hired his team to build Allied Assaults. And after Allied Assault came out, which was I think one like the first marquee shooter that really broadened the market, this guy in LA, I can't remember his name, it's killing me, was negotiating a deal with these guys to stick around. He just was a stupid douche about it, right? just because he thought he was the badass like LA dealmaker and then then there was some stupid quip and he ultimately pissed him off and so he bailed to create his own company and West and then they created their own company and then created the competition and then Activision bought them. Yeah.
And shipped Call of Duty. Anyway, this one executive at EA was literally to blame for losing one of the best talents in the industry
or to thank us for Call of Duty because if he wouldn't have enraged, he wouldn't have left
from an EA perspective. Right.

Yeah. Exactly. For EA, but thanks to him, we have Call of Duty.
Yeah. So, under his uh Vince's leadership, Infinity Ward released four Call of Duty titles, including the mega hit Modern Warfare. That is absolutely my favorite one. So [laughter] after being fired by Activision in 2010 and apparently denied 36 million in bonuses and Pellen West sued and founded Respawn Entertainment. The studio went on to create Titanfall, Apex Legends, and the Star Wars Jedi series before being acquired by EA in 2017. Zanella also led the Battlefield franchise at EA's Ripple Effect Studios. Call of Duty has sold over 500 million copies and generated more than 30 billion in revenue, making it the third bestselling franchise after Mario and Tetris.
Wow.
Uh so just really really sad day. Um LinkedIn has been nothing but like memorandums of Vince like so many incredible stories of

him uh touching people's lives. So uh sad day. Phil, I know you as a shooter lover, what do you have? I
I mean, yeah. I mean, I I was in one meeting with him at EA and I would say his reputation was really well known. And this is sad because this guy did not put up with corporate Uh he spoke his mind. He defended his teams fiercely no matter where he was. He tried to bring home the bacon for his teams and ultimately he created an environment that people thrived in. And like what what more can you ask for? And that meant evolving shooters multiple times, like multiple times. Medal of Honor, um, Modern Warfare 4, which is probably the most important game in like the history of shooters, I would argue. I mean, Goar, we go back to Doom, but certainly in the last 20 years, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 4 and not only that, Modern Warfare 2 are incredible. He does it again with Apex Legends and now his reinventing Battlefield. I mean, what more can you say? Like, this guy is a goat of all time. We're definitely want to like talk about his achievements more

on Shooter Monthly. We have an episode coming out this week, but I think the next time we're definitely going to like spend a moment and just talk about the insane things he's pulled off. Like a loss for America, like to be honest with you. Like when I think about China and what's going on in that part of the world, like having Vince, you know, be be the American shooter master was like a blessing.
Yeah. And you failed to mention Titanfall 2, which is considered one of the best single player campaigns ever made.
Yeah. He's been hitting nothing but net for decades. It's just an amazing amazing accomplishments this guy's had wherever he went. So, you will be missed.
Yes. And everyone drive safe, please. All right, let's do a little bit of shilling. So, I just had a podcast. I'm calling it from metal to Minecraft. So, I got to interview the co-founder of Slipnot. His name is Clown. His real name is Sean. He is surprisingly a gamer and a modder and has been doing game development for 30 years. I think there are a lot of really great takeaways as we all think about working

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We're going to be all over the place. I'm just going to let you know. We all put in different predictions. So, uh, get ready for some crazy stuff, baby.

Yeah. [laughter]
And contradicting predictions.
First, let's do biggest game of the year because this one is super easy. Yeah,
Chris, why don't you go first?
So, basically my first prediction is uh GTA will be the biggest launch in gaming history.
It should drive both hardware sales but also software growth in the industry. Double digits.
Double digits. So console business in North America and Europe will be up double digits primarily driven by GTA and the wake that it creates by selling a lot more console which in essence sells more software as well. So it should be a big gear for the console business is my guess which is not that really a stretch but
yeah well that's because you have to have a PS5 or an Xbox or S to play GTA 6, right? Well, and after the horrible performance in November, which is unprecedented from a hardware perspective, and that's primarily because Xbox is in the

bed right now, I think this will be another a redemption story, but of course it's coming late in the year, which sucks. It would be much better if it was in May, but we'll be good for sure.
Does does GTA have any live ops component?
Well, I mean, the online version should be new and improved. We don't know exactly when that's coming out. Could be a day and date now that they've delayed it so much, but my sense is it was going to come out like three to six months after the launch of the single player campaign, but that may those plans may have changed.
Yeah, it will be a pop and drop as you're describing initially, but I think it should fuel a bigger install active install base though. Continue to buy software next year or the year afterwards.
I feel like you're underplaying GTA Online. Like right now, we're looking at monthly active users for Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox. And we talk about like the biggest franchises in the world. This is operating below Counterstrike 2 but above EA FC26. The game monetizes. It has a loop where

gameplay is involved. Like I think this is a huge opport UGC. They are the dark horse UGC. Phil, I'm totally with you. I don't know why I've been saying the same thing. Like I think this is a huge opportunity for them because they didn't monetize the first one this one very well at all actually on a a revenue per user basis. There's so many different things they can do to unlock, including UGC, including pay to progress, including like, you know, less cosmetic type economy, which I think is they're open to.
And they built it. They they built it in GTA online. Like they already have the president in front of them to go and I mean the irony is like this is basically taking Zinga's Mafia Wars and like making it 3D in many ways.
Yeah.
And adding a AAA touch to it. But a lot of those loops are still there. And that's where they went with GTA Online, which I hope we'll have a deconstruction at some point. Mishka on the website. Like almost no one talks about this game. Almost no one talks about GTA Online.
It blows my mind.
Yeah. Yeah,
that's fair. All right, so uh my predictions are the same. GTA is obviously going to crush it, but but

