GTA VI Trailer / Hybridcasual Success / Africa's Gaming Market

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and growth stage Capital making it by far the largest fund focused on gaming and interactive technology Light speed's Team combines deep expertise in gaming with a global multi-stage investment platform and a culture that truly puts Founders first selected Investments include epic games snap and stability AI as well as game designers and producers who led the creation of titles like fortnite Call of Duty League of Legends valerant Starcraft 2 and many more for more information simply get to gaming. lsvp docomo everyone welcome to another novic round table I your host Devon Becker and with me I have two excellent and actually pretty recent guests that you're getting to see again here we got Matt back on from last week making the rounds again and Dave who you've probably seen quite a few times lately which is always fantastic to see him as well how you guys doing recovering from a cold but uh otherwise doing all right rough rough well good luck with that

it's that time of year yeah I'm sure I'm sure a lot of people are also going through that as well so hopefully they could just listen while they recover lot of a lot of great topics today as well I think we have a lot of interesting like news going into uh winter surprisingly uh starting with the one that I think a lot of people probably have heard about around GTA 6 uh we kind of teased it before when we heard like the rumors and now it's out so we're going to talk about that a little bit uh hybrid casual which of course we've hit on quite a few times uh we got some nice numbers to talk about around that and then Activision Blizzard you know coming up with some details in the Epic trial I think are always fun to see those leaks right I'm glad these lawsuits exist just for that and then uh some some cool numbers around African game industry which I think you know gets attention now and then but probably not a lot as much as like something like China did so we'll dig into those a little bit why don't we just start with the the one on everyone's mind which is the GTA 6 trailer leaks essentially so uh yes that's that's kind of the big news in the industry these La last couple days

right is the Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer had was first leaked a day ahead of time uh and then it was officially released shortly thereafter um and it's you know as expected is just doing crazy numbers on YouTube um the last number I saw which is I'm sure outdated by now 60 million plus views in 12 hours and they're expecting that it's going to overtake the 96.8 million views that GTA 5's trailer has uh and it's going to do so in probably a couple of days um so you know huge game uh reportedly one to2 billion doll budget um expected to release in 2025 uh when sometime in 2025 on Xbox and Playstation um no word on a PC release yet um that's the big news and it sounds like uh maybe Devon you can jump in here that that analysts are

debating whether this is going to land in the fiscal year 25 or the fiscal year 26 we don't know they've only told us 2025 the year so we we'll see what happens there yeah that's the problem when they don't line up the fiscal years with the actual calendar years right is and the only reason it like matters I think is just because take two you know obviously they have other properties and everything going on but this is like the biggest thing that's going to hit their their earnings like by far I mean assuming it's not a total flop dud cyber Punk release uh it should be a pretty pretty big deal just judging by the trailer numbers alone as you mentioned so I would anticipate like obviously take two would probably like it you know earlier than later but as we know these things get delayed especially given like a lot of games lately I don't think we end up seeing it with a 2026 release but I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up actually on the fiscal year 2026 calendar and you know notable for a number of reasons the the trailer is um for the American listeners extremely Florida uh obviously the setting is is Vice City which is supposed to be be

Miami uh a lot of references to the previous Vice City game um two protagonist this time including the first female protagonist um so I think it'll be interesting but I think Dave I interrupted you you were gonna say something uh no no I was gonna say that uh I'm sure those numbers certainly will uh surpass uh the GTA 5 numbers really quickly especially as you have people like myself watching the trailer numerous times uh the amount of detail that they've got inside that world is uh is stunning I'm you know obviously along with hundreds of other millions of players looking forward to uh looking forward to coming out and seeing more more about it and with stuff leaking prior to this right which is kind of what pushed the trailer out I got to imagine we're going to get more leaks you as the hackers are going to be targeting them other people like supposedly you know kids of people that work at Rockstar or whatever you know people CLA claiming that at least uh I

got to imagine we'll see because it doesn't really show a lot in the trailer right it it doesn't show gameplay for all we know everything there is cutcenes we don't really know because I mean obviously the game has good graphics like there's no doubt it will so you can't really tell yeah yeah absolutely and they certainly will be a Target uh and continue to being a Target uh you know being the person to be able to post some of the first live gameplay footage for GTA 6 I'm sure will uh you know gain some notoriety for that person um which is unfortunate because you know as a company hopefully you're able to you know show stuff off when you're ready to show things off you know Everyone likes to show things off as in the best light they possibly can um and uh yeah so I can imagine the frustration on the on the part of uh take two in the Rockstar teams um yeah I I I agree that it probably will end up being fiscal year 26 when it actually kicks in um you know uh the the teams are known for jamming as much as they possibly can into those

into the games and then trying to make sure that's performant afterwards and you know if the game if the the the real-time game world is anywhere near as detailed or complex as what's being shown inside the trailer they've crammed a lot of stuff in there and they're gonna be spending a lot of time trying to trying to optimize it in order to make sure that's it's uh perform it but uh yeah I think it's uh important to remember that this is like the first major headline and what's going to be a multi-year if not decade plus you know life cycle for this game obviously we mentioned the huge budget and if you look at the last game GTA 5 it's had a what like a 13 plus year life cycle is still going strong um and you know not too long ago um Rockstar acquired cfx re which is the company that does 5m and the uh no pixel like

role playing mods uh so they brought that inhouse uh presumably they're going to be looking to integrate that into their titles moving forward we already mentioned it's not on PC yet but it's going to get there the mods are going to come the role playing the streaming the uh live service like all this stuff is going to happen um and this is just the first step so I'm excited to see how it plays out the nice thing is like GTA V was like a big step in a different direction right in terms of the live service stuff the full online play and like that was a huge risk at the time now they have like as you said like 13 years of learning of live service of dealing with Mod hackers and all this stuff so in theory if everything goes perfect they should be like far better in that sense right because they they are going off on the right foot they know how to launch it they know what stuff people were actually interested in playing as you mentioned picking up the role playing uh teams because people just got really into that and so I would imagine that it has a higher chance of like being Incorporated early on uh the the question is like you with the PC

