Ilkka's BAFTA Fellowship, record D2C revenue & the Super Mario Galaxy Movie | Week in Mobile Games

Hello and welcome to the pocket gamer.biz podcast week mobile games where we chat about the week's news and provide some insights of Craig Chapel, head of content at pocketgamer.biz. With me as ever is our deputy editor, Paige Cook and our news editor Aaron Assel. How you both doing Paige? What you been up to?
Nothing too exciting. My personality for the past week has basically just been around the Optimus 2 mission. So like that's basically been my my whole obsession. You can't really see, but I have an Arteimus 2 t-shirt on right now. Like that's how how deeply embedded the problem has got. Don't really know what my life's going to be when this is over. So we'll see. I guess I'll just have to wait for Artemus 3.
That's pretty cool actually to have a shirt as well. The photos you shared as well, they're stunning really.
Yeah, it's pretty amazing. what humanity is possible of doing.
Yeah. When we all work together a little bit, it's pretty amazing. But yeah, I I

think on I think it was I don't know if it was Saturday or Sunday, like the day where they did the actual Luna flyby, I think I had that stream on for like six or seven hours. So yeah, I'm going to be a bit lost about it.
Incredible. Aaron, what have you been up to?
I have been playing the new Pokémon Champions, which has just come out on Switch. I wasn't like especially excited about it. I've never been a competitive battler for Pokémon, but I thought, you know, it's coming out on mobile later this year. I might as well get kind of a early impression from the the Switch version, get a bit of an idea of what it's all about, how it's monetizing and stuff, just yeah, as a bit of a heads up for when it comes to mobile and cuz I do like Pokémon, even if I'm not competitive [snorts] with it particularly. But I have actually been having some fun with it so far. I've um thus far just been playing with like Pokémon you can get in the game cuz a large purpose of it is that you can transfer them in from your other Pokémon games if you have them. I guess on mobile it will be probably more of a thing that people will just get the ones

you can get in game and you'll be able to transfer from Go I believe. But
Oh, interesting.
But yeah, on the Switch you can transfer from like Legends EA and Scarlet and Violet and stuff. But yeah, I haven't done that yet. I kind of wanted to see how I could get on with just what's kind of in the game to begin with and I've I've climbed up a couple of ranks already. It seems like it's not going to be like super pay to win at the moment currently. You can kind of so you can recruit kind of one Pokémon a day for free and it will give you like a random selection you can choose from, but then you can use like a currency to speed up the timer a little bit like TCG Pocket I guess with the card packs. And there's also a kind of subscription like battle pass model once a month that gives you extra rewards and missions and things. And separate to that there's just a general like subscription thing you can do to get other benefits. So it's interesting there's like two subscription models in it but currently

nothing that you kind of outright purchase this one thing. I guess you just pay to unlock more features. And arguably you could say, you know, oh, if you want this Pokémon that's only in ZA, you know, that's £50 to buy ZA and get the Pokémon. But I imagine that's going to be kind of a fringe case. You're going to get more people that have the games that want to use them than the other way around. So yeah, so that's that's quite a long- winded answer for what I've been up to, but I say thought it was sort of interesting to get a bit of insight into it before it comes to mobile,
I guess. So for those that don't know, how does the game actually play? So, it's like it's just normal kind of Pokémon battles. Is there a twist or
It's very traditional battles. It's you can either do one v one or 2v2. Obviously, you have more of a team, but you know, singles or doubles format, which is quite standard. I think doubles is the most common in competitive. So, you'd use two Pokémon against the opponents, too, but you overall bring four each. So, you know, swap them out.

So, yeah, it's very like classic battling. this turnbased system,
right? Sounds uh sounds really interesting. And uh when's it out on mobile? Later this year, is it?
I have a feeling it's August. I'm not sure if it's set in stone at the moment.
All right. Something for to look forward to. We'll see how it does compared to Pokémon TCG Pocket. Any predictions? You're right.
It's not going to make as much as Pocket.
All right. But I think it'll do. I think you'll get people subscribing that just pay every year to have it or like every month for the battle parts.
Thanks for that, Aaron. As myself, I I've just been boring. Barely done anything. I' I've watching more TV. Watch a series called Shrinking, which is very good. Very like Ted Lasso, made by the same people. Can't remember if I mentioned that last week. And um I've been watching For All Mankind because that launched the new series of that launched as it were at the same time I think as Optimus 2. So it's kind of cool to see that back again. I need to see how this series shapes up at the moment. I think the first two seasons of that

