eFootball vs EA FC, Apple Arcade stats, Stillfront, Queen, alt app stores, payments, more

Hello and welcome to the mobile gamer.biz digest. I'm Neil Long and every week I go for a walk and tell you what's happening in the mobile games industry. Here we go. Just as the round of 32 kicked off in earnest this week, we did an article about Konami's eFootball and how it is racing ahead of EA FC Mobile. This is from Gendel Gento. He's a writer based in Japan who's written for various Japanese newspapers and other industry outlets. And he managed to get hold of Konami producer Junichi Tayama to talk about eFootball and Konami's approach with that game. I also pulled out some data from App Magic to contextualize the performance of the title, which I knew it was doing well, but to my surprise, it seems month-to-month according to App Magic data, it's earning three times the in-app purchase revenue of its closest competitor EA FC.

All of that money is coming out of Japan. Only 12 million downloads in Japan, but 915 million earned from that territory lifetime according to App Magic estimates. So, that revenue per download figure is over $75 per player. They have really nailed this Japan whale market, you might call it. They have not really cracked the West downloads-wise. It's all Brazil, Indonesia, Turkey, India, Thailand. Japan's eighth biggest by downloads. Whereas EA FC, of course, is broader, much more Western in profile, but just does not monetize anywhere near as well. So, really interesting stats there to contextualize it. And then we go [snorts] into an interview with Junichi Tayama, eFootball general producer, who says they are very close to the community. They are aware that maybe

they need to do more in terms of reaching out beyond its core home markets, but they've [snorts] just held the eFootball World Festival in Bangkok, Thailand, another of its key markets. They've even got Wayne Rooney there presenting or doing something there. They've [snorts] got a tie-in with FIFA, so they are expanding out of Japan, but don't seem to have achieved it just yet according to the numbers. And they also are keen to point out that it is the more accessible game. It is available for free on PC, console, and mobile. And he says at the end in terms of challenges for the game, he says it's mostly technical and making [snorts] sure players in players on less powerful phones and with slightly wobblier internet connection can play and enjoy the game. In typically humble Japanese style, they say, "Growing the game together with our users is what we believe will ultimately move us closer to becoming the number one football

game." Um but it is already the number one football game in terms of mobile. More data, context, and a thrilling graph in the article on the site. Have a look. On Wednesday, I finally got around to publishing some interesting Apple Arcade data that the kind folks at Game Discover Co. sent over to me. Simon, who runs Game Discover Co., has been tracking all of the reviews on every Apple Arcade game since the service launched in September 2019. And from that data, you can glean some interesting stuff, I think. The top 10 are all family-friendly non-hardcore gamery games besides your NBA 2K games, I think. And as I note in the piece, which is called the top 20

Apple Arcade games by player reviews, that really underlines the fact that this is a service for the mainstream, for families, for parents, for kids, and not really for your average gamer. So, top title by an absolute mile is Sneaky Sasquatch. Obviously, this data comes with caveats in that it is based on reviews, so it's not exactly hard download data, but you can assume that the games with the most reviews probably have more downloads. There's an asterisk on that as well, though, in that some games ask for a positive review within the onboarding, some don't. Sneaky Sasquatch and Hello Kitty Island Adventure are two of those titles who do ask for a positive review, according to Game Discover Co, and they are the top two. Which is perhaps no surprise. I get a ton of emails about Hello Kitty. They are updating that game all the time.