here are some numbers I really wanted to get into, which is I think it's going to set record number of sick days taken,
divorces, Door Dash deliveries, Little Caesars pizza orders. Uh, I think it's gonna actually be the single largest globally productivity loss that we've ever seen, Phil. Like, get your economics out. But, okay. So, on a serious one, I do think it's going to be the largest marketing budget spent of all time. You know, bigger. I mean, a Monopoly Go is what, like one and a half billion spent on marketing. I think this is going to surpass it. I think it's going to be insane. Which is ironic because they actually don't even need to market it because everyone's probably already signed up.
All right, what else we got? Phil, you want to make a prediction about a a biggest game coming that isn't Grand Theft Auto?
Yeah, I've got I've got two entries here. One for HD, one for mobile. And I am off the Enzo train. Bye-bye. [laughter] And welcome to the Animo train, ladies and gentlemen. This is going to hit you in 2026.

It has already gone out to streamers. You can watch videos on YouTube. This is Pokemon meets Genchin Impact. The execution here by the team, when you look at actual footage on YouTube, is not just trailers. They are bringing the heat. I think this thing is going to completely dominate 2026. It is going to be crossplatform and it is going to be beautiful and I think people are sleeping on how important this is going to be. I think Palmon was just the the first of many and I think this is a faithful execution. This is by Fun Plus. If you remember, they're now going into HD games. This is again crossplatform, but this is going to have a PC Steam release as well as consoles, I'm sure.
Simulation loops.
Yep. Animo an N I I M O.
Yes, Jen. Unfortunately, they have violated your advice.
Yes. Yes.
Looks really pretty. I hope it's not like the Teemo version of uh of Pokemon.
No, I think the designs in some ways even actually exceed Pokemon. I would say that especially the more recent Pokemon batches.
The other one I would like to highlight

on the mobile side strictly is Ark Knights Enfield Saves. This is the next iteration of that franchise and we haven't covered Ark Knight in a really long time, but remember this was a squad RPG that integrated some early tower defense stuff. You kind of look at where tower defense has gone recently. Like it's it's certainly been an interesting part of the genre. And the other thing they added was a lot of like lifetime simulation loops. So there was like gyms you could put part of your Ark Knight characters. So they were trying to grow Squad RPG in a really interesting direction. They were a little bit softer on monetization. The game, the original Ark Knights has done hundreds of millions of dollars. I don't have the sensor tower in front of me, but I'm really excited for what this team will iterate with next. And God knows Squad RPG needs it.
I I think for mobile like the sleeper hit that I don't know which one is it or what would happen is some kind of a Chinese match three game. Like I think they're going to come in out of woodwork like they did that before with matching man was it matching mansion that game like that was long time ago but I think now they're ready the way they conquered merge category. I think they're just going to come in and just eat everybody,

you know, ass first essentially.
Oh god.
Like a bear. I meant I meant like a nature like bears like Okay. Got all right. Got it. Got it.
Sorry. [laughter] Sorry.
All right. Crest, you have a few kind of industry macro trends.
Yeah. the two big macro ones that you know I think mobile will ek out a meager like 3 to 5% growth but no major releases coming from western publishers and Chinese publishers will continue their domination on the new release side in particular but also from a publisher perspective kind of more of the same that we saw in 2025 discontinuing in 2026 because I don't really see any western publishers competing at all right and
obviously that that's not include the Turkish.
Can I ask you for a diagnosis, Eric? Because I'm curious about this. China rising, West falling.
What do you do with Playrex? I feel like we haven't heard from them in centuries. Like, they just keep chugging on their little franchises.
I don't know. I haven't heard anything

about them in a long time, to be honest.
They keep launching. They have tons of games in soft launch. Phil is right. They haven't released them globally. Maybe they should look at Supercell's playbook and just start like putting games out globally.
Yeah. I don't know. Chris is going to blow his fuse. I'm just going to say this. Roblox is huge in the US. Like, most of these studios are US-based. They're they're by these young creators and they're doing really well. Then on the other hand, we see tons of European developers doing really good Steam games like CL's Exodus. Um, you know, tons of those games that that sold really well are based out of Europe. Clay's obscure.
Yeah, mobile is tough, but then again, we see, you know, Cypress doing pretty well with all the uh HQs over there. We see Vietnam, we see Pakistan rising, we see French hybrid casual publishers doing really well. If we only look at mobile, things are looking quite bleak. But if we start looking at different platforms, things are not that bleak at all.
Like we still dominate casual puzzle in

the west. Like we still have King on our side. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. I guess like are we considering that the Middle East if we're not just doing the East West divide? I think
Okay. Sure.
I I think that that is it depends. And we also have Scopley, which I'm very curious like where they're going to go from here. Like they basically have Pokemon Go and Monopoly Go. Monopoly Go has stabilized, but like I mean it'll make billions, but Javier and Walter are not satisfied with that. They're going to want to see that thing grow. Like where's the spin-off or the reskin, I think, is to me the key question for them.
Yeah. And my understanding is that they're going after like the Genchin style thing, which is just a mistake because that's just not
in the wheelhouse of the West, right? And the cost of development is too high. And maybe if you have a Chinese team building it,
the San Francisco team that was from the X Capital Games, was it Arza Games? You remember the X Capital Games founder? They had VC money. They were building
Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, they're still in effect. They're going to come up with something, but that's not Scopely.
Yeah. But do you think they're a mistake because they're going after the Genchin style?
Yes.