were the best and the others are still very new. We'll see where it goes. Right, before we jump into things, just a few quick shoutouts for our upcoming events. So, we've already done London and San Francisco this year. We're going to Malmo on May 27th to 28th. On the 28th when we do uh like a like a smaller summit and uh on the 27th it's simply a day for meetings. We're going to Barcelona June 15th 16th. That that's shaping up to be a big event. Shanghai Summit on July 29th. Going to Helsinki for Pocket Gamer Connects Nordics on October 20th to 21st. Bangkok on October 27th. And we're going to the Grand Canary in December. And we may have some other events later this year which we will shout out when we when we have the details. Right, I'm going to jump into things. So interesting news this week was that BAFTA so the BAFTA games awards takes place next Friday and they have given the BAFTA fellowship which is like their highest accolade that they can

give and BAFTA if you don't know is like I think it's a nonprofit charity that basically celebrates the screen arts and supports it. So it's a cross entertainment mediums games is one of them. They awarded the BAFTA fellowship to Supercell CEO and co-founder Ilka Parnan. He has of course been in the industry for just over 25 years. He did Samya way back in 2000 which did mobile games back then and then he was at Digital Chocolate after the acquisition and then he formed Supercell and he's been there ever since. So congratulations to Ilka. He joins a number of other luminaries that have had the awards that include Hideiojima Shu Yoshida Shivon Ready Gabe Newell Yoko Shimamura and Shiguru Miiamoto. So there's a and there's many more. It's a real long list of really big names. So yeah, congratulations to him. I think it's really cool that mobile is getting the recognition from BAFTA. We've spoke about that at length on this show, which if you haven't listened before, basically mobile doesn't really get that much recognition or at all like in at the BAFTA awards. Um or it's games that

are basically just available crossplatform. Generally, Google Play is actually the headline sponsor this year. So I guess that kind of makes more sense that is also getting the award. Maybe they had the heads up. I guess it would still be nice if actual mobile games were really on the on the list. So I think there's a few interesting ones on there to be fair, but a lot of them are now kind of again crossplatform, but we have gone through before that it's perhaps more incumbent on mobile games publishers to nominate themselves. I still care if recognition is important and I'll have more inspire's news inspire's newsletter. So by the time this podcast is out, check out uh the newsletter or I'll try and put the article on the site. And he said, "Yeah, it's important basically that we get that recognition. It's good for the mobile industry even though even though I guess we don't technically need it because of the way it's marketed. Yeah. And some more comments on that. I had the chance to interview him about like his career and then the state of Supercell. So some highlights he he said to be successful in games. So he's been doing for 25 years. You need three things. Luck to work with a great team

and to operate in the best possible culture. And then he said to quote, "There's a lot of people who do all of those things, but then somehow miss out on the luck part." And he's just he said he was just very grateful that all those stars aligned for his career. One of the interesting tidbits that people may already know, but I thought was really interesting was at the start of his career when he was at Helsinki University of Technology studying on the business track. At that time, most people on that track would probably end up at Goldman Sachs or McKenzie, but he was interested in entrepreneurship. And then he said during one summer job he found himself sat next to an engineer named Sammy who said they were thinking of founding a company with a few friends but they were all games people and they needed someone to handle the business. Do you want to join us to help with that? And then they needed a respectable title. I think he's about 21 at this time and they were like why don't we just call you the CEO? And so he comes out of one of these lunch meetings like I guess I'm the CEO of a company now. I've never done that before. He was like I've never had a real job. I've just been uh like reading stuff in books about how this would work. So really

interesting and a bit of luck. He made made his own luck there of course but bit of luck at the start of his career. He had some interesting comments about the you know that classic cell culture supercell that puts creative creatives first. I tried not to go too much into that because it's all well talked about by now. I said is it still relevant today? He said it absolutely is. And we had a little bit of a discussion after that and he explained that companies that become successful can eventually start pushing creatives aside by to quote invisible or sometimes very visible forces from the outside. So I asked him like when businesses grow if they did put like that creative part first but then they start to focus on like more business factors and external pressures. Can that destroy can that destroy games and companies? because he made some comment and then he he said and that's the last quote I'll do. We get criticized so much about if you think like close to 300 million people will play our games every single month. If you compare our revenue to the player base we have you could argue that uh you

