ChinaJoy insights, EA finalises sale and our 100th episode! | 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 news and provide some insights. We have a very special episode today. It's our 100th episode. Very exciting. If you haven't watched this before though, I'm Craig Chapel, head of content at pocket.biz. With me as ever, is our features and data editor, Aaron Assel, and our editorial director for events, Miam Amad. Welcome both to the 100th episode. How are we doing?
Yeah, pretty good. Thank you. Excited to um hit the big 100.
We made it.
We did. I'm sure it's flown by for you, Mariam. It can't feel like 100 already. [laughter]
I was going to say it doesn't feel like I should be here at this very special moment, but I'm glad to be here. Um yeah, it's very exciting.
It is fantastic to have you on the show, Mariam, with always with your with your great insights. Yeah, it's been a interesting journey. We just started this out. Didn't know how to edit a

podcast or even really record one. And when we started, I guess it was a couple years ago when I joined, started it pretty quickly. And I think we I can't remember if we always use Riverside or not. I think we did, but I used Audacity because we started out as an audio only podcast. Use Audacity to edit that. And uh that was that's an interesting program. It's pretty good. It's free and it's it's not bad. But then I think over time Riverside has done a good job with the edit in the inbuilt editor. Sometimes it makes dramatic changes that really alarmed me like they did recently, but I've kind of got used to it. They kind of fix it as they go. But yeah, then we we I think I can't remember 20 20 to 30 episodes in we changed the video, put this up on YouTube as well. So now you get to see our lovely faces as well as just listening to me ramble on like I am now. But it's been awesome. Thank you everybody that has been tuning into the show. It's been really fun. I we wanted to talk quickly some dumb anecdotes from the show, things that we've noticed. So, one, I usually edit out this out the

show. People may still hear it if I don't do it successfully, but we're talking about this just before. And Aaron has this clock in in the room that he's in that does, it turns out, we didn't know this until recently, I think, does different music every hour on the hour, except it's sped up. So now over time it's been like 2 minutes to it starts going playing music. Now it's like 3 4 minutes.
Yeah. It's usually 56 minutes past the hour it will start. [laughter]
And it's always when Aaron's talking so we have to stop immediately and
Yeah. And then just wait it out. [laughter]
Yeah.
It's one of my favorite things of the podcast hilariously. And then I was thinking like we I'm kind of doing it now. weird ticks that I notice that people do. I [clears throat] think you know when you start editing a podcast in particular, you notice weird stuff that that people do, particularly of myself. One thing I do is I every I just pick up ticks and then they kind of go after

maybe 20 episodes generally. One of them is I just start touching my face a lot. So you have to like remind yourself not to do that. I think that's a standard human thing. And more about that in the pandemic, I guess. Not not supposed to do that. And then I'm doing it literally now. I recently I've just not for audio listeners I start I keep clasping my hands together like I'm praying. I have very gesticular speech and so yeah there's a really weird weird things that I do. I'll try and edit some stuff out but you know all a lot of these things end up slipping through but yeah it's been really good fun. Did you have any highlights Aaron from the show? I think as you mentioned our kind of origins there like the because we'd been talking about doing a podcast for a little while as you say after you'd joined and then I think what really kicked it into gear and we started it off afterwards was the kind of impromptu kind of panel that a few of us did at PGC London in 2024. That would have been
Oh yeah.
Cuz we had to like fill in a slot. So I

remember you came and found me and were just like basically you're needed on stage now to talk about the games industry. And so a few of us ended up having a chat there which you know kind of went all right and then I think that kind of helped get the ball rolling on like yeah we we could do that every week.
I believe it was you, me, Chris James and Peggy Anels
on stage. I did like because it was like really last minute someone as sometimes happens sometime people end up very like on the day like pull out of the show they can't make it something's happened and so yeah we did that and I remember trying to rope in just like some random people in the industry and so I remember trying to speak to Adam Smart at I was like do you want to just join a panel right now he was busy he was very nice about it though so so thank you we've done that at some other shows occasionally as well so thank you for everyone that's for anyone that has ever been impromptu asked and joined a live podcast. Much appreciated. But yeah, it's been a good show. And now just recently obviously we've had Mariam join the team. So the