And Sneaky Sasquatch has, as I note in the article, been such a success that Apple actually bought the developer that makes it. But the rest of the list is interesting, too. Third game in terms of the number of reviews, Solitaire by Mobilityware, which tells you what kind of player is playing on Apple Arcade, super casual, maybe even a little bit older. Then you got NBA, Oregon Trail, which is not really a thing here in the UK or I think internationally, but it was apparently in a lot of US schools 20 or 30 years ago, and that is a fondly remembered thing. Another one for the parents there. Angry Birds Reloaded, Sonic Racing, maybe some titles you'd expect there. Sonic Racing has also been on Apple Arcade since launch, so no surprise to see that. Balatro or Balatro, huge hit obviously, ninth in this list. And really the only sort of true indie game in this list. So,

yeah, just shows you the scale of the breakout success for that game. SongPop Party in the top 10 as well. Everyone likes a music trivia quiz, and Apple Arcade customers clearly are no different. Bloons, Ninja Kiwi's tower defense game, always seems to do well on whatever platform it's on, even if it's Netflix, Apple Arcade, App Store, these games seem to have a real following. More NBA games, of course. Then you got some big brand stuff, which very much confirms that Apple is going for recognizable IP. SpongeBob, Disney, Lego Duplo, Crossy Road Castle, Lego Star Wars. I guess the only sort of semi-indie title in there is Skate City, but as a launch title, I think that was pretty heavily pushed as well. So, really interesting list. There's also

the lowest ranking games in terms of review volumes in that article. And it's just a sample of those games seems to confirm that this is really not the place for hardcore games. Devolver's Paint It Black was a launch game, but has only attracted 33 reviews in all that time. Koei Tecmo's Three Kingdoms, Taito's Arkanoid vs. Space Invaders Final Fantasy IV: The After Years are in the bottom 10 by review volume. So, Apple Arcade not really the place for hardcore games or gamers. Never really was, honestly, but this data seems to confirm that lots more context numbers analysis in the article. Have a look. Quick one from Tuesday, Alexis Bonte is stepping down as Stillfront CEO. He has effectively led the company through

a big restructure since he was appointed in October 2024. He will stay on as CEO until a replacement is found. And in the report on the site, I note that yes, this re-structure has been underway. It has sold off its narrative game portfolio recently, and there was also an extraordinary general meeting at which the company replaced three members of the board, so that may be sign of a changing of the guard at Stillfront. So, yeah, new boss incoming at Stillfront. Keep an eye on the site for news of who is taking over from Alexis Bonte.
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Quick update on that Queen story. The founders did not respond to me when I asked for a comment to confirm that story, but they did talk to Swedish business publication Breakit. And that story is now confirmed, so the quote that Sebastian Knutsson gave to Breakit reads, translated from Swedish this is. "We are currently planning to close the business. We do not see the economics of scaling mobile gaming in today's market where CAC has become extreme." CAC being the cost of customer acquisition. So, that is now confirmed as we reported a week or so ago. Queen, the successor to King, set up by

some of King's senior executives, is no more. "Are developers actually making money on third-party app stores?" We asked on Monday. This is an article from Daryl Baxter, a freelance contributor, that has covered WWDC and a bit on emulation in the last month to 6 weeks or so. And he asked a couple of indie storefronts, AltStore and Sketch, how their business is going and they seem to have survived thus far because they are small and lean and so on. Setapp, another third-party app store that closed down earlier this year. Epic Games has been fairly transparent about its mobile store not getting the traction it thought it would. And then since then they've actually released Fortnite on the regular app stores anyway. So, that is a sign that these

third-party app stores aren't maybe making the impact that people thought they would, but yeah, AltStore is the home of cool indie apps as we say in the article, and Sketch is betting more on solving the game discovery problem on mobile. So, Sketch CEO and founder Sergey Budkovsky says discovery on the App Store is wrong. It's built to surface what is already popular or what is paid for placement, not to match a player with the game they will actually love. I think that's a long-running concern of many. Sketch is built to to solve that problem and it seems to be going okay. 700,000 downloads, 100,000 new users a month for Sketch. AltStore seems to be going well. That's raised 6 million from Pace Capital to expand into new markets. So, it depends on what you consider to be a success. For smaller, leaner entities like AltStore and Sketch, I think these guys are doing pretty well.