could monetize much better. Often times industry blogs and podcasts or what have you people criticize us for that but maybe the reason why people have played games like heyday and Clash of Clans for more than a decade maybe that's exactly why we don't burn out players. He said, "It could be so tempting to overmonetize and burn out players because you need to and you want to meet your next quarter's revenue goals." So, I think it can absolutely destroy games and companies. So, I recommend that you check out the uh the full interview on the site. Any thoughts, Pa Aaron, on either the interview or Ilka getting the award?
I think I mentioned when I read it that that's the part that stuck out to me, too. But basically, he went to a lunch and walked out basically a CEO. My first job was like a volunteer at game. His first job was CEO. Yeah. Right. Yeah. My first job was like at Next. It was just a close chain.
Pretty amazing.
My first career job was staff writer on develop magazine. Not not you know editor or CEO of Inte Media. I'm not

sure how Stuart Dy would have felt about that but he was the CEO. Yeah. Really interesting.
I think the burnout point is quite interesting as well. I remember hearing some developers and publishers talking about that at PGC London this January and yeah just kind of finding the line between you like monetizing players without irritating them so much that they leave basically and like where that line is. Um so yeah it's interesting to hear kind of Supercell talking about that as well. Um, yeah, I think just generally it's quite an interesting topic that seems to be more prevalent at the moment and then that kind of maybe pushes people more towards the premium games that don't have that quite so much, but obviously you know the freetoplay model is still the winning model overall. I mean obviously I get you know games is ultimately a free you know free playable game is is obviously a business so money they don't make these things for free but yeah it was really interesting comments and I think I think the I mean they're doing very well still to be honest and and looks

like Brandon's back on the air terms of new games they just haven't been able to do it at all. We did speak a bit about that so check out the interview. One thing I at least used to think, but maybe the waits have been a bit too long, was like, say they did release a game every year and it did okay, made like a couple hundred million or or you know, whatever, it's profitable. Would it be better to wait a good few years for your next multi-million dollar hit rather than push out a game that won't hit those levels? I'm just talking about money, but even like, you know, hit hundreds of millions of players or something, right? But yeah, congrats to Ula and uh thank you BAFTA for the mobile recognition. Right, we'll move on Paige. Uh what have you got?
Yeah, so first up from me is a quick one just about a new mobile launch. I did some looking into this one for the numbers. So Tom Clancy's The Division Resurgence is out. Uh it's pulled in over 700,000 in player spending during its first week after launch. Um this game was announced a long time ago. I

think it was 2022 and obviously it had a bunch of delays. There was kind of a point where it just nobody was talking about it and I kind of assumed that it might have just dropped off the map and they weren't doing it anymore, but they are. It's out. So yeah, it's been out for just over a week. Kind of the numbers are what you would sort of expect, you know, like climbing is expected when a game first comes out. Obviously the numbers we've got like maybe don't account for everything if you factor in like web stores and things but there is kind of an interesting comparison with another Ubisoft mobile game which is Rainbow 6 mobile that earned a little bit more in its first week but overall it's kind of on a similar trajectory of like you know quite a you know strong opening you know big western spending and stuff like that US leading that I think maybe part of that is to do with the fact that these games also have very strong player bases is elsewhere. So like Rainbow 6, The Division, they've got, you know, quite loyal player bases on console. I think The Division 2 is maybe 7 years old now. Um, and like that has like a really

loyal player base. I think it was only like last month they were doing updates for that. Like they added like a realism mode or something and I was quite I saw like loads of people talking about it and I was like, "Wow, this game is getting pretty old and people are still really passionate about it." So I guess they're the kind of player base that if they did see a mobile version they're at least going to check it out for a little bit you know whether they stick around that's that's a different story. So yeah like whilst the you know the numbers aren't huge but you know it's sort of steady momentum for now. I guess the real test will be if they can maintain or grow that. I don't really know like what the road map for content for that looks like. I did give it a quick go. I'm I'm only quite early in it. So, I can't really speak to how much like the monetization works and how we were just talking about if it's, you know, I do think sometimes if games like that, for instance, are heavily monetized, people will just burn out from it, like they don't want that. So, I don't know how it's balanced cuz I'm not quite that far. But the parts that I've played, I feel like just in terms of an actual gameplay experience, it does a really

