Apple's $2,000+ iPhone Duo and the backlash to new EU App Store rules | Week in Mobile Games podcast

[music] Hello and welcome to the pocket gamer.biz podcast week in mobile games where we chat about the week's news and provide some insights. I'm Greg Chapel, head of content at pocketgamer.biz. With me as ever is our deputy editor, Paige Cook. Our features and data editor, Aaron Assel, and our editorial director for events, Mariam Mad. Full house. How are we all doing? Mariam, what have you been up to? You've been away.
I've been away. Hey, I was at Slice in Seattle um which was an indie event and I hosted our big indie pitch and it was fantastic. It was really exciting to see all the sort of like weird and wonderful games that everyone came forward with and we crowned the winners. So yeah, that was really cool. Um and other than that, I've been sort of preparing for my trip next week cuz I'm actually going away on my honeymoon to Borneo in Malaysia.
Amazing.
Amazing.
So yeah, so I'm really excited. It's like one of the most I mean we picked it because we're both we love just sort of like nature and biodiversity and it's like the oldest rainforest in the world I think even older than the Amazon in Brazil.

Oh wow.
And um yeah it's really cool. Aaron I feel like you might find this fact interesting but I was doing a bit of a deep dive on like sort of like flora and fauna as it's called. There's a plant called a refleia and it's a corpse flower. Oh right.
It's of its rather distinct s because it inspired vile plume I think in Pokémon.
Yeah. So they look Yeah, they look like very similar. So I was doing research and I was like, "Oh, Aaron would might appreciate that."
Yeah, definitely. I think in the older Animal Crossings, you could get them growing as like an invasive plant, I think, if you didn't play for too long as well.
Exactly.
Mysterious plant somewhere. And Aaron's just like, "Yep."
Yeah.
And here's and here's all the cases of it in entertainment.
Yeah.
I saw a picture. I was like, "Aaron Aaron will appreciate that."
Oh, yeah. Thanks for thinking of me. I'm glad to have my little niche specialist area.
That's incredible. Well, that sounds amazing. Is it going to be like a relaxing? You're going to be going out?
It's a mix cuz I think if it was too relaxing, I'd go a bit stir crazy. So,

it's a mix of sort of seeing orangutans cuz that's apparently their native sort of land and seeing all these animals and then also going to the beaches. So, it's a I'd say it's a mixed bag, bit of both.
It's a lot of traveling. So, one other thing in Seattle, you met quite a few people. We had a a big interview published on the site already so far.
We did. Yeah. We met I met um the studio head Emirat, the co-founder of uh Sucker Punch and uh we had a really good interview. It's on the site. I really um recommend people to check it out. He sort of talks about what comes next for him and sort of process that went behind the creation of Ghost of Sushima and Infamous and Ghost of Yote as well. Um and there's a few more coming out as well. I had got a good few interviews and the next one will be with Bernie Yei who is CEO of Windup Minds. He's ex Meta and he worked on Oculus which is their VR. He was part of the sort of integral team as well at Zombies View Plants. So yeah, got a good few um interviews in and yeah, keep an eye out for those.
Amazing. Looking forward to that and yeah, good luck on your on the on your next travels.

Thank you very much.
Paige, what you been up to?
Yeah, definitely nothing that exciting on my side. Just boring stuff. So, we've lived in like the this house for like over a year now. And you know when you first move into somewhere, you do all like the little decorating bits and then you kind of stop. I've stopped for too long, so I've decided I'm doing stuff to the house again. So, I've ordered a bunch of stuff and I'm redecorating the spare room this weekend. That's going to be my job, which is very boring, but I'm quite excited for it. And outside of that, I've been trying to do some gaming. I started Dawn of the Blood Walker. Don't know if any of you have heard of it, but it's like a RPG game. You play as like a half vampire person, but a lot of the people that made the game also worked on The Witcher 3 and you can instantly through the whole game just feel very Witcher 3 sort of essence throughout it, but not in a way where this doesn't feel original. It still feels like its own thing. But you can definitely tell the influence of The Witcher 3, but in the best way because I absolutely love that game. So yeah, I'm having a really good time with that.

