Games on iPhone Duo, Lego builds mobile arm, more App Store news, August’s top performers and more

Hello, and welcome to the mobilegamer.biz digest. I'm Neil Long, and every week I go for a walk and tell you what's happening in the mobile games business. Here we go. As expected, Apple announced the iPhone Duo at yesterday's keynote. It is their first foldable phone. If you've been paying attention, you will know this already because it's been leaked far and wide. It's $2,000. It's out in October. And there were actually glimpses of the device running Zenless Zone Zero from Hoyoverse and UnGodly, the lavish-looking action RPG from Azra Games, which is a VC-funded studio made up of a lot of ex-EA people who made Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes among other things. And slightly unusually, Apple staff have been posting about it online.

Greg Essig, who is head of games partnerships at Apple, said on LinkedIn that the iPhone Duo is the best gaming experience ever on an iPhone, which, you know, you would expect him to say, but few specs here for the techier folks among you, 7.6-in Super Retina XDR display with ProMotion, up to 120 frames per second, 3,000 nits peak brightness. Games look incredible on it, says Essig. Bright, fast, and big enough that every detail shows. The Duo is powered by an A20 Pro chip, a seven-core GPU up to 40% faster than last year, and up to 35% better sustained performance than iPhone 17 Pro. High frame rates that hold, says Essig. He adds, "If you've ever enjoyed gaming on an iPad Mini, you know what I'm talking about." There's plenty of footage of Zenless Zone Zero and Unnggoddly running

on that new device online. By the time you listen to this podcast, there will be stuff to that effect on the website. You should have a look. This was a bit of a surprise from Monday. LEGO Digital Play, which was a fairly low-key sister company to the LEGO Group based in London, which is also home to mobile game veteran Aaron Loeb. They have snapped up the team behind Chrome Valley Customs Offroad Games. Worth explaining a few ins and outs from this one. So, LEGO Digital Play has been pretty low-key, but it has been operating in London since early 2025. Aaron Loeb, he has worked in leadership positions at Scopely, FoxNext Games, and EA. And the Offroad Games team are the guys who spun out of Space Ape when

Supercell bought up that London studio in early 2025. That was also when a few people left Space Ape and the team that was running Beatstar also spun out as Next Beat, which were then acquired by Duolingo. The connective tissue here is that John Earnest, the co-founder of Space Ape, is an advisor to LEGO Digital Play, so may well have connected a few dots there, but Offroad Games Jeffrey Ziel on LinkedIn confirmed that he and all of his staff at Offroad Games are now part of LEGO Digital Play. I understand that Chrome Valley Customs will continue to operate under the Offroad Games account. It won't be canceled for now at least or be moved into the LEGO Digital Play account. But, yeah. LEGO Digital Play has been putting out

some feelers in the last few weeks and months. Few job ads on LinkedIn flying around and stuff like that. So, clearly stuff happening here with LEGO's crack at the mobile market from this London-based. I couldn't get the terms of the deal, whether it's an acquire, full acquisition, what have you, but more to come on this one with any luck. And yeah, an interesting move from a huge toy maker like LEGO. The headline, if you want the full details, is LEGO Digital Play snaps up Chrome Valley Customs maker Offroad Games. The new App Store boss, Eddy Cue, wants to squeeze additional revenue from developers, according to a Bloomberg report. If you're interested in all things Apple, you should definitely subscribe to Mark Gurman's Apple newsletter. His report suggests that Apple's new CEO, John Ternus, and the

new App Store boss, Eddy Cue, want to raise margins and squeeze more revenue out of the App Store. And he also suggests that Phil Schiller, the departing App Store boss, part of the reason he is leaving is that he doesn't agree that Apple should be making more money from the App Store, and he would rather not be part of any attempt to rinse any further revenue from game and app developers. I think the charitable read on this one is that maybe they want to improve margins by offering more flexible payments and tools that will keep people within the Apple in-app purchase ecosystem. The more cynical view is that Apple does see developers as people who should fight for approval to sell their wares on the App Store rather than being customers of Apple. And that view