good job of capturing the experience that you get on console, but on mobile, like the gameplay loop is um like very similar. It looks quite good. It's story. There's cutscenes. Um plays quite nicely. Strange it being like touch. I think very early on it's like if you want to connect controller, you can. But at the same time, I can't imagine connecting a controller to play a mobile game. I think that's part of the PE. you know, if I'm just out and about and I want to play, I'm not going to [clears throat] pull out a controller to do it. So, but yeah, like, you know, interesting early numbers. Guess we'll see how it it does. Hope it does well. It would be great. But yeah, I'm kind of I'm intrigued to see if just this I think, like I said, the game itself seems to play well, but I'm intrigued if it's something that people will want to keep playing for years to come. And yeah, a lot of that will probably depend on how much content they keep bringing out for it and how they monetize it. So, we'll see. I think um to the monetization point as well, if I'm remembering correctly from writing this a few days ago, as you say, it's done pretty similarly to how Rainbow 6 mobile

did in its first week. I think um like AppMagic estimates put the Division at um 717,000 and Rainbow 6 at 728,000. So, very similar. What I found quite interesting was so I think Rainbow Six started stronger in the first couple of days and then kind of kept the momentum and grew a bit over that week. Um whereas The Division started lower and peaked higher than Rainbow 6 did in the first week. So kind of in like daily earnings, The Division did surpass it on that kind of first week basis, but took longer to get to that peak. So, it'll be interesting whether it ends up overtaking or not in the weeks and months to come.
Yeah, it'll be interesting to see where it ends up in terms of like sort of against Rainbow Six.
So, I was just looking at the App Magic charts. So, I looked at the US top grossers for the week between April 1st and April 7th. Specifically, in the

shooter category on the app Google Play, it ranked seventh. The Division Resurgence ranked seventh for the week. So, I mean the titles above it, you know, it's War Robots and Fortnite just above it and the top ones that make millions, PUBG Mobile, Free Far and Call of Duty. So, such a competitive market. Um, I'm curious how big the team was on the Division Resurgence and what the expectations are.
Um, it sounded like a pretty big team.
One more thing worth mentioning, I am speaking with somebody uh doing an interview with the with someone from the game soon. So hopefully yeah, we'll have some kind of followup on this as well on the site in the coming weeks.
And curiously, Robo Robo 6 is not on this list in front of me, which is I don't know, the top 20 25. Gross. All right, thanks for that page. Aaron, what have you got?
So I've got some news on the new Mario movie. Um, so no spoilers for I haven't seen it yet, so no worries for anyone listening who hasn't been out to the

cinema yet. Um, but we sort of covered how the game's performed at the box office so far. Um, and it's doing very well. Um, which isn't probably too much of a surprise of the first film made over a billion. I think it was the first like animated game film to do so. And obviously we're kind of 3 years later almost to the day since the since the first film came out. Um, and according to reports on the box office, uh, yeah, the Super Mario Galaxy movie made just over 370 million internationally in 5 days. So, it was at that point in time leading as the number one film domestically in the US and internationally. In the US, it also made over 130 million in its first three days and then by the end of the weekend it got to 190 million. Obviously, it's sort

of come out during what are like Easter holidays over here and we had the long Easter weekend. So, yeah, it's made a lot of money so far to put it mildly. Uh I think um on its opening day it made like 34 35 million in the US and then as I went on to get to near 200 by the end of the weekend and internationally sort of edging on 400. It was also so yeah in the US it out earned the second biggest film more than four times over which was Project Hail Mary. So, it's got a like a very strong lead at the moment. Also, a lot of space themes going on. Like Paige, you were talking about the moon stuff. Then we got the Mario Galaxy movie. I think the Hail Mary film is a space film.
Yes, very much. For all that kind is back.
Yeah, it's all been orchestrated together.
It's a conspiracy.
Yeah.