You can't compete. You can't compete.
You just think no one in the West can compete.
Not in an openw world 20,000 person.
No. That's crazy
game, right?
That's crazy. fundamentally it it comes to like pragmatic game design when you're trying to build like a 4X game, you know, like you build a 4X game, right?
But instead, these guys are trying to do something super creative and ambitious that they don't have the money to do to compete.
You're mentally sizing up mobile developers to go after that AAA Genchin thesis. And I think if you think of Scopely as AAA, and don't get me wrong, I'm using that as an assumption, it's much easier to make the leap that they could go after Genchin if you think about a AAA developer in the west trying to do Like we still make MMOs. I mean Amazon Games made like 18 MMOs. Yes. A lot of them was publishing. [laughter] A lot of them that was an RPG. A lot of them were just publishing Eastern MMOs, but like New World was a real thing.
Like we've we've tried AJ H Conan if you remember that.
Like I don't know. I don't think it's World of Warcraft is still a top game.
I I don't think it's the end of the world.
Dude, you're proving my point by

mentioning all these games that have completely failed.
Yeah.
Dude, stop stop Yeah. Stop feeding my ego on how correct I am, you know, by keep on giving you all the examples.
I want to make correction on Phil's or Phil to make a correction. He said Playrex with their little games, they are after Supercell's growth during the the past months, they are now at the level of Playrex where Playrex have been. So, it is a sizable company for
No, no. I I think Playworks is fine. It's just I mean, look at this graph. It's been completely flat for Playrex.
Yes.
For quite some time. They haven't had anything interesting or exciting. Their games are stuck in soft launch. It just looks like a company in stagflation. Kind of like this middle age, this awkward middle age of of where do you go? You know, it's the candy dividends.
Oh, like all of us. Got it.
You're just taking shots. [laughter]
Okay.
All right.
Yeah. The next one is a little mean, but I'm going to say it anyway. Is that we should still continue to see VC back startups from A16Z, Griffin, and Lightseed collapse under the weight of

their mismanagement and overinvestment. So record, you know, we should see record low investment for video games in 2026.
Play Ventures, which is one of the absolute best in the business, actually open up their books. I think it was last week. Henrik or one of the two co-founders shared the uh their fund performance of all the funds. And basically, you see all of their five different funds. And the terms here are ERR and DPI. So just to understand ER means internal rate of return which is essentially unrealized value and that shows the percentage and then DPI is distribution to paid in capital which is the actual cash returned to investor after the fund has performed and sometimes what you can do is you can return the money and then spend longer time to kind of crediting more of the investment. Anyway, so their first fund was raised in 2018 and that has returned 1.58. So extremely good fund performance. And

again, if you look at it like when the game investors invested in 2018 or earlier, the 2000 that were the COVID years were the real exit years. Then the fund raised future fund in 2021. So this is more of the crypto that fund has actually already returned and is looking to return way more. I want to give a shout out to the fund manager on this one. I think he he lost few years of his life with the crypto going up and down. But shout out for day trading Kendrick like because like it looks really good. But yeah, what a roller coaster. But then when you start looking at the other funds like there's a 2021 vintage that has a you know internal rate of return only 11% and the DPI zero like only 4%. You got the opportunity fund which is again 2021 vintage is not doing so well at this point yet. And then you have the biggest fund which is the fund three that was raised after co years and of course it's not here in this graph but when you look at the fund strategies and what the uh fund has told openly the

fund three is already investing into much broader strategy with apps tools tech and platforms and some other stuff. So the moral of this really is when it comes to investments is that after co the multiples have significantly decreased and gaming is just not as investable as it was before because if before in an exit you could have gotten 10x revenue. Now it's good that you get between 1.5 to maybe three four maybe scopely would be like at five but the returns are not there and that's why investors are going away. They're not hating games. They're not thinking games is stupid. Just the growth is not there and so they're not investing in particularly in mobile at this point.
All right. And then did you also want to defend Lightseed?
No. Well, Crest is always attacking Morets and Lightseed and I actually [laughter] I spent some time actually going through Lightseed's portfolio just because of these attacks on my friend

Morett. So So I looked at it that like they have some really good investments. They got Triple Dot. Triple Dot is is kind of on fire right now. Gardens, we don't know what's going to happen with Gardens. Inworld is an AI NPC companion. They had a funding route at $500 million and AI is being all hot. You don't know who's going to acquire this company for like two billion when you look at these AI startups. K away again away from content more into platforms. You got audio mob, you got Epic, you got Magic Eden. So the point is it's really easy to make a point that VCs are dumb per se because most their investments are wrong but at the same time like that's the business model like most re investments go to zero. So it's almost like a game of sales and gambling at the same time and we only know at the end of the portfolio how it's going to perform because in the end the most important thing is the multiples. If the market is growing they're going to do well. If the market is not growing then yes their portfolio is going to suffer. As soon as he starts talking about exits instead of money raised, then I'll be happy. If all

