Gamescom 2026 insights and Sony Music's shock Puzzle & Dragons investment | Week in Mobile Games

[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 Craig Chapel, head of content at pocketgamer.biz. With me as ever is our features and data editor, Aaron Assel. Just us asked you today. How you doing Aaron? What you been up to?
Yeah. Yeah, doing good, thank you. Yeah, it's been a while actually since it's just been the two of us on here. Um had quite a full house lately, but um yeah, I'm doing well. Enjoyed the the long weekend. Obviously, we had the bank holiday Monday, which was nice. So, was fairly busy doing bits and pieces. Went out for a karaoke night, which was good fun and quite flattering. A bunch of strangers kept asking me to sort of join in and duet with them after I'd done a few on my own. Yeah. Which was very nice of them. Bit of an ego boost. Just to add in, Aaron is actually very good at singing. I've heard you sing once at the Mario PGC London a year or two ago.

Can't remember which one.
Thank you very much. Yeah, I'm hoping there's something like that again at PGC London next time.
Sounds like you've had a fun time. Enjoyed the enjoyed the bank holiday. I actually forgot already again that it's been a bank holiday week. It just feels so busy. Lots been going on. I've just come back from Gamescom, which I'll go into in a minute. Yeah, been up to some fun things this week. couple festivals. I went late to the Notting Hill Carnival and it's very different when you turn up at what time did we even get there? 5:00 p. p.m. on on Monday than I think if you go there at 12 p.m. like the actual main proper carnival bit where everybody is like at the on the side of the road seeing all these people dressed up like celebrating like different kind of or whatever different cultures whatever. And when you get there at this time, they just let people onto the road, the the floats, the big buses, they can't move anywhere. It was it was kind of chaos. One thing I actually wanted to bring up this week, I listened to uh

which I never actually listened to this podcast, but it was the Diary of a CEO podcast with Steven Bartlett. It's quite famous by now. and he interviewed Ed Zitron who is who worked in PR, has worked in tech for a very long time, has a newsletter. He goes into a lot of depth about issues within technology. He is a fan of technology, but he is not a fan of the current big tech giants and how they're framing and investing in generative AI technologies. And I think it was just a very very long chat. It's like a movie length, like two and a half hours. So, if you got the time, but I would say it's really really interesting to listen to. Whether you think that there's this massive AI bubble that's going to burst and open AI and tropic might might go under or it's going to affect the economy really negatively. Like that's like the worst end or you're at the the complete other end or somewhere in the middle or the complete other end which is you generative AI

specifically is amazing. And of course the productivity games will be seen and I don't know there's a whole new kind of re industrial revolution happening. Editron is on this end. He thinks it's all like rubbish. And again not to be confused with which I do agree that I think some of these tech giants conflate what AI is. And so it's not talking about machine learning or other AI tools which games have been using for a very long time. For example, it's specifically about generative AI and the expected returns on investment. you know, he reckons that they've already invested a trillion dollars into this. Anthropics when it's I was just looking up. So, Anthropic is expected to say because it wants to go public that its total addressable market exceeds $30 trillion as a random comparison. SpaceX did this kind of thing recently. It said its total addressable market is about 28.5 trillion. Whatever you think of that, I think it's kind of insane, but you you don't know the future. But anyway, listen to this. It's really

interesting. He uses a lot he doesn't just talk for talking sake. He uses a lot of data, a lot of context, quotes that people have been saying like their actual financials. You know how they never actually say how much money they're actually making from AI. They use like run rate, but the way that they use like the term run rate kind of means nothing because they never specify what they're actually talking about. Yeah, I I I highly recommend it, especially if you're a games company using or using or interested in generative AI. whether you agree with it or not, I I think it at least would make you ask the right questions of these companies. So, yeah, that that was amazing. Right, we're gonna move on. A few shout outs for our events that are coming up. And so, we've got Pocket Gamer Connects Nordics in Helsinki coming up on October 20th, 21st. We have Pocket Gamer Connects Jordan coming up. We also have Pocket Gamer Connect Summit Montreal in November. And of course we will be back in London next year for BTC London on