release was something like this where they're going to be jamming just to try and like hit their release date schedule uh which I imagine like they'll get closer to actually pinning down you know maybe a month or at least a quarter uh maybe sometime into next year as they start teasing it out uh and that starts to become even more of a Crunch at the end so I would imagine they'll delay the PC like until they feel confident because we've seen so many PC ports including GTA V that come over and are just like subpar like so many them that come over like on initial release they run poorly and the amount of people too like trying to even run like that are running GTA5 on Steam deck you're going to You're Gonna Want A GTA 6 that can run on Steam deck because by 2025 you know there'll be a lot of owners of the steam deck hopefully they've got Val has time to ramp that up so I mean one would hope right like obviously that could be a a bit of a a seat warmer with a game like that but it's it's one of those things where I hope they get the release right with the with especially es with the PC version because that's where it

starts to expand out like what people could do as you said with mods and things like that where like that's part of why that game is like lived as long as it has but it'll be interesting to see if they if they take new approaches that's what we don't know right like as I mentioned like with five they took like it was a very different thing than they've done before I can't imagine they're just going to be like well we'll just repeat that for six with a new story so there's going to be new things and as you guys said hopefully we'll just you know get trickles of more information as time goes on into next year obviously they don't need to tease a lot more this year it was more just kind of like let's get the hype train rolling so I don't I don't know when we'll see more but I I imagine you know as we start rolling into like E3 type season obviously we don't have E3 anymore at the moment but those type Seasons you know we'll probably hear more hopefully have a bit more to chew on maybe some some actual gameplay we can get into but uh terms of gameplay evolving and actually getting better hopefully or at least uh getting deeper hybrid casual the topic that we've uh topped out a few times actually has some

numbers to back up whether it's working or not absolutely so uh sensor Tower uh has put a report on uh the world you know the state of the nation for hybrid casual games uh and what they found is that uh it certainly is a a more of a bright light than some other areas inside the mobile industry uh it's seen its revenues increase by 30% this year uh probably looking at topping 2.1 billion doar uh by the end of this year um and you know it's and it's been significant growth uh as a category um over the last couple years so 30% growth rate this year uh previous year was actually a 60% growth rate uh as it reached $1.6 billion dollar at the end of 2022 um so as as a genre overall genre it certainly has been uh has been doing well

um the areas where it's been uh most significant in terms of the increases have been in the the action-based games uh as well as some of the puzzle hybrid titles so where you're seeing uh where you may have you know during the the hyper casual series at a time you know simple Gunplay but now being wrapped in uh more of a a casual style rapper to help with the retention and giving those opportunities for for players to spend um you know if you look at uh you know the company where one of their uh senior execs was very famous for saying that hyper casual was dead Voodoo um so a French developer uh they've done a very large shift from hyper casual which is where they started into the hybrid casual uh model uh and apparently they've seen a 250% increase in Revenue um so I think if you if you ask Vo do yes hybrid

casuals doing very very well thank you and that it was the right choice for them um and uh even if you look at you know specific markets that this particular report put together by sensor Tower uh there was a lot of lot of focus on on the Chinese market um and if you looked at the the top 30 uh mobile Revenue earners um they've shifted from about 20% uh hybrid casual in terms of Revenue up to 43% uh in 2023 so uh in you know definitely in some markets the hybrid casual um genre if you want to call it as a genre considering it's a large number of different types of uh Games built inside there but or maybe the hybrid casual business model uh is certainly doing well inside inside a lot of the markets um the question will still be you know are we able to continue that level of growth in that style of game uh I expect that it will start to slow down um you know you know basically the the

growth Revenue uh the revenue growth haved uh between last year and this year um but do expect that it will continue as people get a little bit um you know more familiar get those best practices in place uh for for building up the the hybrid casual titles um again you know you're you have the fortune side when you're building them you're not necessarily building a lot of content to a high fidelity so your costs are um still fairly low for the title but you're giving the players an opportunity to actually spend and not just uh counting on the ad Revenue in order to help sustain the title so um it'll be interesting to see as as things move along um it was also interesting to see uh you know the the action-based titles those are the lot of the titles that I enjoy playing inside the the hybrid casual space um it'll be intered to see how those continue to do well you know uh not just the um uh you know the uh

now I'm blanking on titles uh you know not from there's a wide variety of different types of action titles from the you know straightup Shooters to the overtops um you know I think they'll they'll continue to do well it'll be interesting to see how the the revenue increase happens across 2024 a couple questions and like following up on this and I'm not sure how much detail censor Tower went into to be able to answer these things but like for one thing like where the line is kind of drawn between hyper casual hybrid casual and Casual because I feel like it was it was pretty easy to tell the difference between casual and Hyper casual mostly because hyper casual was so far in the extreme and it's like as it edges over like at what point is it not just casual with like like lighter mechanics or more action arcade driven mechanics right and and maybe that's the distinction is like you you throw in the action arcade kind of stuff into a game that like a casual game would normally be like a puzzle or solitire or whatever

and and suddenly that's hybrid casual now and the other question I guess is U you know are these like new titles that like they're developing and they're developing using kind of the same ideas uh or is it where like let's go ahead and strap better retention mechanics better casual stuff on top of existing ones I mean obviously Voodoo had a pretty big library of of hyper casual games that could have done this to for example but I and I'm curious too like on that overlap of like you you mentioned the cost and I mean are they just still using the same mentality let's just prototype the crap out of these real quick see what works and then start figuring out the retention or I I I'm not sure how much they went into but um not So Much from the report but just from um combination my own observation speaking with various groups um so a definition of hybrid casual yeah there isn't a really solid one across the industry um I think if you basically look at the definition that I generally

go with is if you looked at the game play the art style um and it looks and feels still fairly hyper casual but then you've got the The Meta the wrapper the the ability to have that progression mechanic built in on top of that then you start drifting into the hybrid casual space so there is there any specific games you could point to that would be like this is obviously casual like you could point to this one as a one that people could understand from uh like as an example uh I know one kind of the classic example or like survivor.io those are like hybrid casual right yeah Survivor iio would definitely be one um yeah I'm trying to remember the names of a couple of Shooters they're recently done by um Voodoo one of them was the submarine title um where the graphics were a littleit you know they were better than the line drawn you know stick figure character Graphics but

uh there isn't a lot of variety to them there's certainly a level of uh progression built inside the game um you know the you have uh you know missions and events built into the games that are beyond the just you know survive the next level or you know collect 100 Balls and you pass the next level type of um uh you know progression mechanics um yeah I really wish my list of uh hybrid casual games in front of me but yeah I don't think there's like a you can't just like Browse by that category right in the App Store you can't just be like was filter by hybrid I mean maybe eventually but you know there the categories it's like you got to go like arcade maybe this point or something like that yeah um arcade certainly has a lot of them that fall in especially as you look at the the action based games certainly fall into those categories some of them fall under the shooter categories right now um in terms of how if they're new games or or older