you can point to is the fact that you raised the most money, that's not interesting, right? Like all these returns you're talking about for these VC funds, you could have thrown this in the VTI and made more money like without any risk and absolute liquidity, right? But for as an example, I just want to say last thing, as an example with with Lightseed, their returns are really good as an overall fund. That is why they're able to raise so much money because they show the return. They actually do the return to their LPs.
Again, that has nothing to do with morsets and that has nothing to do with gaming investments. That's the whole point. It's like you have to actually return something to the fund and to your shareholders. Like that's your fiduciary duty.
Yes.
Well, isn't that why they're all pivoting? And so my prediction, I'll just bring it up here, is that VCs are going to continue to become credit cards and do UA financing and we're going to have a Lightseed and a Bitcraft and a you know A6Z, you know, UA credit card coming in 2026. Like if you can make your money better in other places, which

is now UA financing or you know, the stock market, it I don't know. you're it seems like we're putting too much on like the luck of being good at picking someone if this is the case.
This is weird. I'm like defending VCs in every point. We [laughter] can defend the VCs on on this side as well in terms of UA financing. Like a lot of these VC companies have actually invested into companies that do UA financing like PVX as an example has VC investors. Medicica that does UA financing has VC investors. So in a way I understand Jen like I would agree with you that if the LPs their investors would allow them to do loans which this is loan uh then the type of UA loans they would do is either they could funnel those loans through the companies that they have invested like if you have invested into a company that has UA investing why should you set up your own operations your own back end to manage that and the other one is technically if you can see how your portfolio companies perform form and you

actually have people who understand UA and math, then you could be doing UA financing only to the companies in your own portfolio. So that could actually make sense because they're the most
that doesn't make sense at all. That's actually the exact opposite of why you would do a UA fund. The UA fund is supposed to cherrypick the besting opportunities for UA, not the ones that you invested to that don't make it know how to make a game, right? I mean, that's ridiculous. That's a
You can underwrite it. You can underwrite it better because of the transparency that you're seeing through those companies. The whole point of PVX and these guys is to find the right opportunities that work for this type of funding. You're not just arbitrarily because you invested your equity like three or four years ago that you're going to start funding it with this money. It's you need the returns.
Yeah. Aren't you hedging your your shitty bets on companies that aren't working?
You're doubling down on trash, you know? Like that's not the way this should work at all. Right. Like that is a false strategy. And I know. Sorry. Whatever. All right. Moving on. Moving [laughter] on. Moving on. Let's not talk about UA

financing for a while.
All right. Very good. Uh, I've got a couple predictions. So, as a former footballer, retired with too many knee surgeries. This is like a news and prediction combo. So, FIFA Netflix and Deli Interactive, these are the folks that are working on the 007 game. We actually just did a bunch of digging because we're like, who the is Deli [laughter] Interactive and and what what are they doing? So apparently they all signed a deal to do a new FIFA game. Although I'll say this isn't the FIFA game you're looking for in the best Obi-Wan Kenobi joke. So apparently they're launching a game in time for World Cup. Players will only need a Netflix and your phone to either play solo or play with friends online. The new FIFA then will be available for free on TV via the Netflix app with phones used as a controller. All of the

screenshots, if I was EA, I would be suing EFC because is no longer FIFA. This just to me is going to be the biggest train wreck bomb. If it even launches,
it won't press.
How much do you think that Netflix paid for this? Do you think this costs more or the GTA mobile catalog costs more?
How about this? At least the GTA catalog was tangible product, right?
Yes.
I think this is complete vaporware. When you make an announcement and don't even have like aing screenshot you can share and all the screenshots are froming FC, you know, like all over the internet. Like that is a scary scary proposition.
And this game's coming out in six months. No, it's because and the also the notion that you're going to be able to play this on a TV with a controller that's your phone. Like there's just no way that you can get rid of the controller lag to actually play a simulation game. Like it's impossible. Like there's nothing that makes sense

about this whole thing. And not to mention, I actually tried to look up this Deli Interactive and I want anybody to tell me what the this company is. I don't even know how many developers they actually have because they're using IO for 007. Delphi just doesn't even seem like a real company. It seems like a publisher. So, I don't really understand that either.
Let me tell you what Deli Interactive is. Deli Interactive is actually redefining how AAA games are made. They are architects behind 007 First Light with IO Interactive, a game that hasn't launched, and the company is leading the return of beloved FIFA simulation game. Their model Their model combines most iconic IP with top tier creative talent and cutting edge technology. It's built around deep alignment between partners and a modern d-risisked approach to development and publishing. By the way, those long lines in the text are typical with AI uh created text. So, aim short. I think they're going to make this game with lovable. I think that's what's going to happen. I [laughter] think this