Epic Games Store, a bigger, more expensive enterprise, and perhaps more ambitious, too, maybe not going quite so well as they thought. If you have a more experimental app, it seems AltStore is the place to go for that one. Sketch has just signed a partnership with Exola. So, that company will handle a lot of its payment and merchant of record stuff. And then, there's maybe a little bit more optimism around Apple as its new CEO beds in, John Ternus is taking over on September the 1st, and Gil of AltStore says he's optimistic that the new leadership will bring about some slightly friendlier relations between the platform and developers. But, we shall see. Lot more detail in the article. Have a look. UK regulators could force Apple and Google to remove steering restrictions by the end of the year. This is another

regulation government story. This time, the Competition and Markets Authority of the UK has outlined some proposals to lift measures put in place by Apple and Google that prevent UK app developers from steering customers away from their native platform payment systems. So, just like US, EU, other nations like Japan, Korea, Australia, I think. This will bring the UK in line with those other nations and also follows on from Google last week effectively lifting most of their restrictions anyway, but Apple has not so far. And [snorts] the CMA, the Competition and Markets Authority does reference that in the statement. They say, "Steering App Store customers off platform for payment is, quote, currently banned by Apple and restricted by Google in the UK."

There's a consultation period, which ends in July, and then by the end of the year these measures could go through, which will force Apple and Google to offer more off-platform payments options at the point of in-app purchase. So, another domino to fall in this ongoing loosening of App Store payment options. And hopefully, these regulations will come in and be robust enough so that Apple and Google can't, as they have done previously, weasel their way around them by adding a load of confusing and deliberately complicated new guidelines and systems that mean that the actual hassle of offering off-platform payments is greater than the actual benefits you get from that once you've jumped through the relevant hoops. So,

yes, we shall see. Uh as with any regulation story, um it's a little bit unclear as to whether these regulations will come in and whether they'll have sharp enough teeth. So, stay tuned on this one. In Data Digest this week, A mixed selection of stats and reports and things like that. Pokémon Champions, 10 million downloads since its release on June 17th, so a decent start for that one. You got May's top grossing games in the US led by Monopoly Go, Royal Match, Candy Crush Saga and more. AI world model firm General Intuition has raised $320 million to to make interactive AI-powered world models by the sounds of it. PVX Partners, which seems to be in data digest every week now, has got 5 million from the Massachusetts Institute of

Technology, aka MIT.
[snorts]
A sign of the growing institutional recognition for the UA finance category, it says in the press release. FunPlus's title Survive has hit 30 million downloads and there's a big deep dive into Sensor Tower's mobile game ad revenue report. This market was worth $12 billion in 2025 according to Sensor Tower estimates. Lots of graphs and bits and pieces in the article and then we finish with 53% of devs plan to port mobile games to browsers. So, this is a survey from the perhaps slightly biased browser game company Poki, but interesting numbers nonetheless. Have a look at the site for more. Rattling through a few of the other regulars, Jobs Digest on Monday has moves at Scopely, Metacore, EA, Roblox, Apple, Zynga, Outfit7, Fateless, who have taken on an ex-Plarium person for their take on

Raid: Shadow Legends. Uh Miniclip, Google, Blizzard, Peak, Unity, King, Motorsport Games, Duolingo and Zu Funday Games and UK industry group TIGA also have new appointments this week in Jobs Digest. That runs every other Monday. A new game digest from last Friday has the arrival of Guild Wars Reforged, the long-running MMO, which is now playable on mobile and fully compatible across platforms. Zynga has what looks like its take on a Dice Dreams or a Monopoly Go with Dice Companions that has been registering a few downloads in the US again after surfacing earlier this year. Scope Play's next game appears to be WWE Generations: Eras Collide. So, this is a turn-based RPG that lets you collect a load of current and former

wrestlers. It's getting downloads in on iOS in the Philippines. Rolelic has has a UFC game, another sort of creator fighter kind of game. And there's lots of other stuff in there, including a intriguing Traitors game that is playable only in WhatsApp. And Netflix's Unhinged, their horror game with lots of famous people in, Zoe Kravitz, Sadie Sink, Troy Baker. New game digest that runs every Friday. Have a look. That's it for this week. Thanks for listening. Speak to you next week. Goodbye.