games that have rappers I think early on they prob they in many cases were games that were tested out as hyper casual games and then had progression mechanics built around them added to them the games that I'm seeing now um coming in are uh still being tested very early on so still you know probably still could be considered more hyper casual than full hybrid casual um and you know so very quickly trying to get a number of games out in the market the way that Voodoo says that they do it you know they've got they test you know hundreds of uh very quick almost prototype level versions of games uh find the ones that do really well and then focus on them and build them out into full hybrid casual games um but I think games are being developed now with the the hybrid casual um model in mind versus just doing a hyper casual and then trying to bolt on uh more progression mechanics or

opportunities for people to spend it makes sense I mean obviously hyper casual is getting a lot more expensive to try and do the UA for and all that stuff right so you gotta you got to hold on to the people while you can as long as you can and and Matt mentioned also like some of the ones like um the heavy ones like Survivor to IO and stuff where that was I mean technically that was a casual is game like uh vampire survivors I don't know if you put that in the the hyper casual side or the Casual side obviously wasn't a mobile game first but they really strapped a whole bunch of like more casual style mechanics on top of it so maybe that's like also as Matt mentioned a good example in that sense of bolting kind of on to this one but uh was you mentioned voodo being in there was was habby a big part of that as well with because I I believe survivor.io did pretty well financially I believe so I I mean I couldn't tell you the numbers off the top of my head but I do believe that it's done well I know it's certainly spawned a number of uh copycats over the last little while to kind of show how successful it's done

yeah I don't I don't have any particular numbers on a game by game basis in front of me hopefully get into those details uh at some point on these reports just to get an idea what's working right in this market if it's being that successful then obviously people need to know like what could we copy that's what it comes down to as you just mentioned like who who do we look at to start copying from and obviously you know copy surviv.io you're like what copying a copy at that point so it's I don't think that matters that much right exactly so yeah vampire survivors yeah also wasn't wholly original either so but that's that's how the mobile industry especially goes so not a huge surprise there any thoughts on the uh the hyper casual Market there Matt I don't think I have anything to add I think you you summed it up pretty well well we'll add some more stuff next time for retention purposes but uh in the meantime for podcast retention purposes um yeah no I think it's certainly worth going into a deep dive rather than just a sort of quick look at things yeah but I mean it's good for

people to know that there is definitely some uh something working there right it's not just like hyper casual is dead so what do we do next it's definitely like all right these things where we're starting to adapt to the market at least in terms of retention and like giving a little more depth than just flip the bottle is probably a good idea so I mean that's a good thing right like obviously I think mobile developers probably should put a little more into it um obviously like some of those games were just too shallow to to Really support that but I'm sure we'll see this evolve and then we'll just end up back at the Casual Market again and there won't be hybrid casual anymore we'll see I mean we'll see like if it's just also casual starts moving the other way right where they start looking for ways to make casual style games have a bit more uh approachability or ease of just jumping into and just trying stuff out uh as like onboarding I think as you look at the Casual games now they are becoming more and more complex they are becoming more and more costly to build almost midcore sometimes yeah I mean if you

look at uh as an example you know Royal Kingdom um that is a game that uh if you if you compare you know even just the basic match three games that come out today versus match three when it first started the Fidelity of the graphics the complexity of the gameplay the number of gameplay modes they have the um how progression is built overall um you know it it is a lot bigger the basic table Stakes just to try and release a match three is so much for you know so much far beyond what it was uh you know 10 years ago if you think of Candy Crush when it first released um you know it's a a lot more basic game than than what games are coming out today in terms of uh the match three start guess it always makes me wonder to are like is is the audience size just growing and needing these more different levels of complexity or are we actually uh training the audience to want more or

less complexity as they go and just have like a variety on their phone it's it'll be interesting to see like obviously you'd have to track like individual cohorts to kind of see that but it does you know obviously remember when like mobile first came out like just the different demographics have like shifted over time uh and it's interesting to see the market kind of reflect that and obviously we've got more countries involved more developers evolved stuff like that and it's still all provided for free for free wink wink definitely well uh speaking of things for free hopefully uh fortnite and Lego have an interesting thing going on here but Lego is not known for being good at being free so I'm really curious where this is going well uh a quick update here uh the this is kind of like the C the culmination of um a series of announcements that happened maybe a year or two ago so uh if you recall um April of last last year uh epic games and Lego

announced that they were going to be working together uh to build I quote a space in the metaverse that's fun entertaining and made for kids and families um I don't know if they're still on their metaverse path but um the news the other day is that um they're releasing a survival crafting game in fortnite uh with the Lego theme and you can watch the trailer it looks looks pretty interesting um seems to really into the building mechanic of fortnite um definitely has notes of Minecraft in terms of like the survival and the digging and um you know building your little U structures and whatnot um so you know I think there are some interesting um what's the word uh sort of the competition is heating up let's say between fortnite and Minecraft and Roblox um and it's definitely a play in that direction Young younger audiences uh similar types of games now look this

is just a trailer it hasn't shown any gameplay but I'm I'm sort of projecting based off what they've shown in the trailer I guess uh one thing I I neglected to mention earlier in the like Lego and epic partnership uh background is that um the family office that that um founded the LEGO Group that's called Kirkby um they were a part of a$2 billion funding round last year as well uh this came just a few days after after that announcement that Lego and epic were partnering up uh and that was also done with Sony by the way um so they have a the Lego and Kirkby have invested a ton of money into this partnership um and clearly they've placed their bets on Epic um we'll be interesting to see how this plays out how popular this is given the recent sort of um Resurgence let's say in fortnite with the OG uh map and the Eminem experience uh and some of the the other things that have been happening in that ecosystem recently but

anyways thought this was um worth mentioning as um an interesting development yeah the um know as of the recording this podcast is not available uh yet for uh for fortnite users but uh I believe will be shortly after uh this gets released um but what you can do is you can uh take a look at um you know the models in game you can see them going through and doing their dances you can see the uh the accessories that are uh you know with the uh with each of the the Lego characters inside fortnite um and they've done a great job so far I mean you know from the very very small amount that they've released to the uh to the players um you know I it looks good and I'm certainly you know especially based on the the trailer very interested to see how well it does but uh I think from at least from the the the Avatar perspective and you know what you're able to do with them and uh the the various pieces that um you know are