January 18th and 19th. That's our biggest event that we have going. So yeah, lots of events coming. We just did the Mo Pocket Gamer Mobile Games Awards in association with Samsung Gaming Hub. Thank you everybody that attended the show. It was a really great evening. Congratulations to all the winners, the honorable mentions and the finalists. It was a really great night and we'll we'll be doing it again next year. Right. So, we're going to kick off the news. Before we go to the news, we mentioned this before the podcast. I never actually say people should like and subscribe. If you enjoy this content, please like and subscribe. I guess it helps us for some somehow, you know, number goes up, which generative AI companies really love as well, right? So, the first thing I'm going to go into is my Gamescom takeaway. So, I was there all week, Sunday to Friday. Uh, I've been going to games, man, I don't really know how long. Possibly 15 years, not every year, but many years. So, I've seen it evolve. I've seen it evolve from for context, I

guess, from the GDC Europe days to then DevCom, now Gamescom dev, and then Gamescom itself starts proper. So, I've seen I've seen a lot of different forms, I guess, but it's always been massive. My big takeway. So, it was the attendance is up year over year. As I think we said before, the expo floor space was sold out except like I don't know if that just means consumer looking back because and when you're actually there there's a whole B2B floor that's just unused. Don't know why that conceivably could be. So if they meant trade as well then it has not all sold out except for the space I guess that they want open. Anyway, small aside. So my takeaways I wrote an article about this. One of them is it's kind of obvious thing to say but it is a truly global event like every country wants in. So for example Nigeria and this delegation was kind of led by Malian Games had its first ever delegation and pavilion at the show as did Morocco. Dubai hosted the UAE's biggest pavilion ever at the show to date and Invescar also had a presence on the on the show

floor. Brazil Games, which has been there many times, but it actually set up its first ever dedicated Brazilian indie pavilion in the B TOC space as well. And you got other countries, UK had a massive booth. I guess that we always do, courtesy of the UK, Catalonia, Switzerland, Netherlands, the Nordic Allstars booth. Various Nordic countries come come together for that one, which I think is a great idea. France, Australia, South Korea, China's Zang Province, and just many, many more. I think Saxony was there and as as GM Dave Bradley pointed out to me like the way they did it was quite funny. They put an exclamation mark and all capital letters like Saxony is here. So really really cool and I spoke with people like why are you there and the answer is pretty obvious but it's a great chance to showcase their country's developers creativity and culture and it's also obviously a chance that they might cut some like publishing investment deals right so a really fantastic event. I will add that I I know that there's there's has actually been reported some major issues. So some people had their

some developers had their belongings stolen like laptops and stuff which for some people could be like part of their livelihoods and just if you come there the whole reason it's very expensive that gets taken away. You have a very different week. Hopefully that gets sorted next year. I will say that the security slightly concern me this year of it's very present. I'm talking about when you enter, but previous years they've been extremely hot on checking your bags as they should. Many, many people come in and out of the show. This year, not so much. They they checked it sometimes when I went in. Other times, they just didn't even ask. Um, so hopefully they fix that cuz like I say, it's a big successful, very good event. Other takeaway, Asia companies around force. I say that kind of for every event now, but it was just true. The Ark Knights Enfield booth was just enormous. So, it was basically two booths and then it's not even just the front and then you go you go to the other side and there's more on the back and there was another level cuz I did an interview with one of the co-founders and we went

up some stairs within their own booth. Like that's kind of the scale that some of these are working on. Uh you had love and deep space was there. I wondered if it was going to be there. It was because they cancelled out Billy Billy World and some of the controversial stuff going on with the Balco character. my photo. Unfortunately, I went on like very I was probably saw that booth at about 7:30 p.m. on Thursday. So, it looks like there's no one there, but uh I'm sure there I'm sure there was. It's all very very popular game
and yeah, I don't know loads of others. Tencent, Netty's, a corporate studio with an email. Then you've got Crafton, Sega, Bandai Namco, Nintendo, loads. But what I will say is I think we get car a bit carried away with saying, "Oh, there were Asia companies taking over." Actually there was loads of international fans there from everywhere. So like I say it's a very global conference even on the consumer floor. So Xbox had a very very big presence with Halo Force of Horizon. Creative Assembly was around. They had Alien Isolation 2 and Total War Warhammer 40k. Arc Raiders had a very

