Mobile Gaming in 2025: 10 Trends That Matter

[Music] Thank you Sam Anie. Welcome to the podcast. Hello Mishka. Good to be here. So Sam, you are a gaming insight analyst at Sensor Tower, the author of State of the Mobile Gaming Report. My favorite report this year. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Specifically because of that. No. And you're here to get a promotion, right? That's correct. Yeah, that's the only reason. Well, I I I hope I hope it works out. So, um No, but really I wanted to kind of have you on the podcast and and dive deeper to the uh the report and some people I think a lot of people have downloaded it, but not maybe all of them have truly analyzed because there's a lot of insights. And what I like about the way you bring the insights forward is you're very positive about the market. You filter. you look at the things that are growing rather than than being the pessimist like myself who's like, "Oh my god, when are we going to

see the next big hit? Why isn't the market growing as fast as it used to?" So kudos for you for staying positive. Thank you. Yeah, it's it's easier, I think, to stay positive in in my position whenever I'm always looking at, you know, the Sensor Tower platform and I'm able to see what what are the top 10. Oh, this game is doing well. This game is growing. Uh whenever you're constantly looking at these positive things, it's easier to stay an optimist. Uh, I don't discount anyone who's a little bit more negative than me, but yeah, I I I like to stay positive in general. I would say we we'd need a specific Sam Anie filter on Sensor Tower that kind of brings the positive. So when you're feeling a little bit down, you just use the SAM filter and be like, "Oh, actually things are growing. It's not as gloomy." Exactly. Yeah. Don't Don't look over there in that dark space. Just look over here. This is this is where you want to see. Exactly. Exactly. Well, let's start looking at at at the um at the bunch of questions that I have. So, one of the thing is is the basic one like has gaming plateaued? Uh because the downloads have plateaued since 2020 and I can actually show the

graph. So, if you're listening to this on Spotify uh probably easier to look at the graphs, but if or just check it out on YouTube, but the first graph that I have here is mobile gaming plateau and what's next. So can you talk a little bit about this and it's like are we plateaued? Are we growing? What's the current phase? Yeah, it does seem like we're plateaued a bit for sure on the the download side. Uh it's been as you noted uh kind of going down since 2020. However, I think it's important to note that uh 2020 was not a normal year. Of course, we had a huge growth and then uh it it's kind of natural to kind of revert to the mean from there, I would say. uh and if you kind of take a longer term uh zoom out approach uh I think maybe it's arguable for sure that uh we're seeing more of a long-term kind of stable growth uh in ter at least in terms of inapp purchase revenue which is what if we look at the bottom parts of the screen uh we've been seeing a little bit of growth in this past year which is nice to not have a

uh not have a little bit of uh decrease year-over-year unfortunate in the previous years which is And how do how do these trends look like when you start removing s certain very mature markets like China, Japan, Korea which are really big markets on their own. Like what does what does the graph look like? Yeah, absolutely. Uh so unfortunately in the past four quarters we do still see a decline in downloads about 5% if we discount those those three markets for the past four quarters over the previous four quarters. Uh but again, if you if you zoom out and you you remove these these more mature markets, I think it becomes a little bit more pronounced that yeah, maybe we're seeing a little bit more long-term kind of kind of healthy uh curve. Okay. And what's the uh what's the comparison of of downloads? Uh when you look at iOS versus Google downloads and revenue, is it still so that Google drives most of the downloads and iOS drives most of the revenue? That's absolutely how it looks. Yeah, there's a

couple other key differences. is I would say iOS leans a bit more western while Google play leans more towards eastern and emerging markets. Uh iOS is a bit more expensive competitive compared to Google Play but with a more valuable audience. Uh and behavioral I think iOS players tend to engage more with things like inapp purchase monetization long-term progression mechanics while Google Play players are more likely to engage with ad monetized content. So something like the hybrid casual games that we've seen a sururgence of lately uh tend to see a lot of success on Google Play. And what's the trend line there? Is is it changing? Is it stable in terms of um the revenue percentage iOS versus Google as well as download percentage iOS versus Google? Yeah. Uh so we do see most of the downloads decline on Android actually. Uh iOS devices are also down in the past four quarters over the previous four quarters. So sorry, I'm actually bringing some a little bit fresher data. Good. the including the the last quarter. Um, but yeah, the iOS down to