the accessories for the for the characters they've done a great job and um you know if that level of quality carries across to the gameplay then I think it should be very well received yeah to clarify this will be available on December 7th within fortnite survival crafting game well I guess we'll have to see how that does hopefully we can get some kind of numbers usually you only get those of course if it does well right no one wants to brag about bad numbers so I I mean if we if we get numbers then they're probably good but I'd be interested to see how it does mostly because Lego has seemed to struggle in the past with trying to do these these Minecraft kind of things they've tried to do Lego worlds all the numerous ones before it and like the the big thing I think that uh might be interesting about this especially given uh epic recently kind of looking to sort of do something different with their sort of moderation team is the moderation side of things which has been a real big struggle for Lego trying to maintain uh not just moderation in the sense of like protecting kids but also brand image has been a big concern for

them with their like metaverse sort of like games and they' tried and tried and tried and not really outside of like the Lego kind of like uh you know Lego Star Wars and all those kind of games I don't I don't feel like they've hit much of a success with their kind of more open building games of different kinds so it'd be interesting if this actually was the first thing they were like really hit it off with or if it's just like oh this is a cool fortnite event and then the time passes and people just go back to what were doing like is this you know is this something that's going to open up for them or is this just going to open them up to again the old moderation problem especially with the kind of some of the older audience in fortnite versus Roblox well and that for me actually is also the questioning um you know fortnite is rated teen Lego certainly attracts players younger than Teen um what is the expectation in terms of that uh you know are is it the end result just going to

be you're going to bring even younger players into the fortnite uh space as parents go hey you know yeah you can play Lego of course it's Lego be so much fun what could go wrong well that's what they want right like um epic does at least yeah yeah Roblox has has that demographic kind of locked down and I would think epic would want to make inroads there not just locked down but Roblox has that aesthetic too basically visually I guess uh I mean it would be interesting to see like what they do in terms of content as well because one of the things that makes Lego like as successful as it is is not their generic stuff so much I mean obviously that is like the backbone right but their licensed stuff does a lot right with the license sets that you buy even if it's Minecraft in Lego right like buying the physical sets that are some sort of property even if you're not even being very creative like those do pretty well I would imagine I mean I don't know this maybe you can answer it but I wouldn't imagine they're doing that in this like that it's going to be probably more vanilla maybe mixed with fortnite stuff I would hope like that they would take

some of the fortnite IP and Lego f it which they've been very good at doing you know like both through the bricks and through the movies right The Lego Movie one and two and the Batman movies and all the other movies that they've done where they've kind of Lego fied things including in the games that that would be an opportunity for fortnite then to use that as kind of the the the pivot to appeal to the Roblox audience that's like hey this looks kind of more like Roblox but it's fortnite stuff in like a fun way in this like Lego game that like it kind of crosses that bridge I I mean I don't know like I would I'd be curious what they do IP wise I don't think we're going to see Eminem performing in the Lego fortnite thing doesn't seem like a the Right audience match but I don't know never know we'll find out soon yeah right okay I guess we'll see yeah like hopefully it's a I mean hopefully it's a big success for Lego just because I I hate to see them struggle because you'd think they'd be the easiest fit for so many these things yet they just and maybe it's just the protecting the brand image has made them a little over corrective and maybe May epic will help with that but who knows epic's been trying to do a lot of

different things and speaking of which some of those have come out in court as now that Microsoft's not dishing out lots of secret dirt through its trials now we get uh still some pseudo Microsoft dirt here through epics trials that continue yeah so the setup here if you recall there was like I guess three years ago now um epic um started this lawsuit against Apple um now this is the one against Google uh and so that's just begun I guess the the hearings are just beginning here and we're starting to get some leaks coming out of this and um the big one that I wanted to surface today was the news that um Activision Blizzard had considered forming a Google Play competitor uh mobile app store alongside epic games and supercell um so the details here are uh the they had two potential plans uh one of which they

ended up doing which was called project Boston um so close to my heart of course but um this this was uh basically to strike a deal with Google it's like instead of doing our own store uh we're just gonna um strike a deal with Google and that deal was worth more than a hundred million doar which epic is now alleging is um basically evidence that Google bought off activation blizzard to continue uh its sort of App Store dominance but the other plan was uh the one that that um sort of necessitated this payoff you might say uh was for Activision Blizzard to build a store in conjunction with epic and supercell uh to circumvent Google play um it would have allowed side loading on Android and they had plans to do an apple version to follow that and the the fees were expected to be like 10 to 12% versus the 30% um that exists today um and this would have started with just King Gam initially um but eventually you know

theoretically would have opened up uh so um this is these are the allegations um plans that were not pursued however this is kind of relevant because there was there's also been recent news um just a couple days ago and even earlier as the Activision uh Microsoft trials were going on um that Microsoft has interest in opening its own mobile store uh Phil Spencer excuse me talked about this recently uh I'm quoting here um the Xbox Mobile store it's an important part of our strategy and something we're actively working on today not only alone but talking to other partners who'd also like to see more choice for how they can monetize on the phone and then he goes on to say I don't think this is multiple years away I think this is sooner than that uh so look I I I understand why people might be skeptical that Microsoft is going to be able to pull off an app store but but like I'm inclined to take him at his word here that at least it's something they want to do and it's

something that they would like to do urgently King is a massive player obviously in the Casual space in the puzzle space they've got a huge stable of games that can at least provide a foundation uh for an app store and now they've got um at least a few games from Activision Blizzard um you know Call of Duty mobile uh they've got the new Warcraft game they've got Hearthstone Diablo Immortal U so look it's not it's not the same thing as the app store or the Google Play store today but it's a foundation to start with and judging from all the action that we've seen around web stores and Progressive web apps and all these other attempts to kind of circumvent the 30% tax there's clearly an appetite uh for an alternative to the sort of duopoly uh that exists in mobile app stores what do you all think do you think that this is something we're gonna see do you think that Microsoft could have some success with this uh do I think that they are going to give it a shot yeah I do I think they're they're going to try and