big booth. EA Sports FC had a really cool one. CD Project. Funkcom Remedies Control Resonant. There's loads of stuff. Ubisoft had a really big presence. Apple and Google were attempting a chab offensive. Uh so Google Play had a very big move on the on the consumer floor which is really interesting. They were also actually promoting PC stuff really but mobile freeto play uh premium titles as well. They said it was their biggest Gamescom showcase yet. Apple also I think hosted like basically like a track I think it was free sessions at Gamescom dev. I think they're both basically trying to say to developers, hey, sorry or not sorry, but like we we want to reach out because it's been a very challenging few years I think for those relations which you know attempt to maintain the 30% status quo anti- steering policies trying to keep them burning organic platform discovery in favor of their own ad strategies disrupting the foundations of mobile gaming with with privacy quote unquote. I'm hoping that actually this is a permanent thing of because them

engaging is very good for the industry. So kudos to them. It feels like the timing of it is like it took threatening their bottom line to make this happen. I hope it continues. Lastly, what was missing? GTA 6 was not there. I I appreciate the Netflix announcement reveal was timed obviously alongside Gamescom, but there was nothing actually tying Gamescom together with it. Not even that I could find like a billboard or a poster to say GTA is coming or even hey GTA exclusive reveal on Netflix on this date right nothing like that very surprised Sony wasn't there but I I think they haven't been there for a few years but Nintendo and Xbox had a very big presence Roblox I don't think had a presence which I thought was interesting because that's I know it's kind of there's a lot of talk about it facing challenges but that still massive 123 million daily active users. Yeah. Wasn't on the show floor, but Fortnite was there. And brands like and entertainment companies like Paramount,

Disney, and Netflix, which had really big presence last year, they were not there this year at promoting their show. So, it wasn't like we're capturing like entertainment culture. It's very games focused. Lastly, yeah, AI. I spoke with a bunch of people about it. I think the the most interesting discussion I pro possibly had was with Art Knights Enfield's co-founder and he focuses on the creative stuff and he said they use almost no AI. He's referring to generative AI and but it's worth noting that they actually started development before the current hype. So maybe it just didn't make it into the workflow yet. But that was really interesting and I spoke with a bunch of other people about it. NC Mobile and MTG are making AI a kind of very core part of their processes. So very mixed opinions, but I thought it was most interesting because it was a Chinese company. They're saying not really when we were told kind of the opposite. Cool. Sorry that that's it. There's other stuff I could go into. Very good show, but yeah.
Yeah, it sounds like it was a a good event this year.
Yeah, like I say, it was great and I

guess your mileage might vary on how you feel about the industry after it. I I felt very good coming out of it. Obviously, there's a lot of challenges. MS that did a very sobering but very good talk about industry layoffs, job opportunities at Gamescom dev, his keynotes. But I I I came out of the show feeling feeling pretty good about the industry, I would say.
Yeah, that's good. Like from here cuz it varies quite often um sort of covering, you know, the news as it comes out from Gamescom. Like some years it seems quite surprisingly quiet because everyone's sort of announced things just before or hold it for afterwards. But like this year like last year see sorry last week seemed quite packed with announcements and things like just a lot of things getting revealed from you know from all corners of the industry and then like this week as well we've not really even entered a lull because everything got out the way last week particularly after the bank holiday Monday like Tuesday we were you know more than spoiled for

choice on what you know what news to cover just seems to be a lot going on at the minute
hilariously Tuesday. So for football fans out there, Tuesday was the pre Premier League transfer deadline day, which means it's the last day until January that you can sign players from other clubs. And it felt a bit like that for games. It was all these big jobs movers. One one I'll go into I mean Sat for example join one up benches. Yeah, there's a whole bunch of others. We put them in our jobs round up. So check that out. September's moves to shakers. But yeah, there was so many like big big jobs moves. It felt just felt very timely, right? Cool. So, I'll stop talking for a little bit at least. So, Aaron, what have you got?
Yeah. So, first up from me, I thought I'd actually talk about one of the announcements uh from Gamescom. Uh, one of the games that got shown off was Monster Hunter Outlanders, which is a obviously I want to talk about it cuz it's Monster Hunter and it's a mobile exclusive entry and it's supposedly going to be like a fullyfledged game in the series and a traditional hunting

experience cuz there's a few mobile games like Monster Hunter now of course which is geoloccationbased and then there was like feline puzzle aisles or something like that a few years ago which kind of didn't hit the same scale. tale, but that's sort of like a match three type monster hunter game, whereas this is supposed to be more of like a traditional Monster Hunter on mobile. It's obviously using Capcom's IP being developed by Timmy Studio, which we sort of known about this game coming for a couple of years. It was actually about two years ago this time of year that they originally revealed it. But we now also know that Greener is publishing and pre-registrations opened during Gamescom or maybe just after for a release later this year. Um, and something else I think sort of worth noting from it is that they revealed an original monster during Gamescom. So there's a new elder dragon called Ruger Adal. um not sure if