It's got some interesting like mechanics. The combat's a little bit different. It's like a time mechanic in the game. So say if you want to do something, it'll be like, "Oh, this is going to take, you know, three in-game hours and you only have like I think it's like 30 days to save your family." Like that's the whole plot. So you have to really pick and choose what you do and don't want to do because you only have a certain amount of time. So yeah, I think that's really cool.
Is this like a Majora's Maskesque? You have like three days to save the world and is that is it like that interesting?
Yeah, I didn't know that.
But it's cool.
Yeah, I might get that one. I was I was looking at games yesterday and I was I was thinking of that. So
yeah, I really like it so far.
Amazing. All right. And uh thanks for that page and Aaron, what you've been up to?
Well, I've been getting overwhelmed by all the Nintendo news this week really is. Um yeah, like Monday, um obviously Zelda's the big one, but we'll chronologically like Monday, Fire Emblem had a little kind of mini presentation for Fire Emblem Heroes because there's a new Switch game that comes out later

this month. And then they announced that there's a load of new content coming early around those characters to heroes to kind of market the game. And because yeah, on the Switch 2 title, you'll kind of pick between four kind of main story lines originally and like follow a different character and you'll obviously be able to play the other ones, but you'll choose one that you want to do first. So, they said like they've added those four characters and some kind of like story quest stuff and challenge maps and things to help people kind of get to try out the characters, you know, see which one they like the personality of before the the game comes out. and they announced that Monday and then that came out like Tuesday morning. So that was very quick turnaround. So that that was cool. And obviously Tuesday was the big like Zelda Direct where I I really expected a movie trailer. If anything, I thought, you know, that's sort of guaranteed at this point. We'll get a proper movie trailer. You know, it comes out next April. It's been like 3 years since they announced it. Way better than

at the Zelda Direct. And then I mean we got a title reveal. That's The Legend of Zelda, not even with movie at the end like Mario got. Um, so at least it's it's still gradually drip feeding as little as they can get away with.
Maybe we'll get a Netflix exclusive teaser.
Maybe. And then obviously the main thing they showed off was the Ocarina of Time remake. Um, which does look good. I was really impressed by the like scenery and stuff, especially
looks great
as a kind of Nintendo player, you know, that it looks like too realistic to me. I'm not used to to those kind of graphics. And then they revealed the new like Switch 2 model that's like Zelda themed. So, uh, a lot of time like refreshing websites until like a pre-order went up and then they were selling out instantly. I finally actually managed to get a pre-order in. So hopefully that's all going to go ahead fine. But I'm quite nervous.

It's been the perfect week for you, Aaron.
It has.
Yeah, I'm waiting for what the rest of the week's going to bring now.
Delays, cancellations. Thanks very much. As for myself, just very quickly, but it was it was my birthday last week on Saturday. And so the night before I went to karaoke, much like Aaron, I I very much enjoy that. And but I went to this thing. It's called Bararaoke. And there's this actor in the UK that's quite well known if you you if you're I guess of certain generation. And he used to be in a in a soap called EastEnders. Very famous, very longunning soap. And he played a character called Barry. And he was famously pushed off a cliff to his death. Anyway, later years he set up this karaoke thing called Bararaoke and he tours the country basically and he kind of came to town and I was like, I'm not missing this opportunity. So I I I managed to go on stage, sing with Barry, I sung Mr. Bright Side by the Killers and had like the best time. Got some amazing photos, videos. Yeah, it was it

was it was great.
Yeah, the photos were fantastic. He must have just known it was your birthday and was like, "That's where I'm going."
Yeah. Like literally the stars align the night before my birthday. I couldn't believe it. But yeah, awesome.
You'll have to at the end of the podcast just kind of tack on the video of you doing the karaoke.
Yeah, you got to do
Oh god. I'll consider it. So, I I'd say stay tuned, but people could just click to the end to see if it's [laughter] not.
That's cheating, though.
So, I put it somewhere in the middle so no one knows where it is. And I won't stay for the surprise. [laughter]
Yeah.
But yeah, it was awesome as I keep saying. And the other thing this week is I after I think Paige and Issa, I think you were both saying how good Silo was. So, I binge watched it in like two days, the f not the final season, the third season. And uh I thought it was amazing. And I don't it's not a spoiler but in in there is just a mention of of Hod which is my which was the town I grew up in and I was like no way this big US show