next 100 episodes, Mariam, you [laughter] are you going to be part of all the next 100 episodes hopefully.
Yeah, excited to be here. Very excited. I dove straight into the defend. You guys have all this lore and background, but yeah, I get to reap the benefits and be a part of the show. So, thank you.
We've got new law to create now. This is
all right. I guess that's our little celebratory thing of 100 episodes. But again, thank you everyone for listening. We'll be we'll continue doing these. And of course, we've actually expanded the podcast a bit. So Peggy still does her shows. We're actually kind of rebooting that a bit. She's going to be doing a new series. So she'll still be around called Marketing Marvels. Going to focus on marketing UA and Hansome Brand stuff. And of course, Mariam, you've started the in the hot seat, which proven very popular, which is interviews with speakers, our events on really cool, interesting, hot topics in the industry. And I've done a couple of interviews, I

guess, I haven't named. So, I should probably work on the branding. Which reminds me, it took a 100 episodes for me to change like the intro of the of the podcast. But yeah, so we're we're expanding the podcast and uh plenty more to look forward to. So, we're going to get into things. Uh there's plenty to talk about. Some very big news that has also broken today and this week. First thing as ever, we have our upcoming events. So we've just done Pocket Gamer Connect Summit Shanghai. So thank you everyone who who attended that. I'll talk about that in a minute. We have got the Mobile Games Awards coming up which is on August 25th. We are close to selling out of that I think. So if you want to book your ticket, I think there might be a table left. If you want to book, definitely do so now. It's a really great chance to meet with kind of leaders in the industry for one for one evening and you get a nice sit down dinner and get to see the awards announced live. Nice celebration of the mobile game sector. We've got Pocket Gamer Connects Nordics on October 20th to 21st that'll be in Helsinki. We have the Pocket Gamer Connect Summit Montreal which is a new one on November 10th and

we are planning some other events that we'll update you on as as we have more information. Right. So, uh to jump into things. So firstly, I wanted to do some takeaways from China Joy. So I have spent just over a week in China in Shanghai. My second time in China. First time was Shenzen. It's like a at the time it's right next to Hong Kong. Felt like a kind of new business city. This time went to Shanghai and I loved it. It does feel when you're there in the summer at the moment. It did feel like stepping into a furnace 24/7 every time I went outside. But the city is itself beautiful. Really nice like skyscrapers, buildings. It looks lovely at night. really nice sort of rivers. Really love the city. During the during our time there, just before the big event China Joy kicked off, which is like China's Gamescom, we had our Pocket Gamer Connect Summit in Shanghai. We had about 770 770 delegates with representatives from over 400 companies and 40 countries. We also ran a party with

Century Games, a mixer with Enjoy Pay, and a supper club with Epic Games, which took our total attendance like over a thousand for the show. So that was great. Thank you everyone for for joining our show. We'll have videos of the sessions coming up if you missed it. And I wrote a few stories. We'll have more on that soon as well. And we'll be back next year. So my main takeaways from being in China just over a week. We've obviously written a big report recently. So if you want other details from local experts, please do read that. But some of the things I noticed at the show, our show and and the whole thing. I guess the probably the biggest takeaway that I guess we all are aware of is China going global. So we've all talked about micro fund century games kind of dominating the charts globally. Tedscent obviously for a long time has invested as had Netis with a bit of scaling back recently. But if you walk around the show floor at China Joy which has a B2B and a B TOC section or attending our own events or even CIGDC and CGDC. Yes, those are two different

events. You can see how global like China's kind of industry and market is becoming. So for example, just like two examples other shows, there was talks from CG Project and Pocket Pair. So they were there on the show floor. They were recognizable names like Discord, Al Media, Exola, [snorts] um they're kind of all trying to get into deals with with Chinese developers going global. There are also various international delegations including one from the UK at the show. My Game CEO Mikall Linan said at PGC Summit Shanghai, there's a growing trend of publishers returning to China. He said that they are no longer looking for quick wins or expecting to enter a market that makes up 30% of global industry revenue with 3% of the effort. I I think it's still very challenging for it's being made easier. For example, I think if you're in Shanghai, it's a bit easier. Takes a bit less time. More games are getting green lit, but it's still very very difficult for international publishers. one to launch there and I think two to actually be