is held by former App Review boss Phillip Shoemaker. He has been on the site before. We spoke to him a couple of years ago where he talked about why App Review hasn't improved for so many years. And he said it was really down to Phil Schiller and his promise to Steve Jobs that every app would be seen and approved by human. Shoemaker in a blog that came out around the same time as this Bloomberg report said that based on his experiences with Eddy Cue relations may well improve with developers. And he cites the fact that Eddy Cue has been dealing with record labels and film companies and TV companies for years. And those relationships are much more partnerships than they are in the App Store where really developers are often subservient to Apple in lots of ways and must bend over

backwards to accommodate some of the rules. So potentially a little bit more leeway coming for developers under the management of Eddy Cue. But also maybe a little bit more of an aggressive push from Apple to make more money out of the App Store. I think it's an interesting one and proved to be quite popular on Monday when we published it. The headline, if you want to read the whole thing New App Store boss Eddy Cue wants to squeeze additional revenue from developers, report says. Star Stable Entertainment is cutting about 20% of its workforce according to a LinkedIn post from interim CEO James Nicholas. This developer based in Sweden makes Star Stable online and Star Stable Horses. Followed up with them to ask how many people there are in its workforce to get an actual number on

what that 20% actually means and they declined to confirm how many people work for them, but it says on LinkedIn they have about 180 staff, whereas on its website it says they have about 130 staff. So, could be anywhere between 26 and 40 staff that will be laid off at this developer, which is unfortunate, I must say. It doesn't help anyone if you are going to say you are laying off 20% of your workforce, but you won't confirm exactly how many people are in that workforce. It does cause confusion. There could be 10 people working there. There could be 100 people working there. There could be 1,000 people working there. So, I don't think that 20% figure is actually that helpful, but whatever the reasons for Star Stable declining to confirm some of that

information, there will be layoffs there. There's some app magic details in here, too. Star Stable online does monetize outside the app stores, too, but in terms of in-app purchase it has made about 23 million since it launched in 2022. Star Stable Horses made about 2.7 million since that launched in 2017. So, this is a fairly successful company, but sadly like lots of other studios having to cut its workforce in a pretty significant way. Quick one from Tuesday morning. Love and Pies Make a Trail Mix has a new CEO. This is the Supercell-backed London-based puzzle game studio founded and formally led by Carolyn Krenza. James Nicholas is now taking over as CEO there. He was COO previously. Joined in 2023. Krenza is stepping into the role of

executive chair after almost a decade of running the company. So, little bit of change at the top of Trail Mix. New CEO, James Nicholas.
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It's the start of the month, so it is time to look at AppMagic's figures for August. In the top downloads chart, we have quite a few of the usual suspects. Roblox, Free Fire, Subway Surfers up to

third. Block Blast Arrow Puzzle down a little bit into fifth. But, maybe the most notable new entry here is Tencent's Gangster Mirage City. We have covered this game before, and it is very much Tencent's attempt to bring a GTA-like experience to mobile as a free-to-play game. It was rolled out in selected regions, not really in the major Western Europe and North American markets on August 20th. So, it only had 10-11 days to rack up downloads and it ended up being the seventh top download of the month with 12.2 million installs. So, we'll see if that momentum continues. I've been told that Tencent is still working out the ins and outs of a Western Europe and North American launch to make this game global.

It may well come in the heat of that GTA 6 launch, so worth keeping an eye on this one. Elsewhere in these charts, a new one from a Japanese hybrid casual studio Goodroid, Bus Traffic Fever, 11.4 million downloads in August. That was the eighth most downloaded game of last month. Grand Games also two entries in the top 10 in ninth and 10th. Magic Sort drew around a little bit longer than Block Out, but Block Out really is gathering pace. Elsewhere in those charts, Block Blast's decline has halted a little bit. Arrow Puzzle dropped a little and so did its very similar competitor Amaze Go from Learnings. That dropped out of the top 10 last month. All the football games that benefited from World Cup fever in July, they all dropped out, too. The biggest

one to suffer was Soccer Super Star. That was fifth in July. It is now 35th. Mob Control, Mystery Dumpling, Pizza Ready, Candy Crush bits on them, too, in that article, which is headlined August top mobile game downloads, Roblox, Free Fire Max, Subway Surfers, Block Blast, Arrows, and more. In the top grossing charts, according to AppMagic for August, we got Honor of Kings, Gossip Harbor, PUBG, Royal Match, Roblox, and plenty of others. I think, as I've called out in the strap line to this article, Gossip Harbor being the second top-grossing game in mobile is quite an achievement. Five games earned $100 million in August, according to these numbers. That top five I just ran through there. But, never seen that in the top-grossing charts before. And yeah, I mean, props to Micro Fun and