actually launch it um you know outside of T talking about the uh uh creating the store itself um Microsoft has has stated that you know maybe exiting the phone business when they did was not the right thing for them to do um it certainly uh was not a success story for them even though you know they went out and bought uh actual Hardware manufacturers um they certainly gave it a shot for a while but never really saw any real uh Market penetration uh with their devices and I think that's gonna be one of the biggest things that they end up going against is that Google Play has got their own devices uh Apple has got their own devices um and so where is uh Microsoft going to end up inside that are they going to try and create a store that is similar to uh

you know Samsung store where it's something that sits uh you know inside the overall Android world but is a is a separate store from from the Google Play Store um or you know do they revisit creating their own phones again which um I think would be a a huge Monumental challenge for them uh to try and do um I think from Microsoft's perspective uh you know having their own store um gives them even more information about their players from uh from a from a game just pure game player data perspective um you know it's already going to be a situation where they've they're able through Xbox Live you know log in be able to track people from Mobile to console to PC um you know if they bu build a story and on top of that that gives them even that much more data and that much more

ability to uh you know Market their games through uh through to them um you know the the Xbox game pass uh you know you know even taking that and and using that as part of uh their mobile initiative I think is going to be an interesting strategy for them um you know then you've got game pass across PC console and mobile as well um yeah I definitely think that they will try and and give that a a real shot um I'm sure they'll be speaking with the uh with their you know their new company mates over at Activision and find out where things got to you know what was the appetite for other companies to to come join them um but yeah I think it it certainly will be uh an attempt that they make especially if they're able to try and uh move away from the from the tip typical 30% and able to get into that you know 15 to 20% range here's here's there's

like a number of problems that I think kind of prove that this idea is already dead before it starts uh first one is Microsoft's terrible making digital stores so like that's already just kind of a no go like if you've ever used any Digital Store Microsoft's made you were not exactly excited about the experience but the the thing is like but you're talking about the appetite certainly there but it's only from the game developer site the consumers aren like man if only there was another store where G developers could save money on me spending money to give them bet like more like no no one's there's no appetite for that from from consumers and I think the proof of that there's there's two solid proofs that one on mobile specifically a lot of people forget about the Amazon underground Amazon App Store that existed that did provide a benefit to Consumers what they did was they made normally paid apps free and then they put they paid the developers out based off of playtime as a way to be like hey we want people to use this alternative store we actually give a benefit to these players in a way that like is like oh cool we can convert them as you you know probably know at

this point that did not succeed unfortunately and so that was like you know strike one and the other thing is looking at the desktop environment which I know is a different environment but the it's the same thing there where EA has an appetite for building origin you know Activision Blizzard has an appetite for selling things through Battle.net all these things are like great for them but they're not really providing any benefit and everyone just ends up on Steam uh obviously epic has an appetite for making their store work and they've put a lot into that and they they try and do exactly like oh we'll give out free games as our way to convert people or are things where they're like trying to because if they just give the developers the benefit that doesn't trickle down to Consumers as much as we'd like I would love for for developers to be like well I'm only paying 15% instead of 30% so I'll just discount all the inapp purchases by 15% on this app store and it's like that just doesn't happen like you you get little bonuses on like the uh you know the web stores occasionally but even then I feel like sometimes I see those just kind of getting cut back if they get people used to them because like hey

why am I going to give away more money like and it's I don't think it's like a greed thing but it's clearly like the motivations are just not aligned and this is a consumer power thing like this is where consumers go and if you're talking about side loading it's just not gonna as much as I would love to see it and I would love to see the duopoly like actually have to compete nothing compelling is being offered here that makes this like a viable opportunity outside of Game Pass kind of stuff and that's the only reason I launch the Xbox app on Windows let's be honest is like to play game pass stuff like I'm not going to launch it because I'm excited to buy things from their Digital Store it's like no I'd rather buy that from Steam but if I could play it for you know for free on the game pass sure I'll launch the Xbox app and like that's what it comes down to like even Netflix getting people uh to get inapp like games that normally had inapp purchases give them away as a whole thing similar to what Amazon underground did isn't going to be like oh wow people are subscribing to Netflix now for these games it's it's just not enough of a selling point because the games themselves usually change and it's just

I don't know I mean unless you guys have any other good examples that would really like uh be like you know maybe this could work other than Xbox wants to do it yeah I don't I don't think you really can point to any of them right now I think part of it is also just um consumers don't necessarily want to have a whole bunch of different stores on their device to try and find the content that they're that they want um you know you're not going to go to uh the Google Store for this type of game Samsung for this type of game e or or uh or app Microsoft because I want to get this particular type of game uh if they're all available inside one particular um uh you know platform or store then chances are that's probably where people will go just because it's that much easier to um uh uh you know to be able to just go into one store and just find what you want well reminds me of the

search thing right where like when you search on mobile like on a Google device right it will search the Play Store depending on your settings and stuff especially on Google phones uh but obviously they're not going to index side side loaded stores right unless there's a way to like shoehorn that in it makes me think of like you know when you go for searching something on Roku right like if you if you use a Roku Smart TV where you're like oh I'll just use the voice search find out what streaming service this happens to be on because you're not going to navigate to each one of them individually in search right like that's just kind of a given at that point and you're like even typing it in just like I don't want to type this in I just want to search for it my voice those kind of convenience things ultimately win in the end so as you say like people don't want to like go through all these stores as much as I would love to be like hey maybe I can get this game for free or save us you know on this I'm GNA go to like what's easiest first and like unless Google endorses it right like as if Google can find some way to get a cut out of this then sure they'd be interested right yeah and if you look at it even you know Samsung whove uh certainly um have a

very large market share uh in terms of the Google uh or Android devices um even their store isn't you know as successful as I think anybody would or anyone at Samsung would hope that it could have been um you know theyve got had the ability to have the store directly on device as they ship out devices but even still uh it's you know really tough to to compete against the you know the dominance that both Google and apple have in their in their relative stores I'm a Samsung Galaxy user and I just I forget that store exists when it pushes it up it feels annoying like they're just trying to push me into it like it's clunky and I'm just like why would I use this right like I acoid store right it's like unless I'm trying to download some weird like exclusive Samsung thing where I've got to get it from there like again that's where it comes down to right can you force people to come here and I think the desktop environment proved that like that's of limited appeal I mean battl net did work to an extent