I think they saw the lovable like what is this? And then they're going to release something and it's going to look pretty much as as any game on Netflix. So, not to worry. like let's hope that they get the game done before Netflix changes leadership again.
I guess no one else wanted to pay FIFA their royalty rate because there are other companies that have made successful football games in their past, but nobody signed up except for a vaporware shell of a publisher who hasn't launched any games. Like
I've actually asked the guys at 2K about this, right? The fundamental thing is that building a soccer game that's competitive with FIFA is impossible at this stage. Not to mention the fact that you need all the licenses for not just the FIFA, but you need the leagues, you need the players, you need the teams. There's noing way they have any of that right? If this was say 2K announcing this with like screenshots and even video or whatever, this would be a whole different story, right? This would be amazing, right? But that's not happened because no one wanted this thing, right? And so Deli, which is a

bunch of, you know, bisdev guys that are like trying to get developers with licenseors, like that's the only company that would ever do a deal like this because it's so folly in its execution. Just saying, just going to like I'm doing investigative journalism. The the person who heads strategy and operations, both strategy and operations in Deli Interactive before his role at this AAA publisher, he was a music producer at Universal Music Group. Like that's that's it. I think he should be the CTO
to be honest.
This just lowers my Netflix points when I look at this and I'm seeing like like somebody at Netflix at this amazing company sat through these meetings and be like, "You know what? Let me sign this. This sounds like aing awesome I'm going to put my job on the line for this." Like it's insane. [laughter]
Yeah. I
Let the record show that was Eric Crest's cat, by the way. Not
I have I [laughter] didn't even know that you had a cat. This is
you. You talk so much cat and you're a hypocrite. You're a hypocrite, too.

Of [laughter] course.
Of course. Right.
Of course, I'm a hypocrite. Positive cat person.
You don't think we have animal early Christmas present? [laughter]
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that's up from two right now. So what we have is Century Games with White Out Survival and Microphone with Gossip Harbor. Can I just like take a moment? Gossip Harbor is in the top 10. Like holy I think I called them out
as someone crushing it in our Golden Twig Awards. So anyway, my other crazy prediction related to this would be that Tencent and Riot somehow figure out how to launch Valerant in the West after its massive, massive, massive success in China. By the way, Last Four, Survival, I think, is number one globally minus China. Like that game's just crushing it. It says they're from Singapore, but I think they were they kind of all started in China, so that's like a 0.5 China team. Candy Crush is number four. Coin Master, White Out Survival, Roblox number seven, Gossip Harbor 8, Clash Royale, number nine, and Township. There's your plays title round in Ireland apparently. Rounding out the top

10, Mishka, take this
like you put in the top games. So, I put in top 20 publishers. And we look at the list of top 20 publishers. Six out of 20 largest publishers globally looking at inapp purchase revenue are Chinese. And then of course you could kind of make the point that Supercell which is at least owned by 82% by 10 cent kind of goes to the China camp just in terms of ownership uh not operations. So I think the question is like to go to direct predictions. Do you guys see that by the end of 2026 we'll see more than six and a half or two seven Chinese publishers on the top?
I'm not as into the you know go east thesis as you guys are. Like wages are rising, the country is developing. It's not going to be as cheap develop. They're already outsourcing to Vietnam, right? They they are outsourcing themselves. I wish the West would have a better outsourcing partner that was in North America or Europe. I do think that would be nice for us,
but I don't know. I'm not as convinced.
All right. Could somebody from China buy Playa?
Play.
That's possible.

Yeah, why not?
Eastern gambling super interesting. Yeah. Konami. I know. Konami did market sides of the
No. Didn't they previously had a Chinese owner or like some kind of a situation before the IPO? Yeah. I don't think Playerix is going to go. And then the uh the other one is Garina, but I don't think it's on sale. And I doubt that any of the Japanese top publisher will be on sale.
No.
Yeah. Interesting.
Anyway, we'll see. Yep.
I think
we'll see.
I think it's a safe bet that China is going to continue to dominate. But
well, hold up. Let me let me add one more counterpoint here, which is us looking at Haby's revenue. But if you remember, Habby had a very explosive year with Cappy Bear Go and with Archer 2. Remember, we also talked about Widow Defender. It looks like a paper tiger. I mean, look at look at what net revenue has done over the course of 2025. I thought this was going to be a top 10 publisher by the end of the year. Not stacked.
Here's the thing. So, Hab is a publisher and then they have this studio, what's it called? Guerilla Games or Guerilla Studios. Like what was the like Hab is like let's say 300 people and Guerilla is over a thousand or 2,000. That's the

developer that made Archer. bested developer that I think made Survivor.io, it's the one that has made all their top hits. I don't know if they're working together anymore. Like I heard the Gorilla kind of was like, you know, we are the bread winner here.
Interesting.
So, I think that's to play with within Hab, but correct me if I'm wrong. Anybody from Habby? I know there's at least one person who speaks English and follows the show. So, please reach out to [laughter]
We'd love to learn more. So, uh, rounding out a couple of my other ones, I think we're going to see resolution in the Epic versus Google versus Apple cases, and hopefully we don't all have to move to an a cosmetic economy to save money. The next one I have, so Chris, I kind of wanted to ask you about this. I had heard this the other day that as chip prices are going up, RAM is going up for all the, you know, obviously going to AI and all the high-end high-end computers are going to be start to become more and more expensive. So, will Gen A and maybe late Gen Z see more adoption of PC handhelds as they try to

find a lower cost way to play games?
They're not insulated from memory price increases. So, I don't know.
Fair, but they're not going to be a $3,000 machine. They're going to be, you know, I don't I forgot what the Xbox ROG is, like eight like $1,000 or under. So, anyway, that was one of my So, keep an eye on that. And then this is just my wishful thinking category which is somebody actually gets franchise management. Um you guys call it trans media right. So I think number one Tomb Raider has a new TV show. They have two games that they announced at the game show. They've got the game in 26 and in 27 from RIP Amazon Studios. And then I want I wanted to do the Street Fighter. So also at the Game Awards the entire cast of Street Fighter came out. So, if you don't know, this is a movie coming out in 2026, which is a Jed X's dream come true. It's everything from our 90s childhood come back to life. If you