successful because you're competing with such a competitive market. But I think the biggest thing was international companies in town really not just to break into China but to take business from Chinese companies going global. For example, as I mentioned, Discord was there and that is not available in China. I think it might even be banned. So I asked him why are they there and they just simply said well Chinese developers won't want to use Discord in markets around the world. My second takeaway, I have never seen so many ads and payments companies in one place, which kind of feeds into my first point of going global and international companies want a piece of that pie, right? Obviously, there were payments companies for local use as well, but there was definitely an international sense like Exola had a massive booth, right? Our media lit honestly had a big boo. I didn't expect that. Obviously, fast growing company in the rewarded ad space, but it was pretty big. I felt like literally every other booth in the BB area fell into one of these categories. I have about a bunch of photos I could share, but it was insane. My third takeaway, kind of an obvious one that people would expect, but AI is

a big topic. So, a few talks I went to, developers are basically showing off what they were actually doing with their games, and a couple said, or at least one said that they think AI will replace engines or the need for engines like Unity and Unreal in a few years. I think some people listening to this might laugh at that, but that is what I heard. In some ways, what people were saying felt a bit like what you heard with blockchain and metaverse, like all that hype. But in this case, it was actual developers. It was people in the industry talking about it, showing what they're doing right now, whether it's to support the UI, programming, world building, kind of anything really. Like, so these developers, there's a lot of developers that are basically all in on this. And throughout PTC Summit as well, heard a lot of people saying that AI, they're just not worried about using it. In the west, there's a lot of debate around it. I'm not saying there shouldn't be debates around the use or even how useful it actually is at the moment, but in China, they don't care and most for the most part and and they

think they're seeing pretty good returns already. And like for example, in the UK, we've seeing, you know, developers using Claude to get in the mobile charts at the moment. So, another takeaway that I thought was interesting was about kind of paytoplay, which was I guess premium as we'd call it. And there was a there was a really interesting a couple sessions that kind of talked about the inflection point for China from Blackmith Wukong's released obviously that big AAA game that came on Steam. It's had like 30 million sales or something crazy. Most of those in China actually a substantial one in the west. And I think the point was as someone said, no one ever took China seriously as a AAA developer before that, which I think is actually fair. And now people kind of expect that kind of thing in China. And there's a suggestion that that's kind of boosted that premium market. So that was interesting. And my last one, cuz I I always do this with these things. I ramble on this issue forever, probably only like 15 minutes. Last one is just to get a sense of the scale. Like the show is as is as big as

Gabes call. So if you've been there, that is what it's like. massive hangers that house B2B and then there's a B TOC area. Might be, it's hard to tell to be honest. Might be slightly bigger than Gamescom, but Gamescom is massive. So yeah, but the boobs were massive. Really super busy. Just as a top tip, if you're going next year, don't I would advise don't leave going till the last day of the B2B because there is nobody around. And then one last thing, Snapdragon literally had a whole hanger to itself, which I which I thought was incredible. Just like showing off phones and like games for partners, etc. Anyway, overall a fantastic event. Well worth going if you've not been before. And importantly, think you have business in China. But yeah, really, really, really interesting. And uh I'll post more takeaways in the newsletter. Right, talked about China forever. So, we're going to get into the week's news. And Mariam, you have big news from this week.
I do. this game up today. Triple Dot

Studios has bought Israeli mobile publisher Supersonic. The acquisition is at $40 million and that covers the staff, the games, the games catalog and the IP. So for context and for those who don't know, this is there's a lot going into this story. So Supersonic is basically the last piece left inside of Iron Source inside of Unity. So when Unity acquired Iron Source back in 2022 for $4.4 4 billion and fast forward to this year, Unity shut down the Iron Source ad network and Supersonic alongside that was put up for sale. So the deal is essentially just the final chapter of that unwind. But the catch about this and unfortunately is the case with a lot of these things. About a third of Supersonic staff are going to be let go. I think that's 40 people in total across Israel, Vietnam, and Turkey. But this is the bit I think is really interesting. And Apploven's got skin in the game. So they seem to be benefiting from all sides. It's not really an outsider souping in to buy supersonic necessarily because if you rewind to last year in May 2025, Triple Dot bought AppLobin's entire mobile games portfolio. That's 10 studios, $800