right but now now that things are shifting those are ending up on Steam so like I feel like everyone kind of gives in sooner or later and this court case is just kind of proving that right because of the payoff right that that uh supposedly happened proving kind of they do give in and for the big games um you know if they've already downloaded Candy Crush from the iOS store or from Google Play um they're not going to switch over to uh to an Xbox store in order to get that now um so how is it you know how is it they're going to be able to move people from you know one store to another store when they're already ingrained inside a particular store is GNA be a huge challenge for me maybe they're hoping something like Call of Duty war zone mobile or something right would be enough of a shift yeah I mean like I I share your guys skepticism I think it's just important to remember remember like if they're serious about it um this is a long-term uh play and look they have a

mountain to climb uh and no one's saying that it's going to be easy but I think you've both outlined some maybe like orthogonal approaches that they could take to get at this you know one is like the Game Pass angle uh where you know we could you could um craft an argument let's say I'm sure someone on their strategy team has done this where it's like hey look the games industry is going increasingly crossplatform platform we've got this game pass like uh Xbox uh cloud gaming thing where we can start to get some more like HD console like experiences on phones and we can distribute those through our Xbox Mobile store plus we'll have this um you know arsenal of King and Activision Blizzard games that we can throw on there as well we've got our Microsoft soliter collection it'll be great uh you know another another um argument is like the web store uh angle where like um you know I know you mentioned Devin like the benefits don't necessarily um they're

not necessarily consumer benefits they're more developer benefits but I think for heavy Spenders um there is an appeal there for some of the games that that they're really into like they do pass on some of these discounts to to players again these are these are edge cases let's say um but they have to establish a foothold somewhere and expand from there um you know for that from their perspective I think there's there's something to be said for just like throwing stones at Apple and Google um which is one of the two of their major competitors and even if it doesn't necessarily lead to gains immediately it leads to losses for them yeah no I I definitely think that they're going to go ahead and do it I don't think that you know anything that we've outlined will stop them for from actually giving it a go I think the the benefit for what they um will receive out of it uh is something that Microsoft will will say yeah yeah it is going to be hard for us

to move players over it is going to be hard for us to get uh you know the the breadth of of apps into the store it's going to take time um but I think overall it's certainly worthwhile for Microsoft for themselves in order to to undertake the I guess they did struggle with issues with trying to get like say for example their cloud gaming systems and through app stores and that whole issue with like Apple trying to force them to like listed as individual games and just all those things they've gone through I could I could understand there're being some serious motivation from that just because they put a lot of eggs in that basket and as you say Matt like if they want to do it they'll do it and I think that the one proof of that is Xbox itself which was like uh hey we know this is probably a serious uphill climb against PlayStation we're just gonna we're gonna throw money at it till it works and that's the question is like you you mentioned this with uh them getting out of mobile maybe regretting that so it's like does this end up a situation where they go we're not we're just not going to back down and you know we've seen them like try and do that

with tablets right where they just tried and tried and tried and then tried again later and they like they found one Niche like the surface that's managed to work and so maybe it's like maybe it's one of the kind of situations maybe Xbox game pass is that the problem is just like a lot of the games they've scooped up are just not mobile games right it's just tons of like console PC games and like obviously if they could shift people to the cloud well then that's cool that kind of works right because uh then it doesn't matter but then you've got you know that whole set of can of worms uh so obviously hey if they could Port Starfield and fullon Call of Duty and everything else over to mobile and you know blizzard can actually learn how to like develop solid mobile games that like last for a long time then there there might be some potential there you you know they might find some interesting um sort of uh the enemy of my enemy is my friend uh in terms of like Netflix epic games Roblox like um companies that Amazon yeah yeah like companies that like you know they've sort of been grandfathered into this app store rule um but they might you know

find a more flexible regulatory environment on a an alternative app store um with the backing of Microsoft um you could imagine like fortnite coming back to mobile for for example um I don't know I'm speculating but like they might find some right very powerful allies that have interest in breaking up the Google and apple uh app stores by supporting Microsoft uh as weird as that sounds I mean that's what this lawsuit was opening up right that that that leak was basically showing exactly that like that there was interested forming the sort of like opposition thing the hard part is like yeah you could get S loading going on Android but what do you do about iOS like obviously there's some forcing like trying to happen but like let's be honest it's it's not GNA happen in the US anytime soon right like we might get like some sliver of a crack in maybe the EU or I know Brazil's actually done a good job of like cracking some you like one of those other countries might be able to like chip at it but that that's it's really and that's the

hard part is like if you just get that going on Android is that really enough to justify having this like giant cartel of opposition trying to do something about it if you can't realistically I mean if if they're all loading it via HTML 5 stuff and like uh not having to go through an app store cool like then they don't have to worry about it but it just feels like that's that's the real struggle is unless say governments or you know Regulators of some kind can force Apple to really kind of like go fine you guys can do it like this one alternative store can exist but only because like everyone hates us and they're all like part of this then all right we'll allow it like that's maybe maybe there's something there yeah that's the that's the issue of them not having their own device in order to be able to sort of anchor everything that you know it is possible for them to create something that allows them to go on to Android devices Google could change the rules and then all of a sudden they're

not able to do side loading to the same you know with the same methodology and they have to then change you know Microsoft would then have to react to What Google was doing um it is uh yeah I I do think that it will be more challenging and you know a little bit the irony meter will certainly go up if Microsoft is able to uh you know break the uh the whole that Google and uh Apple have in terms of uh pricing fees by using their own devices to have a Microsoft store on them well I guess maybe maybe we'll wait to see if Microsoft announces a surface pocket or something as a as a way to move back into that space I mean arm stuff is getting pretty strong like a lot mobile processors are getting pretty crazy so there's the possibility they start to look at the mobile space not as the typical mobile space But as a smaller PC form fact like they were trying to in the past and maybe there's like the actual opportunity for that to exist now

uh I mean there was there's definitely some cool things they did with previous Microsoft phones it wasn't like a complete failure it just didn't have the market traction uh and so yeah maybe maybe if they line up enough ducks in a row and as Matt said they get a whole bunch of allies maybe this is something that could happen I just think uh there's a lot of roadblocks given what's G on in the past but uh I would be against if this if they could make this work you know please I we don't need this duopoly forever as much as it's like you know it's funny it was the Mac versus PC World and now it's on mobile it's the Mac versus Google world and when Google isn't even like a PC company they're like you know the the cloud the web so it's it's kind of interesting how that shifted but uh in terms of like border shifting and uh different demographics things like that going out there uh Africa has been kind of interesting especially in the mobile space a new report uh has uh has come out uh based on the Africa games industry um and and uh um gamesindustry.biz got an early look at

it was able to to grab some of the the bits and pieces from it um and' been sharing that out uh it was produced by a Nigerian based uh game studio uh Malo games um and what they were looking at was what is the industry today inside Africa um and you know where is it going what's it comprised of um what types of games are are being made what platforms are being supported uh and so forth and um the end result was a you know a fairly comprehensive fairly high level look at the African games industry so uh for those that are not familiar uh in general the the Mina region or the Middle East and and Africa represents about 4% uh of Revenue uh across the global games industry um but it is also a growing uh space um there are about uh