But yeah, I say not not a lot else I can really add for the Mario movie at the moment. I haven't seen it yet. Um, but I am planning to go and see it probably next week hopefully and update everyone if I have been to see it by then. But yeah, it looks like it's doing very well so far.
I think um it looks like critically it's been a bit panned.
Maybe it's not. I mean, the first one was like it was a good movie. It was okay. It was good. Whatever. I quite liked it,
but it wasn't like it wasn't like say I mean this is all subjective, but like I'm thinking of like random movies like u the Lego movie was just like kind of or the Barbie movie. I feel like they just ultimately what what maybe what you'd expect whereas Mario was just Mario. [laughter]
I wonder if that's cuz they were a little bit more meta maybe at like
Yeah.
Pandas viewers more.
Yeah. But yeah, I don't know. It seems perfectly good. I'm quite excited to to see it. And the theory is is that they're going to uh bring it all

together with the Smash Bros. movie at some point.
Yeah, I was going to say it's like how Marvel built up to that first Avengers film. Like we're going to maybe build up to the Super Smash Bros. movie, which would be quite cool.
Yeah, but why not? I don't know. I It's just weird. Like why not build up to a Mario Kart movie? They'll see Mario Kart in the first one, [clears throat] first film.
But yeah. All right. Super Smash Brothers sounds pretty cool. It'd be weird as well. I'd kind of like to see it, but I don't I can't see how they'd pull it off because obviously next year we've got like the liveaction Zelda movie. Like, would you have that actor playing Link hanging out with animated Mario and like bring Detective Pikachu back cuz why not be a
Well, I guess if it's multiverse and you just have the multiverse animated Link, you know.
Yeah. I just it if if they animated Link, I guess it would be all right. I was imagining more like Roger Rabbit style. Like you've got animated Mario running around with like, you know, real actor.
Maybe they'll they'll do like they did in Across the Spiderverse have like a

quick scene of
the actual reality versus all the animated. Anyway, yeah, it's doing very well. I think 429 million at the moment. It's the latest figure worldwide and it's a good it's still a good time for games making the jump to TV and film. All right. Uh, thanks for that, Aaron. So I had another story that I did for the newsletter and I later published on the site which was I mean the headline is not that surprising but direct to consumer sales hit record levels again in Q4. For some it's Q3 but basically the end of the year. Uh makes a better headline. So what are what are the numbers? Player reported $250 million just over in DTOC revenue in Q4 which accounted for about 36.8% of sales. This was up 19.5% from the previous quarter and 43% year-over-year. So very good. They ended 2025 with approximately $1 billion in annualized DTOC revenue.

And so it was interesting to see because of that there's a chart. Check it out in the article on the site. There was a 9.9% decline in third party platform revenue year-over-year uh to 429 million. So all that's very interesting. The CEO just said it marks a clear shift in how we engage with players and process transactions. Some other companies still front DTOC sales now make up 45% of total bookings, an increase from 34% in Q4 2024. This has helped increase their margins to 27% from 24% the year prior. It's worth noting that user acquisition costs ate up 26% of revenue, though that was actually down year-over-year. uh modern times group which I think owns um inner games snow print maybe maybe another one playerium now anyway they they reported another they they reported strong DTC sales 32% revenue which also

includes browser revenue probably through games in Q4 up from 19% the year prior so that's actually a pretty major job and I I noted total UA costs accounted for 38% of group revenue in Q4 compared to 40% in 20 in in 2024 which is interesting. They have an interesting chart that shows kind of the rise in revenue stream. So the rise of DTOC and kind of the decline because of that of platform revenue. Some others that are prot G5 entertainment they're all reporting really interesting numbers positive numbers for DTOC take 2 CEO Strauss Selnik said it's mobile business which of course effectively mean Zinga but they do own some others within that mobile division delivered it strongest quarter on record specifically the DTOC business he did note however that operating expenses for the business are expected to grow about 3% year-over-year with UA investments to support robust performance in the company's mobile portfolio folio and he said to quote with the regulatory environment becoming even more favor favorable to us we view

direct consumer as a meaningful growth driver that will help accelerate netbookings margins and profitability so yeah the obvious thing but the shift to DTOC is very much happening and it's happening quite rapidly now especially as we talked about all the regulatory changes like straic has mentioned the reason I mentioned UA costs is because you know as as we know in the industry those those been rising over the last few years and companies spend more on that than they do on the platform share. And so it's just be interesting over the next few years the savings that have been made from taking away from Apple and Google's royalties. Is it just going into UA and then you so you don't actually make you don't actually make that much more in the end? Um I had an interesting interview with Matthew B about that as well. He also said, you know, UA costs are going up and by 2027, ad exchange fees on ad revenue uh will go up too. Yeah, really interesting time for DTOC. Uh Paige, what have you got?