billion, half cash, half stocks. The stock bit is really interesting because what it means is Apploven has a minority stake in Triple Dot. That's kind of wild when you think about it. So you basically got Apploven who without even lifting a finger can quietly benefit every time Triple Dot sort of bops up another distress sort of publishing label from a competitor. Two really interesting points that I really want to talk about with this acquisition. Number one is Triple Dot sort of becoming the consolidator for this entire hybrid casual space. Like every time one of these bigger ad tech companies decides publishing isn't really core to their business model anymore, Triple Dot's seemingly right there to buy it. And number two, the structural reasons um behind both moves is the same. Let's be real. Adtech publishing margins run. They kind of dwarf those of gaming, especially when they're at scale. So once an ad tech platform's own algorithm is good enough that they they don't need first party game games to train that just becomes relevant to them and they drop it. That's a point worth making for sure. And thirdly, if these are if this

is genuinely a trend and these aren't just two isolated incidents, what's the next sort of ad techowned game portfolio that's going to go down like a domino next? Those are my thoughts on it. Um I was wondering if you guys because it's we talked a little bit about this and Craig, you mentioned this before as well that it seems like the sort of ad tech own game portfolios are slowly coming to an end.
Yeah, it feels like kind of the end of an era for that. I guess the two big ones because I can't think of others off the top of my head. The two big ones were Apploving and then just by osmosis, Unity. But really, like you said, iron source and unity. The background to this is kind of hilarious. So, I went to a Iron Source Summit years ago, 2018. I think it was not that long after Apploven acquired Lion Studios. Anyway, the people there were just not very happy with Applovin and like some well there was one big company that was just like we can't do business with them anymore like like a big company I can't remember on that and then like another

one that's quite is reasonably big they were like well it's we have no choice but to kind of work with them so at the time it was there was really real concern about how their data would be used kind of against them as these ad tech companies kind of became competitors not kind of they became competitors And then I remember one of the Iron Source execs told me at that show that they would not be doing an app loin and get and like basically having a publishing business probably not that long after they end up having a Supersonic.
Yeah.
So I guess that was how important that data was talking about. And then Zinga acquired the other way around. Zinger acquired Chart Boost years ago, sold it two years ago to Loop Me. So there's definitely an uncoupling of this stuff.
I really can't think of another one. Maybe there is, but yeah, end of an era for a very controversial period in time.
Yeah.
And shout out to Triple Dot. Big UK company, like massive now. Real like global powerhouse. Hopefully they can

make that all work. Like they've gone from what was it two studios to 12 now with this deal. So I guess they're confident that they can make it work, right? Uh thanks for that Mariam. Aaron, what have you got?
So, first up from me is some Nintendo news. So, there was a bit of a presentation this week, I guess, like a Fire Emblem Direct, like a Nintendo Direct, but just for Fire Emblem. It was like 20 minutes long. Uh, which I personally found very exciting. So, I'm a big Fire Emblem fan. I still don't actually have the Switch 2 yet. Um, but I still watched this anyway. It's certainly going to be one I'll pick up when I get the Switch 2. I'm still just holding out hope for a more colorful variation on the hardware before I buy one really. But there are a few games there now that I'm interested in. Anyway, obviously that isn't directly mobile related. But what I found quite interesting in the presentation, so all about this new Fire