remember the old movie with John Claude Vanam, like our greatest action hero of all time.
Yeah, like that guy is amazing. And so, Street Fighter 2, the trailer looks awesome.
Who's playing Tomb Raider? Like, it should be Sydney Sweeney, right?
Uh, Sydney Sweeney. No, it's the woman from Game of Thrones. It's Sansa Stark, I think.
No, I'm super super down for that. She That's going to be awesome. And then I think the real winner for Trans Media is going to be uh the Mario Galaxy movie
when Mario 1 came out from a toy perspective. I was work I was doing a toy project. That's like over a hundred million dollars in toys because I actually planned for it. So anyway, these are my three picks for trans media success stories. Phil, let's go through your list. I would say some more things that are servicing, not necessarily bets yet. Epic Games very interested in how 2026 is going to play out for them. I think Tim Sweeney does not sit on his laurels. I think he's always making bold

plays. I think he showed a willingness to listen and is changing monization in UFN. I don't know if it's going to translate to anything, but I think they are feeling the pressure. And I think this Disney investment in Sora, which is the chat GDP, they allowed the IP usage, I think is going to be very interesting. And I think Epic needs to take advantage of that relationship with Disney. You know, they announced the med this kind of metaverse parky thing. I don't want to use the M-word, but that is going to be very, very interesting. But I am skeptical of their success. Limping Donkey and putting Riot on here. I think Riot's just a sad company right now. I think I think it's just sad. Narcissism. I think Trans Media is desperate. I think the same with Supercell. They just don't know what they're doing. They don't know how to take the next step. Valerant Mobile's a big success, but that's mostly because of China and Chinese development. It's not anything Riots's engineering. remember a report that just came out this week about League of Legends is struggling and that they make more money from Valerant than they do League now. I mean, Eric, like Moa as a category does not look good. You know, I think it's really starting to get chipped away every single year. So, that doesn't look good. And I will I

will quickly go over another UA thesis I've been peding for a while, which is this gender thesis we've been talking about. So, it seems like there's this barbell effect where you either go strong in emphasizing one gender. So Truckstar from Century Games Mishki you were just talking about Chinese match super interesting following in the footsteps of Chrome Valley Nicay very male love and deep space very female and then I think you have like 4X moving to the center with like tile survive kingshot I think royal kingdom again was trying to move match a little more male although it didn't succeed so I think like gender is going to matter more for user acquisition like it can't just be we've maxed out fake ads AI is still happening I don't know about you guys but like every ad I'm pretty much getting on Instagram for mobile games is AI. Like it's really worked its way up the chain. I think remains to be seen having more influence over the games themselves. And I would say just briefly on the genres, most interesting genre for me has got to be merge in its influence in match. When you look at the

overall texomy revenue, it has been the most significant player in ultimately changing how we look at casual revenue. And I think other players need to take a swing at this. Playrex needs to take a swing at this. I think King needs to take a swing at this. All the casual developers need to take a swing. I think it's the next economy innovation away from taking potentially up to 40% of casual match revenue. And the other one I would continue to look at is coin looters. Monopoly go like changed the game. It's a super dynamic subgenre inside of social casino. Slots is way down and coin looters are way up. It's eaten slots's lunch. It scratches that itch with that better metag game. Who fish of Fortune. I know I've been pedalling them too, but there's so much unexplored service area. If people could just get over themselves and embrace social casino,
it does feel a lot like the metagame systems overlaid with social casino feels like a place that people should really go because if you really think about what Monopoly Go and Coin Master

are, they are slot machines or a dice rolling slot machine that has a metagame system and a social component. So, I think the social component is what really drove Monopoly Go to to have a lot of it success that you really want to bring in your friends
like all these live ops events like so so much to be mind there that we just haven't been paying attention to as much as we should be because ew social casino
yeah co-op and social are I mean we we're not talking as much about steam right now but that's what you're seeing the peak and repo are two of the games and one of the my thesis of why those two were successful is it's the Friday night gen a I want to hang out with my friends instead of going to a movie and paying 50 bucks. I'm going to spend $10 on a PC game and have, you know, Friday nights of fun hanging out in a game and really actually engaging with my friends instead of watching a movie together.
Hopefully more than 10 bucks, Jen. Jesus. How about $100?
Those games are 10 bucks. No, I mean
they should be buying hard currency

packs. They should be buying cosmetics. Mike, that is a good Friday night [laughter]
for you. All right, Mishka, what do you got?
All right, let me do this one quickly. So, on the macro side, I think player base will continue to grow about 5% year-over-year, reaching 1.7 billion players worldwide. This is the most positive news that it's called the secular tailwind of our industry. So, we can go up and down, but this is really that is holding a future in the hands. I think Roblox will continue to dominate as the largest audience, especially looking at the CCUs. I think PC will continue to grow. I think it will continue to grow about 5% year-over-year, especially looking at Steam, smaller measured growth, but growth nevertheless of the player base. I think console is going to have, you know, a booming time with the launch of GTA 5. I think everybody else thinks this way. And going on mobile, I think we'll be seeing continuing decline in