cannot be. Turns out there's Hodison film studios that they filmed I think each season as as Pa was explaining to me. It's completely blown my mind. All these twists and turns and this like the biggest shock. If you haven't watched Silo, it's very very very very good mystery show set as the title might suggest in a silo. Each season has a different mystery. I think any more that I would say might ruin it other than go watch it as someone told me and I really like the show Paradise. I think it's incredible. Every episode is great, but someone the way they put it was just like silo is like paradise with brains which I thought actually made sense. Anyway, so I'm going to we're going to jump into things. Quick thing. Pocket Gamer Connects events coming up. We have Pocket Gamer Connects Nordics in Helsinki October 20th and 21st. We got PGC Jordan November 7th and 8th. We've got the PGC Summit in Montreal on November 10th. And we'll have PGC London coming back in January 18th and 19th. So, we've got plenty plenty of big

events coming up. If you're interested, I guess take advantage of the early bird rates if you know you're coming anywhere. Cool. So, we're going to jump into the news and Mariam, you were covering the big news of the week.
I have been. And the big news is that the rumors were true. Apple has launched its first foldable. So, yesterday Apple held its surprise and shine event, which I'm not a massive fan of the name, but hey ho. It was John Turnis' first keynote as CEO. And from it, I think there's we can pull about four big updates that are specifically relevant to sort of studios and devs. So, firstly, the rumors are true. They've released their first foldable, the iPhone Duo. So, it opens up to about 7.6 in and folds down to about 5.4 for an outer screen. Now, the obvious thing with that is for games that means a much bigger play area without actually having to carry a tablet. Apple said it deliberately went with a wider shape here. And price-wise, it starts at $1,999 and it shipped on October 23rd. So, that was the iPhone. So, that was the sort of most exciting news of it all. But, Apple

also launched the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max. The big upgrade this year is that they're launching alongside that in within the Duo and Pro Max the A20 Pro chip. So the A20 is their first two nanometer processor. So they say graphics will be about 40% faster than last year. And it's openly pitching I mean they said it within the sort of keynote that I watched yesterday. They're pitching the sort of high-end gaming as part of the pro iPhone. And with that they've said that there's a vapor ch vapor chamber that is three times bigger than last year's which should help with of course longer sessions. Um, and of course the dreaded battery life that everyone's always been complaining about with Apple, they've they've kind of took a big turn on that and they say that's up and they've claimed that that's 36 hours of video playback on the Pro and the 45 on the Pro Max. Um, prices for that start at $1,199 and the Pro Max is at $1,299 and I believe that pre-orders start this Saturday. One thing to note though is that there's no standard iPhone 18 this year. So, it's just the Pro Max that's coming. I believe the standard one is coming in spring of 2027. And in a

little bit of a fun edition, as I was watching the keynote, this I was like, "Oh, that's really nice." We saw they showcased Monster Hunter Outlanders from Tencent on Capcom and the new 18 Pro Max. Um, and it was running at about 120 frames per second and it used Apple's Metal FX, which is their tech for sort of drawing a game at lower resolution and then sharpening it back up. So, they're showing this game on this on their new Pro Max and they were showing how good it looks basically. And also uh they showcase Azro games free-to-play RPG Ungodly on the 18 Pro Max and the Duo. Um and an interesting twist actually I thought this is quite cool. Azra said they actually worked with Apple's platform team to add 120 Hz support and a new ultra graphics mode. The interesting thing I thought about that is that they're not just sort of quoting benchmarks here. They're working with studios directly to build these sort of higherend settings for these devices. Um, so they've got gaming in mind clearly, but I guess the real test will be whether that performance actually holds up in a long session when it comes to people actually playing. And of course, as we also expected, there was a Siri and AI update. So they say that Siri can now work with over 300,000

apps and can take action actions inside them. This also means that developers can use their own features, but the catch is that some of these features have usage limits and they're tied to sort of iCloud plans which you have to pay out of pocket for. They don't just come with that with the phone. Um, a lot of news to get through here. There's also the developer angle with iOS 27 which can tell if Duo is open, closed, half-folded and Apple has new tools for adapting to each. So they already ungodly the game support already supports switching between them apparently which is quite interesting. I guess the question for studios is whether the audience get big enough to justify building specifically for this. We'll see. And I guess my final thoughts are looking at the bigger picture. Now my thoughts specifically about this. This isn't new. Samsung, famously Apple's major rival, has made a foldable phone. And I did a little bit of research into this and foldable phones only make up about 2% of the smartphone market. So, we're not really at a point where a lot of people are using them. I'm sure you know my fellow co-workers and here would you can count on your hand maybe how many friends or people