Emblem game that comes out in September is towards the end um they said that there were going to be some previews in a broad sense coming to some of Nintendo's mobile apps. So Nintendo Music, for example, um basically immediately after the presentation ended, um had 10 tracks from the upcoming game debut on this music app. So Nintendo Switch Online subscribers can basically listen to soundtracks from Nintendo games on there. And even though the game isn't out yet, and so they've put 10 tracks on there. So that's like half an hour of music from the new game, which I thought was quite a cool little, you know, promotional tool for people that already, you know, are Nintendo hardware owners. And then they also said that uh so the following day, which so that was August 5th, the Nintendo Today app um would get kind of an optional makeover. If you hate Fire Emblem for some reason,

you don't have to have the the new theme. But they basically introduced a new Fire Emblem theme to the app. Like it's got a kind of built-in calendar which looks like the calendar from Fire Emblem 3 Houses, which is the kind of bestselling game in the series. Just the fonts and things on it all look uh like it's from that game. And there are also uh like when you open the app up, it shows like artwork or like a cutscene from um a random Fire Emblem game. There are like character insights about the new characters from Fortunes weave. So uh like in the past, Nintendo quite often would have like a dedicated website for games and you would check on there at random and occasionally there'd be an update. Whereas with Nintendo today, they've been basically putting out like daily updates on the cast of characters, so you can go on and look at, you know, here's this random guy

that you'll recruit during the game and here's his background and a little like gameplay video and things. So, you know, for people who are interested, obviously, it encourages them to to use Nintendo today like the app because you you know, this stuff isn't on a website or anything. instead you kind of you need to look on Nintendo today. And obviously for people who aren't currently Fire Emblem fans, there's suddenly all this exposure through the app and if they have the music, you know, it's being promoted on Nintendo Music, you know, check out these like special early release tracks. So I say overall I just found it quite interesting that they would like it makes sense but it's quite cool I think that they would kind of synchronize all these things and as they have the music drop immediately after the presentation and then do this big Nintendo today update the next day and you know it seems like they're going to drip feed information through the app until the the game comes out maybe at the minute they've been releasing character

insights each day and I just thought that was quite an interesting use of the the tools Nintendo has at their disposal, I guess, on mobile.
Yeah, I was just looking at the the downloads for Nintendo today, 4.6 million, and this is according to Air Magic. And for Nintendo Music, it's about 5 million. So I guess as a marketing channel assuming that any number of those downloads have converted into engaged users
I guess it's pretty good use of mobile for Nintendo considering like the other stuff that they've done is other than Fire Heroes this has never really been great. I mean I guess Animal I mean they made loads of money in the end Mario American Cartour and Animal Crossing but not probably for the level of their IPs. So yeah this is this actually seems like a reasonable thing for Nintendo to be doing right. Thanks for that Aaron. So, moving on, we've got uh I've got another story. I I'll do this one quicker. So, Deolver Digital, which is a indie games publisher based in the US, but that went public in the UK, has proposed a deal to

take the company private and cease trading on the UK's alternative investment market, which is a submarket of the London Stock Exchange. The proposal has been submitted to shareholders as of August 6th, so today at time recording. A general meeting will take place on September 8th to vote on taking the company private. Such a move would require the approval of 75% or more of the votes cast by shareholders. Should the deal to take the company private be approved, Deolver aims to be delisted as of September 16th. It's all moving very quickly. The release of this was just financial gibberish. By the way, I had a debate. I I know another journalist and they just messaged them and was like I was like I basically written a story then I went oh this is happening and then they went no it's not like hang on a minute maybe I don't understand it like I thought I did turns out anyway I I was right but like it it doesn't that it didn't really make any sense and so we reached out to company spokesperson who confirmed it and they said Devolver Devolver Addis board are seeking shareholder approval

to Dist believing becoming a private company is in the best interest of Devolver its employees its partners and its shareholders as a whole. The purpose is simple or positive. Being private will allow Devol the Devolver team, especially the finance, legal, and executive team to singularly focus on the long-term health of the company and less on satisfying the requirements of the public market, which have nothing to do with being a successful games publisher, which is a very interesting comment for from a company that chose to go public. If you want to kind of get the background, I guess, of why this is happening, if you were just to look at his share price, it has dived. So when they went public back in November 2021, kind of at the height of the kind of the pandemic era of of games companies doing really well publicly, usage up, etc. Uh yeah, they were valued at $950 million. And then after reaching a peak in January 2022, the company share prices declined in the following years. And so it was worth $950 million, it's