that's the right pronunciation and that's sort of the flagship as Monster Hunter calls it. So there's usually like one new monster in each kind of main series game which is kind of the story relevant kind of big boss monster effectively. So like I think in the first game that would be like Raffalos which is kind of the most famous one. Um, and each game kind of has that, but something like Monster Hunter now doesn't really have a flagship in the sense that it doesn't have new monsters to have something take that role. So again, I think it kind of adds to Outlanders being treated as like a proper quote unquote Monster Hunter game in that it's getting the same treatment of having original monsters made for it. and it's going to have like tie into the lore of the game and um you there's going to be like exploration and stuff like it's I just think it's kind of noteworthy that obviously we're largely past the days of people just dismissing

mobile games I think but you know this is like a proper Monster Hunter game that is being made for mobile rather than like a little spin-off side project. Um so yeah, I'm I'm quite looking forward to this one. Yeah, I think this is a really great interesting idea. See how it goes. Obviously, if it monetizes too hard, there is a risk there, but at least is as you were saying, this is the kind of game that fans would actually want to play.
Yeah. If you like Monster Hunter, presumably, you know, if this is going to have all the normal mechanics and things, as you say, as long as they kind of get the monetization balance correct or that you don't get ads thrown at you mid combo on a monster or something, hopefully it will do pretty well with fans.
I mean, it's also entirely possible that the game is really targeted basically for Chinese audience, but they're also releasing it elsewhere, right? Thanks for that, Aaron. So, going to move on. I couldn't choose my stories this week, so I have a couple. I'll attempt I'll attempt to be quicker than I was before. So massive story that has not had justice

in the reporting before. Sony Music Entertainment is set to acquire a 23.29% stake in Puzzle and Dragons developer Gungho Online Entertainment as part of a new capital and business alliance between the companies. It will cost about as an approximate $180 million. They are I believe they're taking over the shares of an existing investor. The price of that is insane to me. So, Gungho is basically a trailblazer in mobile freeto play. It's reportedly the first mobile game to cross1 billion dollars. It has made many billions of dollars since. It's one of the best performing mobile games of all time. It is way down from its peak, but like it still makes money. It still prints some money for them. And I'm talking about, if I had to guess, just 200 million in a year, like revenue gross. And I think they did recently say revenue was was down. But like anyway, it still did really well. It just blows my mind that effectively 180 million for like a

quarter of the company is wild. So if you compare and I know it's completely different like Super Play was acquired for arts $2 billion which player is struggling to afford to unload it to 10 for less but you know just for comparisons. Yeah. So I think it just says a lot about one how that game has inevitably declined. can't stay like that big forever. Although Candy Crush, I disagree. And then secondly, how hard it is to make make a follow-up hit in mobile. How hard that has always been. Companies can do it. Super Play has had Dreams did well. Now they've got Disney Solitire, which is doing very well. Obviously, that's a license. A very talented studio. Supercell has obviously had repeat hits, although ever since Brawl Stars, they found it immensely difficult. Yeah, other companies have had other hits in Turkey for a peak kind of two blast and then did match factory although match factory is still not on the same level as a tomb blast. Raw kingdom has grown very fast but a very expensive marketing campaign of an established IP I know etc blah blah blah

but very hard to do and you can kind of see that with gung home. So, I thought that was a really interesting story. Huge huge story in my mind. And by the way, uh if you're wondering why Sony Music they they also own Anaplex, which has previously released Fate Grand Order of Mobile, which is another multi-billion dollar mobile game hit. So, weirdly, Sony Music actually has history in the mobile gaming space whilst PlayStation struggles. And then the other story I quickly wanted to go into is Savvy Games Group CEO Brian Ward has stepped down. Uh that was reported by Bloomberg and apparently he shared his decision with staff on Tuesday saying to quote the right time had come for new leadership as the KSA gaming entity enters its next period. He has been replaced on a temporary basis by Turkey Anoisa deputy governor of Saudi Arabia's public investment fund and head of its international investments division. So he's serving as the intro here. So has been there since 2021. He's