So I it's not really a news story. It's more that uh so we do obviously our mobile mavens stories where we, you know, pick a industry topic and have some people chat about it. So this time we had the question of is gaming undergoing a power shift from west to east. I think we've kind of covered this subject like in pieces on the podcast just because of stories we've had you know so you know growing momentum across Asia and other regions you know there's been some strong releases that have had you know either really good revenue really good engagement and then outside of like just actual games um you know a lot of investment and acquisitions have come from the easts. Um, yeah, we kind of spoke about that. The general sort of consensus, if I'm trying to wrap up a bit of what everybody said. So, yeah, the general sort of idea was that, you know, the east isn't simply just taking over. It's more that the games industry is becoming less centralized sort of altogether. So, rather than like one region replacing another, they believe that, you know, there's just more power

globally with different regions maybe leading in different areas. So like some people were saying how like Asian market markets are driving lots of innovation in mobile games design and live operations of you know how fast they can operate whilst western companies have a lot of like dominance with some like big major IPs and maybe like in console development things like that other points as well about like how talent in general now is more international than it used to be and how there's a lot more global collaborations and when games are being launched now a lot of the time it is a lot more with you like it being something that appeals worldwide being more in mind than what it used to be. Just to do like a couple of quick quotes. So, one of our mavens, Kate Edwards, said that what we're seeing isn't one region replacing another, but capital and attention following where growth and creativity are happening. So, her view was that the center of the games industry isn't just moving, but that it's dissolving entirely. Um then another comment we had was from when

young he said that there is no single eastern model replacing a western one. What is actually happening is the old western monopoly on power is breaking apart with the cost of AAA games production and different parts of the industry are being relocated to different regional hubs. So yeah, there was some really interesting comments in there. I won't go through all of them, but yeah, do go read the full thing cuz it's yeah, it's a really interesting subject. There's some good insights in there and like the engagement for it was really good. So, it's obviously something a lot of people have been, you know, thinking about.
Yeah, we we might have spoke a bit about this a couple weeks back on the podcast. Um, which is kind of what inspired this this debate which was, you know, Savvy Games Group obviously buying up a lot of companies and and investing a lot.
I think that's what sort of triggered us to talk about it.
So, that was really interesting. I think when Fang Yang's comments on this, he has a lot of interesting stuff to say. He's he's the founder of Big Bang Accelerator and he's he's worked at a few Chinese companies. I think like in infold games or paper games, whichever

part of that same company you a couple of his quotes there, but like the two of the two of the other ones that stuck out to me was China has become the clearest example of industrialized execution at scale. Its advantage is not radical creative disruption, but large teams, structured pipelines, and the ability to keep pushing mobile and double A products forward through disciplined step-by-step iteration. And then for Turkey, like part of his quote, they said Turkey represents almost the opposite dynamic. It is it is less about scale and more about speed, efficiency, and product instinct. So there's some really interesting comments about basically what's going on outside of the US and kind of Europe his in his comments. So yeah, as P says, really worth checking out. Um Aaron, what have you got?
So I've got another kind of trans media e story if this one counts. It's the other way round, but we're getting another Game of Thrones mobile game. Does that count as trans media if it's media turning into games?
I think so. It's a cross media.
Yeah. Um, yeah. Obviously, usually we're

talking about it the other way around, but yeah.
Or otherwise known as licensing.
Yeah, that's old terminology. Uh, so there's a licensed Game of Thrones game called Dragonfire, which has just opened for pre-registrations. So, this is a Warner Bros. games Boston title. I believe Warner Bros. games split into divisions last year to focus on different IPs like Game of Thrones, Harry Potter and stuff. So, obviously this is the Game of Thrones team. Um, so yeah, I I actually wrote about this game about a year ago when they soft launched it in the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia. And then it later expanded to like Canada and Australia. And yeah, now it's finally gearing up for a global release. It looks like they're kind of aiming at 10 million pre-registrations. They're sort of tiered rewards as is kind of quite common with these kind of pre-registration things. So the initial tier is for like some in-game currency.