now worth approximately $53 million. So that or that's the market cap, right? So yeah, things have gone down a lot. By the way, if you don't really know Devolver, they do Reigns, In the Dungeon, Talos Principle, Call of the Lamb, Point, they publish those games, etc. Kind of makes sense, I guess, to go private. And I was trying to think a lot of games companies in general have often struggled to go public. I'm not saying that there aren't successful ones, but I think in general, they really do. particularly these midsize companies that don't really seem to have any business going public. I'm not a financial I guess person that understands these markets properly, but just just from what I see. So, for example, Ever Play Group was formerly trading as Team 17 is way down from its highs. Tiny Build shares have crashed to£10 from over £300 per share back in 2021. Paradox is actually up from its IPO launch, but it's not up from 2018 levels. So, eight years later, they've

not seen an improvement. It had gone up, but it's it's back it's back down. And then you've got your mobile publishers and rollups that have also crashed. So, Play Ticket has been at lows over the past year. So, now it's looking to sell. Super Play, a star performer, which is kind of dragging, I guess, this the company in a weird way. Dealfront is at Lowe's. They they've been doing a lot of restructuring to to work on that. Modern Times Group, they own Pllearium. Who else they own? Hutch, etc. They're actually on the up impressively, but it's worth noting that they do also have non-gaming parts of the business. I think people kind of blame AI and postcoid slump. But there are issues that existed for a long time. For example, Zinger, which is much larger, crashed immediately, though in fairness, that was because Facebook like removed the foundations of the entire business. And I don't think it ever actually recovered its IPO launch high before it was sold to Take Two. I feel like some of the things we've learned is that games is prone to disruption. Pretty obvious. Midsize companies probably

shouldn't go public unless there's some serious grand vision because I guess being public doesn't really work if you're relying on like random hits each year. They're not your own franchises and especially if you've just got one key franchise as well. I don't it just it's never really made sense to me and it turns out that hasn't worked out. Rollups haven't really worked. We've seen Embracer Crash and the other ones I just mentioned. So yeah, basically Jol's going private and it seems that going public there was a period of time a few years back in like 2018ish last time I was at Pocket Gamer of like all this excitement let's all go public like Roio did it etc. And then I think the benefits of that are dubious. And I know it's been tough for companies to go public in brief previous years, which probably why we haven't seen so many. But I I don't think the evidence suggests that it's a great idea for all games businesses to do that in future either if money becomes easy again.
$950 million valuation. That is insane. When I when I heard that, I was who came

up with those figures? I mean, I'm sure they're great, but that is a high amount. again back in that time of like that's the COVID kind of crazy highs and PE I guess investors expecting one the hits will continue for Devolver that's a massive bet because that's just not necessarily the nature of of that kind of business you can have bad years so I imagine investors probably weren't ready for that it's just uh it's really tough and that's why we've seen so many valuations crash so uh moving on Mariam what else have you got
another big piece of acquisition news apparently this is the week acquisitions, but EA Games has gone private. They sold they close a $55 billion sale to a consortium of Satiz Piff, Silverlake, and Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners. This essentially ends their run as a publicly traded company, so they no longer have to answer to the shareholders. Two main points from this story, they've gone private, so they've been delisted from NAS NASDAQ, and shareholders received a I think it was $210 in cash per share. Like I said, they have to they no longer have to

answer to public market investors. Saudi Arabia's PIFF over holds the overwhelming majority stake. I believe it's 93.4% and that's backed by private equity fund Silver Lake and Jad Kushner's Affinity Partners like I mentioned. Now the interesting part is not the fact that they've been acquired. This has been in the headlines for a while. It's just finally happened now. Makes sense. But the deal is carrying around $20 billion of debt financing. And I looked this up. This they owe that to a banking group led by JP Morgan Chase. So that's the number that the analysts sort of keep coming back to. And it's one that you can't really ignore. It's a huge amount of money and as we know, it's not the first time that someone's had a debt funded buyout, but what that historically means is that there's going to be pressures to cut costs. There's going to be pressures to monetize harder. What that looks like for their mobile games, I mean, the their mobile games only make up 13 to 17% of EA's net revenue. I believe that's 254 to 290 million per quarter recently. That's a small slice compared to their 1.2 two billion in console