overseen major acquisitions in esports with the ESL for example and the Facebook group. They acquired Scopley for $4.9 billion and they kind of act as an it's kind of like an investment vehicle I guess for Scope's acquisition. So Scopeley decides we want to buy an antic. We want to buy games and presumably they then have discussions with Savar and kind of make that help help make that possible. And they're in the process of acquiring Moonton for $6 billion. Right. Loads of money spent. loads of money allegedly still to spend. I want to very quickly provide context, but hopefully by the time this podcast is out, our Mina reporter Issa will have published his article. We've been discussing various things around us about Brian Mo's tenure and what's going on with the PIF. But what I want to say is a wider context. So here I I know the PIFF is obviously very directly involved in Savvy. That's where all the money comes from. But they've now put their own person in charge and I believe that person was also involved in the the acquisition of EA. So, it brings those actually quite close together. I've always had the theory that eventually

they'll just put EA under the Savvy banner. We'll see if they do that. Maybe they just don't need to, but I think they will one day. Anyway, the wider context, by the way, is uh Saudi Arabia at the PIFF have kind of been pulling back on a lot of investments. So, the whole thing was pitched as kind of diversifying away from oil and kind of investing more in tech. It's the future of the country or or sports. People talk about sports washing etc. because of things that have happened in the past. So live golf invested loads of money in that that was a competitor I think to PGA. So I don't know my golf that well is competitor to to the other body and that they've now pulled investment from that. They the neon project I think they've completely at least temporarily but they basically cut investment to the line which was their mega city project. Neon fun fact was also at Gamescom I guess not about the line. So there's significant cut back there with their Newcastle United investment. So they owned that football club. They previously invested loads tried to invest loads of money but they are a bit

hamstrung by Premier League financial rules. They their chairman left, the CEO left but but that was a bit different because I believe it was health issues. They lost their manager over the summer because they've been selling basically their star players. They have actually spent a lot. They've also sold a lot. Anyway, my point is I wonder if it sounds like they're pulling back on investments and how much how much of the $38 billion they said they were going to spend for games. Are they still going to spend? I wonder if that shrunk or not. And maybe maybe that is in relation to Brian World leaving. We we don't know. He has been there for 5 years. Might feel job done. It's just before it's still a few years out before the 2030 vision whether they accomplish their goals or not. But yeah, I I'm curious, especially after the EA deal, and maybe they consider that as part of the funds they were using for games, if they really splashed the cash that much anymore. Maybe they'll still do it through scope. So, yeah, a lot of context, really interesting, but Brian Ward is no longer there, right? Uh

again, I've been ying on for ages. So, Aaron, what else have you got?
So, yes, my other story this week uh is another another franchise that I am fond of. So, Pokemon have announced a new animated movie is coming out. It's Pokemon Wild Card, which is expected to release uh they've said beginning in 2027. So, whether that means the Japanese version is next year and the dub will be later or you know, it's sort of yeah, a bit like I wonder whether they mean like the movie is next year and then it might spawn a series equally. Like, don't really know at the moment. they've not really revealed, but to some capacity, it's coming in 2027. Um, and it's a like feature length you like anime film taking inspiration from the Pokémon Trading Card game. It's going to follow an aspiring TCG player and the Pokémon Mimikyu, which is like a little ghost Pokemon that um dresses up kind of like Pikachu um because people

are scared of it and it knows everyone loves Pikachu. Um, yes. So, this was the film was teased during the kind of annual esports Pokémon event like Pokémon Worlds. It's being directed by Katsuhiko Kitada whose credits include episodes of Attack on Titan, Idle Master, Naruto Shipped. Apparently, he was also involved in a Makoto Shinai film, The Place Promised in our early years. Um, so these are all like quite well-known things in the the anime world. And yeah, as I say, it's going to be following like an original protagonist cuz we're kind of in the post Ash Ketchum era for the past few years. And it's actually the yeah, the first film since then. Like Pokémon for a long time. They did yearly films. not on necessarily the kind of theatrical release like Detective Pikachu scale, but they would do like an anime movie of Ash going on, you know, like an hour and a half featurelength adventure rather than an episodic one kind of once a year