And then if you um get to like 2 million pre-registrations, they're going to give out runic fragments. I don't know what they do at the moment, but if they hit 2 million pre-registrations, those will be a thing. And yeah, like the top tier is 10 million and that's to get the dragon Dawnseker. It's a strategy game, so it's um it looks sort of similar in that sense to Game of Thrones Conquest which came out in 2017 and has almost made a billion dollars over like 9 years according to AppMagic. So yeah, whether this will go on to do the same, who knows? It's already made over a million in soft launch mainly from Canada and Australia even though they were some of the later countries to actually gain soft launch access. Um, so like some of the game play is like managing crops, um, riding dragons, like going into battle, like tactical battles and yeah, with like familiar locations like Dragon Stone and it's very very dragon themed and yeah, obviously it seems like we've

got quite a few like Game of Thrones mobile games in the past couple of years like Zingga had Game of Thrones Legends with the Jon Snow trailer when it launched which was quite a cool trailer or advert rather of Kit Harrington. Net Marble released Kings Road last year. Um, yeah, now we're getting Dragonfire. You the IP is obviously still one that a lot of companies are wanting to to leverage even with how the show ended. Yeah, I'm interested how it does given the success of the predecessor and looks like it's ignoring what the top Forex strategy games are doing at the moment, which are from Century Games that Funfly, which was adding sort of these more casual mechanics
or hyper casual mechanics, however you want to word it. And then Century did it again with just adding like different sort of elements to it. I wonder it doesn't look like it does that at the moment. Um, so I'm curious how it does, especially in the face of those

competitors and whether that might change at some point. Maybe that that kind of thing doesn't necessarily fit the IP, but then maybe you could make it work. I don't know. I'm sure I'm sure they thought about it.
Yeah, it'll be interesting cuz yeah, obviously it looks sort of similar gameplay to Conquest, which has done very well, but yeah, it's a very different landscape to 2017. Yeah. All right. Cool. Thanks for that, Aaron. So, I've got one more story left which uh I just very quickly wanted to cover. So, it looks like effectively play which I mentioned earlier is it's effectively up for sale. So, they've launched a portfoliowwide strategic review. They didn't actually the release that they put out basically said a lot of nothing. However, it's very much it does appear to be very much a signal that they're up for sale or they might sell parts of their business. That's what it looks like. One of the one of the most interesting things as well is if you looked at Players's share price and valuation in this case I always say if that matters to you but in this case it kind of does. So let's say like it looks

like when they launched their IPO back in 2021 they were at just under they were at $3162. Now the share price has actually gone up a little bit because of this announcement. Before this announcement, it was at I think it was at 2.74 USD and now it's gone up to like $3.2. So that currently has a market cap of around $1.2 billion, which if you were to put that into context, I think they they acquired Super Play for up to $2 billion. And in their last financials, they make a lot of mention about Super Play, I believe, being quite successful and how they're having to basically pay those earnouts uh from that deal, which I think is actually is a good thing, but also a bit of a sink on money that they could spend elsewhere by the sounds of

it at the moment. U because they they just make a lot of mention of basically having to pay that. Uh, and I think there was a question in the last investor call. I might get this slightly wrong. I think it was basically saying I think they were asked about investments in M&A. They said they're always looking at opportunities. Last year they did mention they could do some add-on M&A activity. I think up to 450 million, but this time they were like, "Yeah, we're always looking, but one of their focuses is Super Play, but why not? That's that studio is doing very well." So yeah, interesting one there. big kind of a big story this week even though they weren't open about it and the context is sorry that I nearly missed it was in 2022 launched a strategic review before and then they actually put it on pause and I think they're a bit more obvious about being up for sale or certain deals that they could do in 2024 they actually paused it due to ongoing uncertainty in Israel and Ukraine which it would appear has not changed politically so yeah we'll see what happens with play in the

future as one to watch I don't know who would buy it if anyone could at this point what they might buy. But yeah, it seems it's probably worth more than 1 million, right? Cool. Right. Anyway, that was the last story. So, that brings us to the end of the week mobile games. So, thank you everyone for listening. Thanks very much, Paige, for being on the show.
Yeah, good to be here.
Thanks very much, Aaron, as well.
Yeah, thanks. Good to be here.
Thanks all so much. And we'll see you on next week's show. Goodbye.