dollars. So their debt load is likely sort of increasing pressure on all of their life service revenue streams. I'd imagine that's now 20 billions is now sitting on the balance sheet. So they're going to be squeezing everywhere they can. Whether that looks like killing underperforming legacy titles, which is something that they could very easily do, or like I said, sort of more aggressive monetization on things like FC Mobile. They could be do they could do both as well, but something's got to give because they've got to pay back that 20 billion dollars to that banking group. Yeah. So, this is this was an interesting one. It's a it's another huge consolidation acquisition news, but one that comes with a hefty sort of price tag. $20 billion is not nothing.
Yeah. So, some of this reminds me, it's a bit weird. Again, not a finance person, I guess, but it reminds me, weirdly, of when Man United Football Club was bought out by the Glazer family from the US, and that was a massively leveraged buyout, and they lumped basically all the debt onto Man United, and then they they'd receive money. So,

in some ways, it seemed like the debt was actually good for the Glazers and but it was really bad for Man United as a club. And that meant that they were still signing players, but they were not investing in things like the stadium, which is now going to be upgraded. There's a whole other consortium that now joined Man United to invest money cuz that's what it required. And and the training facilities weren't updated. There was a comment from Cristiano Ronaldo who had left the club a long time ago and then he rejoined spectacularly for like a season and he was just like I think the the some of the reported comments was like it's like the same stuff still here. So he was quite shocked. This is supposed to be a world leading club. That kind of buyout is now banned in the Premier League. But I think for me that is a potential example of how in theory potentially bad that could be for EA. There's less investment that you can put in kind of to the points that you were saying there.
And the other concerning thing I think

for now like the Saudis, you never know, they might invest more, but obviously they've said they're going to EA said there's going to be cuts. Oh, by the way, they released their financials there and then immediately removed their investor relations page. Oh, yes. So, the Saudis have been investing in various sectors to kind of diversify away from oil and some of those include I think it's called Live Golf, which was like the competitor for the PGA. Talking about things I don't quite know about. I believe they've pulled back from that investment now. And then they bought Newcastle. So, the the PIF is really what I'm referring to. bought Newcastle United and they have like a big Saudi league. Saudi league is still buying lots of players, but Newcastle United have been selling like a fire sale this this summer in particular. They sold like the star player last season. This summer all their big players are going now. I won't go into all the details because that'll be boring for everyone. But it I guess my point is is that that is either a change of strategy, fair enough, or there's history of the PIF

investing in areas and then deciding they're not actually that interested in that anymore. I think there's a lot of things that the Saudis can use EA for, particularly like the esports, do the esports world cup foundation. There's a lot of I don't want to use the word synergy. There's a lot of things in common there, but I think there's plenty of things to be concerned about. Yeah, especially, you know, like I said, 20 billion dollars is not a small amount of money. When you've got a private equity and like sovereign wealth, sovereign wealth ownership kind of pushing towards trying to solve that debt. What's that going to look like? Like there's only two ways they can go and and it kind of makes me nervous people working the staff because there I can guarantee I mean you mentioned there's going to be there's going to be cuts to people working for EA and there also what does that mean for their legacy titles as well? I can imagine they're probably going to let some of those go. So what did you did you say what the the costs were? So it's like 700 million annual cost savings
and then what's the debt repayment? It's like 1.7 something billion I think a

year.
20 billion in total in Yeah. Yeah. I'm not sure what that was.
I I I don't have in front of me. I don't know. Yeah, I think it's like 1.7 billion a year.
A lot of money. It's like how are they going to I don't know. Maybe I'm cynical, but how are they going to make this up?
Yeah. So I think again there could be a lot of investment to go in. I guess we just don't necessarily know, but from the words some of the words that they've said, it does sound like a chunk of layoffs are coming.
Yeah, definitely.
And we'll see what the new future looks like and how they invest going forward. Particularly intrigued what mobile would look like. I have my doubts about it. Obviously, they're massive pullback from mobile anyway, but we'll see. Cool. Thanks for that. Thanks for that, Mariam. So, Aaron, round out the 100th episode. What have you got? Wow, the the pressure is on now to make it a good one. Yes. So, I guess to close the episode, um I was going to talk about Ark Knights Enfield, which somehow has already been out for 6 months or just over now. So, it released