roughly. But there were over 20 Pokémon films. Obviously, Pokémon has long been in the kind of trans media game in that regard. But yeah, the last animated film was actually in 2020 in Japan and then it released in 2021 in the West. Um, so that was Secrets of the Jungle, which yeah, that that was a kind of Ash related film. And so yeah, it's been like half a decade since Pokémon's actually released a film like anime based or otherwise. So, they've kind of had other projects that they've um that they've done in the meantime. Like, there was Pokémon Concierge, which is like a Netflix stop motion style series, and then there's supposed to be like an Ardman Pokemon series that's coming to Disney Plus next year.
That sounds awesome, by the way.
Yeah. Well, so yeah, like they they've still been doing like cool, I say trans media stuff, but just not a film. And so I think it's quite interesting timing to to make a new film now and for it to be kind of TCG focused. Obviously the cards

have always been really popular with Pokémon and particularly I think around the lockdown they kind of had a resurgence of people suddenly spending crazy amounts of money for cards. And of course there's Pokémon TCG Pocket which came out nearly 2 years ago now which has been hugely successful. as you were saying, happens with many mobile games. Obviously, it's, you know, it's slowed down from its peak of revenue spending, but like it hit the billion dollar mark faster than Pokémon Go, which I don't think anyone really saw coming. It is a hugely successful game. I say it's about two years ago it came out nearly. Um, yeah, I do wonder. I, you know, I doubt we'll ever really know unless unless they show someone in the film playing the card game on their phone instead of physically. But I do wonder whether that success kind of helped towards greenlighting a new film based around the card game. And yeah, I guess like personally, I'm I'm looking forward to it. Excited to see how they uh you know,

whether it's it seems weird to have the card game and real Pokémon at the same time. I'm curious as to how they're going to kind of balance that in a kind of narrative sense of, you know, it's much more like actual Top Trumps. You know, we get top trumps of real things. Maybe to some extent it's the the same, but like the the reveal trailer shows the um the card player with his like deck of cards and there's a Mimikyu card in there, but then Mimikyu is also like a character in the film. So, it's like will will they come out of the cards? Is it going to be like a more of a like Yu-Gi-Oh thing or is it just
like Well, yeah, they've made cards of Pokémon like you know, we could make cards of animals. It's not that deep. don't really know.
It'll probably be that.
Yeah.
But yeah, so I'm say I'm looking forward to you. It's
It's nice that they're experimenting a bit as well rather than say the Ash era is kind of over anyway, but rather than just

what if he turns out to be the main character?
What if that is Ash?
Imagine who he's just like, well, you know, I finally became the Pokemon champion now. Now, I want to be the the trading card game champion.
Yeah, I'd be up for that if if they go that direction.
And and and uh Poke I was going to say Pokémon actually has a bit of a history of like the law being quite sad and depressing for certain things. And so the Mimikyu is kind of quite sad in a way. So maybe the origin is Ash something's happened to Pikachu.
Yeah.
And then they come together.
Yeah. Well, cuz yeah, Mimikyu is a ghost type, but um
Oh, god. I didn't think God I didn't think it
I thought that's the angle you were going with.
No, no, I just meant I don't know. But yeah. Gosh. Yeah. For people that are wondering like what what are the sad depressive Isn't there like especially Pokemon Red and Blue and there was there was the theory that you fa you kill or fatally wound one of your rivals Pokemon.
Oh yeah. Is Raticate
on the on the ship, I think.

Yeah. That's quite a popular
fan theory cuz
yeah like I think on the ship is the last time he uses it then the theory is like well there's no Pokemon center on there so you you've knocked out his Pokemon and he's just got to wait till the ship comes back and then he never uses Radicate again but I think the next time you see him is at like the graveyard basically so it all adds up.
So depressing. Cool. Yeah.
Yeah. I hope as well actually that it whether it will or not. But it would be cool if that got like a cinema release over here. Like I'm always up for seeing Pokémon.
It would. I guess it'll come later.
Yeah. Like I hope it does cuz I say like there's over like 20 of the old anime films for Pokémon. And at least in the West, they didn't all come to the cinema. A lot of them
released on normal TV back in the day or like Netflix in more recent years. But yeah, it it looks like pretty high like production value and stuff. I could I could see this one kind of warranting a