downloads. It has been traditionally about 88% year-over-year. And I think we'll hold on to that number quite consistently unless there's some big hit or a crossplatform hit coming through. I think the mobile inapp purchase revenue on the other hand will continue to grow but as super measured. I think Crest was talking about two to five. I would probably land at at that 3% mark especially because web shops are eating away a lot from that statistics. So we don't see the full inner purchase growth.
So So where do you pin it? Like what is the web store adjusted number we should be looking at when we look at IEP revenue?
If you just do growth numbers it's still the same 3 to 5%. Right? Because incrementally it's not going to be expanding any more dramatically than inapp purchases, right?
That's assume that's assuming adoption holds constant. You don't think it's accelerated in the last year?
No, I don't. No.
Yeah. I think it's a market share game at this point.
Yeah. There are some big studios that are now adopting web shops because they have been on the fence. These are more

on the casual side, the biggest ones because they have been thinking whether to build their own or whether to adopt one of the existing on the market or do some kind of a hybrid version. But the challenge about the web shops is like it's so genre specific. Like we see the strategy games pulling in 50% of the revenue. And at the same time, I've talked to casual game publishers that did all the steps that the web shop providers have told them and are seeing barely anything meaningful in terms of web shop revenue. So there is that genre divide. I'm sure that as web shops continue to evolve, shout out to Appch charge, uh, but as they continue to come up with new ways to drive web shops, they will also be able to cater better to casual gaming companies. But I think that has been quite of a challenge till date.
Oh, interesting. And also I wanted to mention on mobile which is really interesting is inup ads because Josh was on the podcast and he was talking about the e-commerce advertisers on mobile and how they're raising CPMs and eCPM. So

that could be a quite of a boom for ad driven games or games with ad revenue. So
on the flip side, it's horrific for UA, right?
For downloads, which is why I'm continuing to project downloads to go down, increase the cost of down cost of UA by this more than any type of uptick you get in ad revenue.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, because only very few games actually rely on ads like they do, you know, very few genres. And so it's it's
existing publishers will benefit from that. And so on to the predictions. This will blow blow your fuses off at least Eric's. So I predict that we will have first over hund00 million exit of a Roblox studio with the acquisition made by a reputable acquirer. So a company that is an IP holder either in gaming or media. And the reasons for this before you shake your hands and scream that this ising nuts. The reasons I'm going to give you three reasons for this one is if you're not Roblox native it is

impossible to make a Roblox game. So you need essentially a a studio that has made Roblox game. Not published but made them.
Uh number two, everybody is dipping their toes in Roblox for the past three years. You got Walmart experiences, you got Netflix, Stranger Things, like you name a company, they've done something in the Roblox space. And reason three, this is kind of towards the Roblox. Roblox published their brand portal and so they're kind of leaning in and making it easy for companies to work with brands but as with any game development like Delphi Interactive can make a FIFA game. Same thing goes to Roblox. Anybody can make a game a FIFA I can make a FIFA game just pay me but it's not going to be a good one. And the same thing is hap will happen with Roblox that there are good developers and then there's not so good developers. And when these premium brand holders start working with the good developers and are getting good traction, they will need to buy those premium developers because any premium

developer should always focus on building their own franchises or integrating brands as brand integration into their existing brands to help them to grow because that builds them value, not these one-off projects. Crest, please destroy my thesis. I don't even know what's more annoying, your predictions about Roblox or the fact that you can't pronounce Roblox.
[laughter]
I mean, Roblox, it's not Roblox or what the you're saying, dude. All this is dude. All this is No one wants to own a Roblox studios except for other Roblox studios. [laughter] So, it's not No one's going to buy EA, Scopi. No one of meaning is going to buy a Roblox studio. So, you're pretty
Centry Games has a Roblox game. Just saying.
There's weird. They're not acquiring studio from
No, they're not. I
agree. This
Yeah, but I'm I'm putting my neck out there. I'm putting my neck out.
Can you say Roblox?
Roblox.
Okay, that's better.
Yeah, Roblox.

He speaks like four languages. This is not a good argument for Americans, Eric.
Yeah, exactly.
Oh, no. Anyways,
no. This is the perfect argument for, you know, egocentric, [laughter] ethnosentric Americans. What are you talking about?
This is the argument. [laughter]
Okay. the Chinese the Chinese developers will be eating the lunch of Turkish puzzle developers. That's one of my kind of like two predictions there. We talked a lot about the Chinese, but I want to make this specific about Turkish because that has been the ecosystem that has gotten most investments in content in 2025. And what I look from the side, and it's not even that far from the side, like we're friends of the Turks, just to be clear, but every other game looks and plays largely the same. Every team looks and works in exact the same way and every one of these games have the same CPIs as Dream which is about $25. So yeah, to compete against the ones that are already, you know, at scale and you're soft launching. So when you look at the Chinese, they like big genres.