on the 22nd of January. So, I I took a look at kind of how it's performed so far based on App Magic numbers. So, that's Google Play in the App Store. Obviously, it's a crossplatform title. Yeah, looking at kind of the major mobile stores and it's made um it was 126.7 million in its first half year um which I believe makes it one of the bigger kind of new releases of 2026 so far. The kind of leading contributor to that spending has been uh Japan. They players in Japan have spent 41% of the mobile spending on the major stores followed by China's 28% contribution although obviously this doesn't include kind of alternative Android stores and yeah during the first half year the US ranked third players there have spent 9% towards the game and it's yeah I I think it's been a a solid performance

particularly considering there were like payment issues on day one that I imagine we would have talked about at the um that people using PayPal, there was like an erroneous glitch that was wrongly charging certain players. So, it's good to see kind of after the the years of anticipation for this that that kind of didn't kind of tank the game before it really got started. you know, they've sort of um obviously they refunded people and you know, that's kind of separate to Google Play and App Store anyway, but just, you know, it's good for them that overall that didn't um sort of kill the game before it started. And even at release, it still did very well. So, the game made like 2.8 million on launch day, 4.7 million on day two, which is still its uh biggest day on mobile so far. Um, and it did this after achieving like 35 million pre-registrations. That was across platforms, so rather than mobile exclusive. Um, and overall it took just over 3

months to hit the 100 million mark. Um, half of that was achieved in month one. So obviously that's impressive early numbers, but obviously also means, you know, if it did 100 in 3 months, it's like 126 in 6 months. you know, it's quite a sharp decline, but actually in month six, um, the game started to grow again. So, it had declined every month since release up to month five and then, yeah, around the half year mark, the monthly earnings started going up again. Uh, so up 72% from month five to month six and returned to an 8 figure sum for the first time in a little while. And I sort of looked at what might have caused this sudden spike that as I say I kind of broke that trend of decline and it looked to be tied to um of a an initial spike in late June when version 1.3 phase 2 launched and then in July there was version 1.4 and that latter update

also began halfyear anniversary celebration content. So when that dropped, spending like daily spending spiked by more than 250%. There was like a new character in the gut and stuff for people to spend on. And I also took a bit of a look to compare it to the original Ark Knights. Um obviously they're quite different genres. Like the original was a tower defense or is a tower defense game. Uh whereas Enfield is like a 3D action title. Um, and yeah, so like similarly between both of them, Japan has been the the biggest audience for the original Ark Knights, it's the US that's the second biggest and then South Korea is third. So I think it's quite interesting that for Enfield, China has been a more of impactful market for them. It's also Enfield has made it to the 100 million mark a lot faster than the original Ark Knights did. So that took like a full

year basically to get to 100 million whereas as I say Enfield's done it in like 3 months which obviously there's going to been some uh help there in terms of the IP being established now because you know there is the predecessor title and um yeah kind of a a broader brand like there's three seasons of um like an anime around ark knights that I guess the IP is more well known And obviously, as I say, there was the kind of years long buildup and the hype with the pre-registrations and things that's obviously been a big help for Enfield, but um even so, yeah, it's done pretty well so far.
Yeah, best uh best of luck to them. I know it seems like this game cost a hell of a lot to make based on the it being promoted at I think a couple of Gamescoms, even definitely last year's and so it's good to see it doing doing okay. The name will never not be funny to me because in the UK there's a town called Enfield and every time I hear it

I I just think of that. And yeah, fun that we're uh we started the show with China and we're wrapping up talking about a Chinese company doing pretty well globally. [clears throat] So yeah, right, that brings us to the end of the show. Thank you for that, Aaron. Thank you for all your insights, Mariam. And thank you everybody for for tuning in, watching, and listening. And if you've been with us for 100 episodes, thank you so much if you joined us on the way. really appreciate you listening. Hopefully you find this entertaining, useful, and maybe in the next 100 episodes I'll learn to stop rambling, but we will see. Have a good weekend. We'll catch you all on the next episode. Yeah, have a good one. Thanks so much. Goodbye.
Thanks everyone. Fun.