that you know use foldable phones. I personally don't know anyone that uses one, but I thought it was interesting how they sort of push the gaming angle. They mention gaming a lot and they're obviously trying to take this niche and make it mainstream. I mean, it's Apple at the end of the day, and if Samsung hasn't managed to pull it off, maybe Apple will. We'll see. And if they do, foldable screens will have to be something that I guess game devs won't be able to ignore for much longer. But let's see. It's a It's an interesting time. And the rumors were true. And yeah, we'll see how this one develops, I guess.
I thought it was really interesting the the duo. It was I was just looking at so Bloomberg said, which I thought was really extreme, but okay. A $2,000 iPhone gives Apple's new CEO his Steve Jobs moment. Like, what? What? [laughter]
I don't know about that one.
Is it this? I feel like to be Steve Jobs moment, it has to be really like fresh and innovative, but that's that's what defined his era, whereas Tim Cook's era is defined by
kind of keeping things growing and and more steady without those bigger innovation.

Yeah, I heard the opposite to that. like, oh yeah, Steve Jobs would be turning in his grave if he saw that Apple was sort of venturing into foldable phones. So, I don't know that about that Bloomberg. But yeah,
but I I think it is really interesting. I guess because of the type of fans, customers that Apple has, if anyone could make this work, it would be Apple. I think that at least in terms of financials, I'm sure at I the next quarter or the quarter after it launches, whatever, I'm sure it'll be like, you know, we made loads more money because people are buying the duo. But I guess to your point, how mass market is that? I I especially at this time in the world where I my a lot of my thought was like personally I was like read the rumor. You're launching a $2,000 up to $3,200 phone and people can't put like fuel in their car.
I know. When I saw the price when I saw the price point, I was like $2,000. That is a lot of money for a phone as well.
Do you remember when it was the Apple's first $1,000 phone?

I know. And everyone was like up and up. Now we double that.
Yeah. It worked to be fair, but like
Yeah.
But I'm interested to see how it goes. I feel like So you said it was like a wider screen, right? which I think makes sense because I saw it's really bad. I can't remember the manufacturer. I think it was Motorola had a phone basically that you unfolded it. It was almost kind of square and it had a FIFA Heroes on it. They kind of I guess had a partnership and adapted it specifically for that screen a bit like what Ungodly's done. And I I it was impressive. But then I I did just think immediately like well but right but who else is going to bother wanting to do this? So I guess with the wider screen it makes it easier. They did say that, but I mean they've got some of the best engine that's one thing you can't take away from Apple. They've got some of the best sort of engineers in the world. And one thing they specifically said is that we know because they know the sort of problems that people have with the um foldable phones. So they said we know that in the past, they were obviously referencing I guess their rival Samsung that the crease isn't so seamless and

that there's this inner sort of black boxes that make it so it doesn't seem like it's um opening up to like the sort of size that you want. So we are sort of we've designed this to sort of target those problems. So they have that they do have that in mind. So yeah that's that's that's been interesting to see.
We'll see how it goes. It makes a bit more sense why Apple and Google or I guess more specifically Apple but but both of them were at Gamescom and Apple was hosting a few sessions. I imagine it was talking with a lot of developers about exactly what they're doing. And I guess it does make it a better gaming device in general. I guess premium and AAA push is not new for them in terms of putting stuff on stage, but I guess if things are moving in that direction, I guess we might see more of those experiences and maybe they'll do better if this picks up a bigger audience. But I still don't think things like Resident Evil will be good. But for something like an Ungodly or Achin Impact is pretty good.
Yeah, I'd be curious if someone around me buys one, I'd be curious to play a game on their iPhone duo just to see how