They have big pockets for UA. We can see that they innovate in marketing. They innovate in meta. I mean, I don't know if that's innovation, but they put pretty much every metag game in to push up LTV so that they can pay that insane CPI. And finally, they have massive teams. You know what? Turks don't have massive teams. They work in compact teams, crazy hours. Guess what? So do Chinese. They work crazy hours, too. But there's thousand of them on one game. So that's going to be really tough for Turkish developers. I don't want doom and gloom for Turkish developers. I think they are the best in the world or among the best, but they need to start innovating because I feel like the Chinese are like a you know a chopstick away from taking over their lunch. Like it's it's it's really come in. So um
Wow, that seemed challen I I love I've worked at Chinese love Chinese love Turks, but it's a it's a it's a competition for one of the most lucrative brands. Uh
I love Chinese food. So I love Chinese. That's what you
I don't like [laughter] I I don't love

Chinese food. That's the only thing I don't love about Chinese. I don't like their food. Anyways, with the rise of the Chinese developers, we'll see the way how the teams are looking in the west because till now I think the big publishers can compete with the Chinese head-on. Like if you look at plays, their top games, you know, they have between five to six to 700 developers. But if you're MIT are smaller tier developers, you would have to focus on speed and replayable gameplay. So basically super addict for core gameplay. You have to focus on IP that has relevance in the west which Chinese games still suffer in creating. You have to be ultra focused in driving growth through community through influencers as distribution over paid UA because they're really good at paid UA. And then finally compact and senior and very very focused teams things like peak or supercell back in 2015. So I think that's what the teams will start looking like again on the mid and smaller size. All right. Um PC indie continue to heat

up. I think more games more indie publishers will be coming in trying their luck on the Steam platform, especially as mobile becoming less and less fundable. So if you want to start a game studio, you're probably going to do it on PC rather than Roblox or other ones. I will say that there are 19,000 games that you have to compete with on PC
and it's kind of like getting into the prof a professional to be a professional footballer whether that football is American or worldwide like your win rate is tiny. So, while everyone keeps like, "Oh, like go make a PC Steam game for little baby indies," like, it's not much better than No, I I guess the app stores are still at like what 200,000 new games or something every year. I I forget what it is, but it it is not like there's this magical pool of like indie success that's happening.
It's if you have few couple of people or if you're alone and you're like, I hate execs. I hate PMs. I hate everything about marketing. You'd

be like, those are the three magic words. go and make a steam game and let's see how [laughter] how you succeed in that arena. But on the other hand, people who say, you know, they like those part part of things, they like they are PMs, they are marketers, but they're having hard time making a game in the modern market. They'll be probably doing apps. So that's another prediction. But final one, final one. This is what I wanted to kind of leave everybody on to again putting my neck out. I think the AI bubble will pop and that kind of resets all AI investments. I think the hype currently, I don't I'm not alone. The hype is insane. The boards of any company pretty much force you to invest into AI. And when you look at the results, let's say Gartner, which is, you know, a renowned research company, they said that more than half of the consumers don't trust AI searches. McKenzie, friend of the podcast. Their study found that 80% of companies using generative AI have seen no significant bottomline impact with 42 of them literally abandoning their AI

projects. And MIT, a little school out of Massachusetts, found out that 95% of the AI pilot projects at the big companies they surveyed failed. And so, I'm not saying that AI is Of course, it helps. We all use it a ton, but all I'm saying is it hasn't helped nearly as much as the companies making these products or funding them say it well. And then when the bubble pops, you see a market crash. And when the market crashes, you see money being tied. And you see also these AI startups that are unprofitable dying in mass. And so with 70% of AI contractors evaporating, you're simply not signing more projects and adopting and will be adopting this sort of a wait and see strategy until the new AI hype circle starts. So that's my prediction on all the uh short
the last two years.
Mr. AI I long term as I said long-term bullish short term I think a lot of

these companies from lovable to others will be having hard time. We'll give you a minute. What are your Hail Marys? This is These are fun.
Everything I I have is like like my neck is out. Like these are absurd. I think so. You guys talked about Riot, how it's profitable but having hard time defining growth. I think when you're profitable having a hard time finding growth and if you're I'll just say it. I think they're going to get bought in in 2026. I think somebody big will acquire them. I think Netflix games, the uh this iteration with the TV product, especially as I'm looking how good sports is on Netflix, there's no room. There's no real estate on that screen for this that they've been doing. So, that's going to get cut. Like the real estate too expensive
after acquiring WB.
Oh, there's no reason.
Let's just let's just stop. Let's just stop with this. It was a nice try. It was boost for the industry. Thank you for the cheese. Let's stop. And then uh Supercell two in two predictions since it's close to me. I would say that they

will fail to launch a game that scales in 2026, but they will succeed at resurrecting once again one of their franchises. And I don't know, I was thinking, is it a heyday or Clash of Clan that's going to see this insane growth? And I think I'll put my money on like I I love Maya, but I think I'm going to put my money on Clash of Clans. [laughter] Oh, okay. All right. I Yeah. No, I I I I like that. I like that because
Supercell's new magic isn't launching games that will last forever. It's resurrecting games that are supposed to last forever. Like forever ago.
I know. They're like the resurrection team. Okay, I love how you put your neck out. This was great. So, this wraps up our predictions episode. Chris and I are going to record a little bonus episode because uh the little Lowenfells are going to be back. So, our uh Twig guest

hosts from Gen Alpha, we're going to do a little podcast with them. Maybe we'll maybe we can fit their predictions into this episode and then Yeah, we'll probably have a separate
Ask them about Roblox. Ask them about Roblox.
We uh of course we have Roblox. That's what he says. Roblox. He says Roblox.
He says Rob. Rob. I can't even say what he says yet.
I have a flu. I I've been having the flu since the same way every time. Annoying.
You don't speak. That's fine. English is not your first language.
My brain is full of all these languages. [laughter]
Well, uh, happy holidays, happy Hanukkah, merry Christmas to those of you that celebrate that. Um,
some of us are going to be back next week to do a another episode hopefully. But, um, if not, um, happy holidays and see you next time.
Bye-bye.
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