Gossip Harbor. $112 million in in-app purchase revenue in August, according to these AppMagic numbers. Best-ever performance. This game has been growing pretty steadily ever since it launched. Other notable ups and downs, Scopely's Monopoly Go, best month of in-app purchase revenue since January, but it's still way down on the 110 to 130 million it was pulling in at the back of 2025. 95 million in August through in-app purchase, though, of course. Again, that game is earning plenty through web shops. King Shot is very, very steady. 80 million for the third month running for that one. Konami's eFootball is down significantly on its best-ever July thanks to the World Cup, but that still remains in 10th terms of top-grossing. Way, way, way ahead of EA FC Mobile. I don't even know where that is in the top-grossing charts. Last War's pretty

notable fall from the top earners continued. 57 million-ish earned last month. That is its worst performance since February 2024, when it had first launched and it was just scaling up. Way down on the 130 to 150 million it was once earning. Delta Force doing well. Pokémon GO declining a bit after a monster July. Pokémon TCG Pocket leapt up the rankings by 12 places. That game's best performance for a while. Holo Live Dreams is one to watch. Nearly 29 million in-app purchase revenue for August. Up 14 places and seems to be growing every month. And after a revival of sorts, HoYoverse trio Genshin Impact, Honkai Star Rail, and Zenless Zone Zero all dropped in the rankings. Genshin Impact about 24 million, Honkai Star Rail about 23 million, and Zenless

Zone Zero about 20 million and in-app purchase revenue in August according to App Magic. More stats and analysis in the article proper on the site. Have a look. Late Thursday night, early Friday morning, the Trump White House revealed that it is now the game developer that has made MAGA-styled versions of Snake, Flappy Bird, Tetris, and a couple of other games. If you go to arcade.gov, you can find these games made by presumably White House staffers. They look like they may well have been made in Claude or ChatGPT or what have you, but yeah, I mean, they're obviously completely repulsive. The Flappy Bird one's okay. You're just an eagle flying through sort of Washington-style

monuments instead of green pipes. It's okay if you don't mind it being a complete rip-off of Flappy Bird. I think the most repulsive one is the Snake one where rather than gobbling up dots and building your snake tail, you are collecting people trying to cross the Rio Grande and deporting them. There's also a version of Tetris in which players build a wall to, quote, protect the border from the coming horde. There's also a Duck Hunt type game and a supply line game where you remove unhealthy items from a child's school lunch. But, yeah, the Trump White House also announced the release of these games with a load of sort of video game related imagery. Nintendo, Sega, Xbox, PlayStation will all have alerted their lawyers, I'm sure, but I'm not sure there's much you can do in the face of

the White House deciding to do this. If you want to get the full grim details, the headline is Trump's White House has made MAGA versions of Snake, Flappy Bird, Tetris, and more. In Data Digest this week, Pokémon Go hits $9 in lifetime revenue, according to Sensor Tower. Gameloft's profits are up. Gungho, maker of Puzzle & Dragons, has sold a $179 million stake of itself to Sony Music Japan for some reason. There's a $12 million funding round for Burling Game Studios from PVX Partners. Some Roblox research on the creator economy in the US, some games market forecasts from Newzoo, and some Southeast Asia games market stats from Niko Partners. That is all in this week's Data Digest. A load of

interesting stats and facts and figures for you every Wednesday. In Monday's Jobs Digest, there are moves and promotions at Savvy, Supercell, King, Zynga, Apple, Lion Studios, Huge, Voodoo, Playtika, Google, Nordeus, and plenty more. A pretty huge update to to on there. A lot of people coming back from their summer holidays with new job titles. And in last week's new game digest, Saints Row the Third coming to mobile, some more details on Overwatch Rush, Palworld online, a new Bleach game, Colony, the game tipped by Google to be in terms of AI implementation. There's also a new Miniclip puzzler in soft launch, and a punk rock physics puzzler to enjoy there. New game digest every Friday, jobs digest every other Monday, and that is it for this week.

Thanks for listening. Goodbye.