it what what it looks like. Yeah, to your earlier point, I also don't know anybody with a foldable phone. I do feel like this look like when I saw the videos of this, it is kind of cool how it folds out and like you said, it kind of looks more like a tablet than a phone. Like that's kind of cool, but at the same time, is it cool enough that I would want one or pay that much money for it? No.
Exactly. I'm with you. Yeah.
Yeah. I have um one friend I know did have a foldable phone um cuz Yeah. like we met up at one point and I saw I don't know which one he had but when it folded it was like a square and then it folded out to being a normal size phone. Um and anyway he had that you know I had a bit of a look it looked weird but okay. And then the next time I saw him he had a normal phone cuz he'd broken it already and the the folding bit had broken.
You'd hope that's the one thing that Apple sold.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Great. So yeah, huge news thanks to that Miam. So Aaron, do you want to go through the charts this week? A lot of interesting stuff.
Yes. Okay then. So um so yes um we've

released another kind of monthly charts um feature looking at August revenue and downloads for mobile. So there were a couple of highlights to point out like um 10 cents portfolio like overall grew in revenue and installs 9% revenue increase 33% installs. I think uh revenue was its best in like 6 months. So, you know, not like a record high, but yeah, an improvement. Obviously, in terms of games, they have the long kind of dominant um Honor of Kings, which is still in August, it was again the kind of top grossing mobile game. So, it made another like 218 million in player spending. As usual, this is App Magic estimates. It's Google Play and the App Store. So it does this doesn't account for other stores or web shops or ad revenue, you know, specifically player spending. Um, and another 10-centent game that did that was quite sort of

noteworthy then was Golden Spatula, which was on the rise in China. Uh, so that had its best month since February, made 37 million with a 125 month overmonth growth rate. So on the charts it shot up by 39 positions within a month. Made it to 26th. So you know not not quite a chart topper but one one to watch I guess. Um yeah outside of 10 cent like Anniplex's fake Grand Order had quite a big spike which um it it often does in August because that's the game's anniversary in Japan. This year it kind of doubled or more than doubled July's earnings. They jumped from 22.5 million to 57.7 and yeah, the game makes almost 90% of its earnings from Japan. Yeah, I guess it makes sense that it's anniversary in Japan is when it has its kind of annual I guess predictable spike. Um even

though the North American anniversary is in July. um on a daily basis. I guess it was maybe more noteworthy for this in a way that um so on the 15th of August it made 4.6 million uh which was its highest daily earnings since January 1st 2021. Elsewhere again kind of um a lot of Asian titles at the top of the charts as they often are these days. Valerant Mobile did well had it best had its best month yet in China. So it kind of got pushed up to 20th in the global rankings even just with China revenue. Players spent 53.7 million which was up 68% month over month and 375% yearover-year. This was also its first time getting above 50 million in monthly spending. Other games that I sort of uh wrote about in the article like Pokémon Go actually fell out of the top 10. July

was a massive month for the game. That was its 10th anniversary. I actually wrote a separate piece earlier in the week about how Pokémon Go has shot back up again at the start of September. It beat Honor of Kings over the first week of September and was the most lucrative mobile game of September week one. I guess we'll well tune back in in a few weeks for the September charts. See how it does overall. Anyway, Pokémon Go falling out the top 10. freed up a slot which Konami's e football took. Um otherwise the rest of the top 10 the games moved around a bit but it was the same games from July that stayed in and collectively mobile games like all mobile games between the two major stores generated 6.8 billion in August. So that that was down 6% year-over-year but it was a 1% increase over July. Then on the kind of download sides of things, Level Infinite released Gangster Mirage City online in the EU, Blatam, Mena,

like Southeast Asia. They released it in the Philippines earlier in the year and then it's kind of it's not quite global yet. I guess it's not out in like the US or Japan or places like that, but it's available in a lot of the world now. And that helped propel it into the top 10 for downloads by by the end of August. It actually yeah, it got into seventh place. So there were 12.2 million installs, which it did kind of after releasing more than halfway into the month. So yeah, it'll be interesting to see whether it ranks even higher in September or whether that's a kind of a surge from it being a new release in in these regions. Yeah, it was originally called Code Name Crime Vice Open World. I wonder how much the kind of hype that people have for GTA 6 has helped cuz uh from looking into the game cuz I wasn't really aware of it before writing the the piece. It seems that you kind of go and execute bank heists and drive you know whatever car you can find basically