200 million Gamers uh in Africa um and uh as the industry uh infrastructure uh increases um then we're seeing more and more players uh inside the space um the largest the region that has the most players is is across the subsaharan uh portion of Africa they about 186 million uh and if you look back even as early as 2015 there was 77 million so you can see uh you know by the time that we reach uh you know 2025 or or 10 years after that 77 million it could be uh you know almost a tripling in terms of numbers of Gamers so certainly is a fast growing region um and most of them are actually focused on mobile so about 95% of the playing population uh is focused on mobile and you can certainly see that in the the um

the companies that are that are coming up right now in terms of what their focus is uh one company that's certainly been seeing uh a lot of uh growth over the last little while as carry first uh which is based out of South Africa um they've been getting a lot of Partnerships with um North American and urine Publishers and bringing titles into uh the African region um when it so they they certainly have the numbers of players inside the region I think one of the challenges uh that um you know some North American or european Publishers and developers would see is probably in terms of what the average spend is uh from the players uh South African um players spent the most at about uh $12 us per year um and uh even in some of the uh larger markets um such as Nigeria uh Kenya

Ethiopia Ghana um you know the the average spend is a lot less in between two and five dollars uh per user per year um so the top five markets uh were identified as South Africa and this is in in Africa specifically uh versus uh the full Mina region but in Africa specifically South Africa is the number one um market in terms a revenue uh just shy of $290 million uh Nigeria second at about 1885 million followed by uh Ghana Kenya and Ethiopia um but Africa as a whole uh is certainly on track to spend more than a billion dollars uh come 2024 um and in terms of population so where are these players um Nigeria ends up taking the lead in terms of the number of uh players uh market-wise so Nigeria is approximately uh 46 million

South Africa with about 24 million Ethiopia about 15 million uh and Kenya and GH Ghana followed up by that um there certainly is you know a large number of players there monetization being um I think one of the the question marks you know are we actually going to see an increase in the amount of uh um in the amount per player um localization is a is certainly a challenge across Africa it's been identified that you know English and French uh is a are common languages but um there are about uh 3,000 distinct ethnic groups and more than 2,000 languages spoken across Africa um so you know trying to make sure you've got the right mix in terms of localizations as you bring that across uh is certainly a challenge and then if you look at you know outside of localization another challenge is uh payment methods uh so I

think one of the things that you know working with the company such just carry first gives you the the opportuni is to they have a good understanding of what payment looks like you know it's not like in uh North America or in Europe where it's you know credit cards provided through the App Store the iOS store uh it is or through the Play Store it is um a wide variety of different types of U payment methods uh and then if you look at and I think another reason for pardon me uh another reason for uh optimism inside the space is it's a very very young population so the African population is one that's growing up with mobile devices in hand um I think the median age is uh just shy of 20 years old in Africa versus uh just over 30 years old uh from the global median pardon me um so it's a it's certainly an area a

region that has the the potential for a large amount of population growth uh as the infrastructure comes into play a lot more opportunities for people to have play you know gamling devices in hand um and they did point out that you know one of the largest challenges at this point is the infrastructure in terms of having uh viable access to the internet Dave I wonder if you you maybe see some parallels here or or Devin as well like to um other sort of upand cominging success stories like India or Indonesia or other markets that you know they tend to be younger huge population centers expected to continue growing appetite for games um the the article that you're referencing Dave you know talks a little bit about the development of homegrown studios in Africa and that's something we've seen in India as well I I just wonder if if you all are seeing any parallels there and and if so like what are the what are the important

differences is it just a difference of timing where some of the African markets are you know a few years behind let's say India and Southeast Asia or you know you mentioned infrastructure um and internet access da like are there other things like that that are holding these um economies back from the sort of uh momentum that we're seeing in India southeast Asia and other markets yeah it's uh it's I mean it's one of those things where feel like whenever there's a country coming up that's willing to spend money on mobile games everyone's uh you know eyes perk up and like oh you know maybe we should move into that market right and there's always like that opportunity potentially right the but it's It's Tricky with like a a entire like huge continent that isn't really Games first until recently and that's the tricky part like so I remember I was talking to people in um Korea D you back with Korea blockchain we happen to in terms of trying to just understand that market there one of the interesting insights that that came up was you know was looking at like why do all the PC bangs exist which are like the you know the internet cafes and and

things like that and one of the things that was brought up was they they didn't really get into games video games uh all that much in their country until kind of post console to an extent right where console wasn't the dominant thing so they didn't really have like a console phase they kind of got in on the like sort of Internet connected uh like online games and mobile and things like that so like where your country kind of jumps in I think affects a little bit like those sorts of things obviously mobile is where they're going jump it right you're not going to see PC games blowing up in that country you're not going to see console games blowing up and it's you know then you have the struggles like oh we've got to localize this with a billion different languages what I what I would be interested in is like when we you know when everyone was going for China for example right uh you know we had the localization stuff we had to deal with like not just uh in terms of language but culture right they found like the better culture fit the better for monetization you know let's use Chinese mythical Heroes instead of you know Gods from Olympus or something things like that uh but there was the the other huge elephant in the room there which was the Chinese government

was a part of that so what I wonder here is like is there any influence or interference or anything from broader African governments that restrict this or is this just kind of open and everyone just kind of being like well how do we just get in there as soon as possible before there's any kind of interference I mean obviously there might be on say the payment rail side uh things like that and that would be the big hurdle to overcome besides all the other stuff you mentioned is like well what's the big thing that would really slow this down I mean India ran into struggles too right where they had uh game companies especially Chinese game companies starting to just get kind of removed from the the the marketplace and so governments aren't always super friendly to this especially if it starts doing really well they start either looking as an opportunity to be involved in a way that benefits them or to restrict it and curve it for different reasons and I don't think Africa's like totally unified the way say China is for example or maybe even India yeah um actually there is one thing I would like to point out uh which I also did find um

an interesting tidb uh when it came to the actual developers themselves I thought that you know because the majority of Revenue was uh actually uh in Mobile that that's where the majority of effort would actually be it turns out that uh there's a large overlap between mobile and PC development and a lot of companies when they build a game they build mobile M and PC at the same time so 78% of developers were working on mobile titles but 70% said they were making PC games so there's actually a fair amount of overlap between those two about uh there was about 18% uh developed for consoles um and 1% uh developing games for the switch I mean some it try to develop for other countries or like is it for local only people uh no it's for in some cases other countries uh do keep in mind like there are there are multinational companies that do have branches inside