cinema release.
See, we will see. Right. I have I wanted to go through very quickly as I as as I keep saying I'm failing. Uh W4 Games, which is kind of it's its own business, but it's like a it's like a commercial business that provides services for Godo developers. Godo being the game engine that is open sourced. and it's founded by some of the creators of of God. They've raised $80 million in investment, bringing total investment to $33 million. The latest round was led by Tencent and so the plan is to kind of bring Godo to more developers in China and maybe there's I spoke with the CEO Nicola Feronato and he was saying you know maybe like Tencent could become a big customer. Historically, Godo has been used indie devs, but it's now its use has become much more widespread. And he said that it's actually been picked up by the likes of Meta, Google, Apple, Second Dinner, and again hopefully soon tens. I just want you in like a minute. The history of Godo and where it is. uh it's obviously like kind of come on the

rise and you can chart its rise literally from when the Unity runtime fee was announced which has obviously since been reversed but the trust that that announcement destroyed in Unity game engine has allowed room for a new rival God has been around for a long time but has allowed room for God to come in and I remember the GDC just after that announcement Unity scaled back their presence and Godo had a a pretty sizable one I don't think any of the game engines were there this year at GDC but Just some quick stats. Cumulative installs, I guess a fancy metric. Cumulative installs across Steam and Google Play, which importantly includes duplicate downloads, rose to around 3 million by February 2026. It looks like it's about 1.1 million in February 2024, 483,000 in April 2023. Steam DB, which tracks how many Godo games are released on Steam, showed a 50% increase year-over-year between 2024 2025. I think that was actually similar to 2023 to 2024 as well. During the game

makers toolkit game jam, Godo was the most used game engine, accounting for 47% of the 10,511 games. The previous year it was used by 39% and Unity was 41%. But to be fair, of course, Unity is still massive. I'm not pretending it's disappeared. It's the Epha somewhere to never exist again. It still claims on its website that over 70% of the top 10,000 mobile games were made using Unity. So the rivals haven't vanished. Haven't even talked about Unreal. But all that to say, just very interesting that Godo is growing and it's using a different model, an open source model. I wrote an article a decade ago. Maybe I should update it with a part two. The history of game engines. And basically I said at the time you don't know if your game engine is going to last, even if it feels like and at the time like Unity, it will never go away. as has been proven, again it's not gone away, but as has been proven, like things can change and it's been very difficult for any company ever to scale profitably, like at big scale a game engine business. And

they've kind of found different ways to try and do it. So, at the moment, we have like one funded by an ads business, which is Unity. And I'm not saying it's not profitable at all, Unreal, but one of the shifts has been through Fortnite with it to kind of power its metaverse. And then now you've got an open source kind of angle with this private arm. I say private arm is difficult. Yeah, I just thought it was all interesting. That took ages. I said a minute and I was like three.
Well, as you say, I think that could be an interesting one to kind of follow up on. Do a more kind of modern article
because I could if you look back loads of other engines. So there renderware if it disappeared. I think it was acquired in this spin and then but everyone everyone there's a lot of people using that at one point and then it kind of goes Cry Engine is still around but it's not what it was. They were kind of hit by this race to the bottom with Unity and Unreal. I remember it very well. I I swear in my head this could be wrong. Maybe it was like months. In my head it was like in a period of like days one of them announced I think it was Unity

announced like it was going free and then Unreal was like we're we're free as well but it's a 5% gross revenue gross profit gross revenue charge like okay and then tried to follow and then you had a lumberyard anyone remembers that so Kry was going through financial troubles I guess and so they actually sold a forked version of the cry engine to Amazon so effectively sold cry engine to Amazon to create their version which was Lumbiard and that I believe just doesn't exist anymore and and I was told that and one of the Amazon TVs didn't even want to use it. So there you go. I don't know a random history of game engines that someone could correct me on but all really interesting stuff and obviously very important for Right. I'm going to ramble on forever. So we're going to end it there. Thank you everybody for listening. If you enjoyed the show this week, please do hit that like button and subscribe. We do really appreciate it. And as always, please uh give feedback. I may even put time stamps on this episode on YouTube because I sometimes forget. Thank you very much.

You should say like if we hit if we hit uh I don't know 10 likes, you'll put timestamps on.
It's like a chicken and egg situation, isn't it? It's like Well, if you if you put the timestamps, we we might hit that like button. Yeah, but we we do really appreciate it. Thank you very much, Aaron, for being on the show as always your insights.
Thank you. Yeah, good to hear about Gamescom and stuff. And you got some mention Pokemon and Monster Hunter in one episode.
Yeah, I know. That's a great episode for me.
Stella Stella work. All right, have a good weekend everyone and we'll catch you on the next one.