and fight people and do crimes with your crew. So yeah, I wonder if they kind of purposely tried to to roll it out a bit before
GTA launches. bit of a coincidence.
I would also say that Ted said another actually yeah Chinese developers. So when very quickly when battle royale became a really big thing and and before Fortnite and PUBG were going to be on on mobile it was very quickly rushed out games like Rules of Survival and KN knives out. I think both of those were netis and they were rolled out like I think one didn't have I think Rules of Survival didn't have any ambience sound which sounds whatever but when you play a game and it's just completely quiet
you you don't realize until it happens and they didn't put any monetization even when they finally got PUBG on so I think just to roll out anything 100% they're trying to capture sorry
and yeah it seems it's h mostly taken off in India so far in terms of installs uh so there's like over 3 million

installs from India and it's also been way more popular on Android than iOS which kind of tracks with that. Um it's like yeah quite a massive disparity. It's like 11 million Google Play downloads versus 1 million on iOS. Other than that, Turkey was another successful month for the country in general. Like Grand Games had another record month with Blockout in August. Got um I think how many was it 10.4 4 million downloads in August and that's helped push it beyond 30 million lifetime. Flow game Smash Smash Fest also got 6 million downloads which uh we were talking Craig about how that's particularly noteworthy uh because it's kind of been removed or disappeared from Google Play. Fortnite got about 6 million downloads which bumped it up in the charts. So, it only made it to like 55th place, but it was down at like 80th or 90th or something in July.
That was uh it's really it's really

interesting. I I always love like going through all the chart stuff. There's so many there's so many kind of stories you could kind of tell the industry is so big now. Tasty Travels is one to watch in the merge genre. Century Games kind of coming for Micro Fun there. And yeah, a load of a load of other stuff. We pointed out stuff personel thought was interesting that I feel like they need a big bump if they want to when they announce their financials in February if they want to tell us it's another record year or not. I think they're lacking that at the moment. Cool. Thank you very much for that, Aaron. And Paige, what have you got?
Yeah. So, just a quick sort of news update from me this week. So, there's been a pretty big leadership change over at Trail Mix. So, founder and CEO Carolyn Kresnner, she's stepping down as CEO after almost 9 years. She will be moving into the role of executive chair. So, she's she's not uh fully away. James Nichol Nicholas will be stepping in as CEO. He's been COO for the past three and a half years. So, he'll be taking over, but it's not like, you know, most

of these things like we hear about it, but behind the scenes there's always a lot going on. He's apparently already been sort of running the day-to-day operations for the past sort of eight months. And the two have known each other for a long time as well. So sort of like the last decade, I believe they've known each other going back to their time at King. So I feel like behind the scenes there would have obviously been a a lot of conversations to set this up and make sure it's, you know, nice and seamless and have the right strategy in mind going forwards. But yeah, like I said, it it's it's cool that Caroline isn't fully going anywhere and she'll still be involved in the company. It's obviously been a lot of, you know, work towards this sort of transition. Um, I'm sure they've got the the right plan going forward. But yeah, I am interested in what new leadership means. Like, you know, again, is it going to be so seamless that we almost don't really tell there's anything different going on or is there going to be, you know, some new stuff? I think I'm particularly interested to see if or when we hear anything about potentially

another game from them. Obviously, they have Love and Pies and they work really hard at supporting that game, but I would be interested to see what else they could come up with. Speaking of Love and Pies, it's the game's fifth anniversary this month. Um, and I am doing an interview with Trail Mix, so yeah, do uh keep looking on the site for that. I'm hoping that'll be out very soon. So, a really, really big change. It took me by surprise a little bit. But yeah, curious to see what that change means or if it's just kind of going to be so seamless. It just feels like more of the the same kind of thing from them.
I'm curious what the future looks like. Can they compete in that merge genre? What will the studio be working on? I I I can't imagine the only focus would still be love and pies, but I could be wrong. So, it's either are they going to do a new IP? Can they really even compete in merge? Metacor another now studio owned by supercell like fully has obviously struggled they were open about that and made a lot of layoffs there's a positive spin on this which is they have

been successful but the negative one is I do worry about what their future looks like we'll see if supercell has a a plan for them whether they it's just speculation whether they support Merge Mansion and try and grow that to compete with the games that we mentioned before Gossip Harbor and Tasty Travels Gossip Harbor is the number two top grossing game in the world Tasty Travels is in the top 25. I suspect that will be top 20 before long. It has just been growing up for month centuries behind it. So yeah, like maybe they'll find another part of the puzzle genre to get into or they have other innovations where we don't know. We I think we're going to be speaking to them. We'll find out more. But yeah, interesting interesting future for them, but I always want UK Studios to do well. So best of luck to to Trail M. And to be fair, well done to the leadership for growing a good UK mobile studio. Right. Thanks for that page. So, uh, we're going to end with me. I will be as quick as I can. Uh, but there was an interesting story this week. So, European groups aren't happy with the European Commission or Apple over the latest proposed app store rules. There