Africa so if you think of uh Ubisoft uh Monaco for a number of years or Moroccan developer um but uh but no the the the majority of developers actually do develop both mobile and PC um in terms of uh you know I I definitely agree that because the the the the population is growing up with mobile devices being their Prime connection to gameplay that yes that is where a lot of the the players will be in the studios will be developing for that um I don't have that Insight in terms of you know what the the equivalent of the internet cafe is in Africa you know why there is such a strong development in the on the PC side of things and something I'm actually very interested in terms of learning um

I do think that we probably are looking at um you know it's the the equivalency of being a few as an overall Marketplace a few years behind in terms of um where India is uh where you know a number of other Southeast Asian company countries are um but not necessarily because they haven't had the history like um one of the things they called out was sort of like the the history of where you know when game development was occurring inside Africa um they've had developers there since the the mid 90s um so it's not like it's um something new to uh to the continent um but the the infrastructure is something certainly that needs to uh catch up um for uh for a number of the areas um agree that uh you know the political land landscape is certainly fractured across the the um

the region um certainly be uh different levels in terms of uh social freedoms in terms of what types of games people are able to play what's available for the public um but uh I do think that you know as the as the infrastructure broadens across Africa we'll see that many more play inside the region um as the you know as the GDP increases uh between the countries and we'll see increased spends uh inside the games um you know I think there's the the understanding of um when it when bringing products to different markets not just to Africa but to you know southeast Asia South America all the different regions that we're looking at it's not just localization but it's cultural ization it's also payment methods it's you know there are a lot of things to to keep in mind and I think that as

um as the the uh the the African um national uh companies grow and they gain more experience and you know continue to make uh great games uh for the for the African um continent as they start exporting them further out into the rest of the world I think will we'll start to uh get a lot more recognition for the for the talent that's there cool well I mean it sounds like a lot of research left to be done honestly in terms of actually figuring out that market yeah I I agree um but I think it is uh you know as you look at uh long-term opportunities uh it's certainly something to uh for people to you know take more than just a a quick glance at I think it's something for people to look at uh you know population Wise It's anticipated to double by 2050 um so I mean you've got a lot of

potential players there and as the infrastructure comes into play Then you have that many more potential uh consumers to uh to bring bring your games to well hopefully people can kind of get that figured out I mean if there's been game developers there since the 90s it sounds like there might be some opportunities to sort of find a a partner out there right because that was a a big way that people started breaking into China a lot more successfully was developing Partners figuring out learning the local market that way rather than trying to BR force it from the outside so it sounds like you know companies like carrye first and maybe some of the local developers would probably be their first point of contact for trying to really understand that market better get this research going figure that out and and hopefully that's something that um a lot of these or you know potential game developers from the outside can take advantage of because you know I'm sure the African Market would also love to have a lot of great games coming in that are fit to them specifically and there's only some so much infrastructure that's going to support that from the inside so you know mix of both probably be a great thing so you know if you're listening out there and you're interested in getting into

that market obviously like you we we've written some stuff and I think spoke to Carrie first and uh I know there's a lot of developers in there so definitely take advantage of that get get to know that market before everyone else does because obviously as we've seen it turns into like a bit of a race as as things heat up there and uh obviously if it's more fractured government you may really have to understand the landscape to know what you can and can't do and where you can and can't do it and the payment systems and how you have to deal with the finances and I can imagine it could be a mess until it could all gets smooth out so definitely opportunity but also uh bit of a tricky tricky playbook for those who want to navigate it but uh yeah like definitely going to be interesting to see where that goes forward obviously a lot of these things uh still have yet to fully develop and maybe hybrid casual will be the thing that breaks out over there and that'll be the their Market I don't know I we don't really know like what they like to play yet so hopefully they'll they'll figure that out but I I would imagine hybrid casual is probably an easy one to move over so voodo could be looking at Africa as an opportunity Mina in general as you mentioned as well like Middle

East has definitely been getting very big into games uh so a lot of opportunity in just the whole broader region so we look forward to seeing that grow and I'm sure we will be lots of fun business stuff to talk about on that side from the games uh industry so we'll keep an eye on that but in the meantime of course I want to thank you guys for showing up especially Dave who um who's struggling through with this cold here and uh I think his voice is about to crack he's going to be mute for the rest of the week uh at this point but uh we appreciate you coming on Dave especially with the number of times you've jumped on here lately at Matt as well um definitely thank you guys and as we get into the holiday season as well of course if you're uh listening and a radio listener make sure to be uh saving your podcasts offline for you're doing holiday holiday traveling so you don't miss the episodes right so you can have them playe car wherever uh if you lose Internet just want to you know give you give you a heads up to start thinking about subscribing to where it auto downloads you know why not they're not they're not big files but uh thanks for listening of course as usual of course as we start to wrap up towards the end of uh 2023 as I believe we may only have

one more episode left uh this year one or two um as we will be not having an episode during I believe the final week of December so keep that in mind as well um but I'm sure we'll have more interesting news stories because this year doesn't seem to want to to let up in terms of keeping things spicy so we'll catch you guys on the next one but we do at least have one next week so we'll see you then if you enjoyed ened today's episode whether on YouTube or your favorite podcast app make sure to like subscribe comment or give a five-star review and if you want to reach out or provide feedback shoot us a note at podcast nov. or find us on Twitter and Linkedin plus if you want to learn more about what navic has to offer make sure to check out our website www.nic.edu Ing and advisory Services again that is www.nic.edu [Music]