was a joint letter signed by the European Game Developer Federation alongside the Coalition for App Fairness and 16 other organizations that expressed their profound disappointment with the European Commission for the apparent endorsement of the new terms without consulting affected businesses or users. So what happened? Well, Apple just announced new terms in August that the company said had followed to quote close collaboration with the European Commission and then it added to quote these changes resolve Apple's disagreements with the commission over business terms and alternative distribution. I did go over this in a recent podcast. I'll just go over very quickly the changes. So, core technology fee which is a which had a per install charge. I I think this has actually been for a long time, but it's replaced by the core technology commission, which is now a 5% commission on digital transactions in apps distributed outside the app store. Uh the initial acquisition fee and store services fee were eliminated. Things just change all the time every time. Apps using Apple

will be charged 26%. So that is very much they're really trying to tell you not to use alternative 20% fee for using alternative payment processing. It's a 10% fee if you on a special program such a small business, which I think is if you make below $1 million a year. A 50% fee on apps that link out to complete purchases. 5% charge on apps distributed via alternative app marketplaces or the web. It's worth noting, as I said before, that whatever Apple says, the European Commission hasn't actually formally agreed to new terms that we know of. There's been no announcement or official comment from the European Commission and they do actually mention that in this letter, but they suggest that there have been informal comments that suggest that the commission has agreed to Apple's new terms. But in my opinion, I think it's a classic case of bureaucracy. The EU does not move fast and government organizations not supposed to move fast. Whether you like that or not, they're supposed to move carefully and slowly because these things matter. You can't move fast and

break things when there's people's livelihoods at stake. But yeah, they're going to take a seed a long time. They are well overdue to comment on this. I think I thought it was supposed to be many many many months ago. I think Apple's been a bit cheeky with the word. I think as I mentioned before, so it alludes to simply to possible talks that we we don't really know what those talks were. It could just even be Apple just saying, "Yeah, we've had some back and forth." And the back and forth being, "We tried these terms, didn't work. We tried these terms, you got fine." Maybe that is the ongoing discussions that they're talking about. We literally have no idea. And then they say in Apple's opinion that the matter is resolved and they they could just be saying they've resolved it in their that's what they think has happened.
I was going to say I don't think it's up to them to decide whether or not it's resolved.
Exactly. And maybe the European Commission will come out and say that one is correct. There is to me there is no indication. And actually in the letter, skipping ahead of my notes here, but in the in the letter they there is a claim that says, well, the negotiations with Apple, whoever's negotiating it

doesn't actually have the right to just catch change the digital markets act rules to settle, which I think would actually be a very good point. So, and if they did sell, then that means any other company now that the European Commission has to work with. And they have since designated other companies, I forget what the term is, large platforms effectively. I think they since done that with others, maybe Roblox was one. Getting ahead of myself, but like then that just throws the whole thing into disarray because now what are the actual terms? You I I think you would then have to rewrite the digital markets act based on this deal. there's kind of really no room for maneuver surely unless you rewrite the whole thing. But yeah, I think we just have to wait and see what the European Commission says. Hopefully they will come out and say something. The fact that Apple has said well here's the rules cuz it's all been agreved. Well, they've done this once twice before maybe they say like here's the new rules and then and then you have to wait for the response but the rules are what come in kind of de facto in the European Union. So just cuz this has

happened doesn't mean they won't get changed. Anyway, that was my sort of story. semi rant. Right, that brings us to the end of the week mobile games. Thank you everyone for tuning in. As always, please do like and subscribe is the new thing I told myself I've got to say. Uh maybe it worked. I don't know. Last time we had sort of we had a lot of likes, a few new subscriptions and we actually had a record, not a record, but one of the highest ever views for a video that we've had for the week mobile game. So again, thank you for everyone for your support. Thank you Aaron Mariam Pageige for being on the podcast today. It's been great. Right, we will see you again on the next episode. Have a good weekend. We'll catch you soon.