devices are down uh 1% for downloads, but actually iPhones are are up 2% in downloads uh for the past four quarters over the previous four. So that's that's some slightly good news hopefully uh for people out there. Interesting. And on a on a high level, have you thought about like is there something you can see from the insights of developers and publishers reth thinking user acquisition, rethinking monetization strategies because we are looking at a very mature market. Yeah, absolutely. Uh in terms of uh how how developers are rethinking user acquisition and monetization strategies here, uh mobile gaming has always been competitive, but I think it's more important than ever to stand out. It's the smaller edges become more important. getting creative, uh, I think becomes more of a necessity than than a risk. If you're just copying other games, it's it's less of a winning strategy, I would say. Innovation is becoming more key. There's there's always a market for good games. There always will be, I would say. Uh, but more specifically, I I have to preface with uh the idea that I'm I'm not a

super uh expert in in user acquisition. I've never worked on a user acquisition team, but this is just kind of what I've seen uh in working here and and talking with people. uh maybe maybe doubling down on creative testing and iteration to find those winning creatives is is becoming is is still you know more important than ever. Uh there's a lot of interesting creative trends that I saw throughout the year. Uh I think one one overarching trend that I saw was a focused on existing audiences. So things like IPS although there those are IP collaborations or you know the innate IPs to your game. uh using things like celebrities or influencers, celebrities in particular. I thought I saw an interesting trend of games using kind of smaller celebrities where it's celebrity that is Yeah. that your audience might recognize from a certain show that's really popular with them, but is Jake Paul. Yeah. Yeah. Might be more the influencer side of things. You got the idea. Like being more targeted and cost effective. I think uh trying to lower those CPIs is is definitely a priority. I think for user

acquisition teams at the moment. Yeah, because the way I understand the CPI trend has been pointing upwards and so it feels like a lot of the innovation is going on the marketing side. And the other part where we're seeing innovation is of course live ops. Uh and let me let me show the um the the live ops curve you have here is this one. So what we're here what we're seeing is that the the time in games has actually increased. It's it's 8% more year-over-year that people are spending playing games, logging more sessions than ever before. Um can you a little bit talk about what are the genres that are clear winners in terms of game devs? We know that great gameplay is what players love, but integrating metagame features like challenges, progression, rewards is crucial for retention and monetization. However, coding them is a tedious and timeconuming process. That's why top studios have

turned to Hero. Hero provides a complete suite of battle tested metagame features that are quick to implement, letting you spend more time on the core gameplay experience. Ready to ship fully featured engaging games? Check out Hero today by clicking the link below. Time spent. Yeah, absolutely. So some of the the the genres in terms of uh which which genres are seeing the most growth in in time spent uh strategy is definitely up there with games like as I mentioned earlier last for survival white out white out uh survival sorry they're both survival games and uh and of course Brawl Stars had a massive year in 2024 as well. Uh also I think shooters interestingly saw a lot of interesting growth. Yeah, it's it's I think it's a little bit surprising, but actually shooters people are spending a lot of time playing shooters. Uh also simulation games and puzzle games uh saw saw a lot of of growth this year as well in terms of time spent. And are there certain genres that have been losing

engagement? Yeah. Uh unfortunately, I think sports is one that's been kind of down. Uh I think this is uh what what sensor tower we call a product model more than a genre but hyper casual I think people are gravitating more towards polished experiences in terms of engagement and in genre actually geoloccation was was uh saw some some decline this year as well. So games like like Pokémon Go and others basically game that the whole genre is a one game. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Basically uh it is a pretty concentrated subjre for sure. And and when you're looking at the growth of different genres and the decline, are you seeing geographical differences here, like what is, you know, happening perhaps in the US compared to Korea and Japan? Yeah, I I didn't dive in deep enough to to look at the the genres for each uh region, but yeah, we actually do see a decent amount of growth in a lot of these key regions. US uh 3% time spend increase, 6% sessions increase. Uh Japan 7% time spend increase 8%

increase. Uh Korea it's it's more flat. Uh but another interesting market to look at was was India actually it's one of the biggest uh growing places uh 11% time spent increase and 13% in chess uh increase. So this is a 20 24 over 2023. Is there do you feel that there's some kind of a max level of engagement? cuz I I feel like we're spending a lot of time on phones and when you hear these numbers like 6% year-over-year, 8% they are relatively small but at the same time like how much more time can we spend on on devices? Oh yeah, there there's got to be a limit for sure. Uh but at the same time I I just uh anecdotally I I I feel like there's you know people are spending also a lot of time on on things like entertainment uh productivity. So the there's always a a fight for people's time and while there's a limit for sure, I I think that there's, you know, we can always try to take bigger pieces of the pipe from other people as well.

Damn. Uh okay. Well, that that's that's interesting. Well, there's something else that I wanted to talk about. Not not something else. There's ton of uh one of the things that I've been seeing on on the rise is of course the uh the rise of hybrid casual. And opening up this slide here that you had in the presentation is the the rise of hybrid casual. Um what can you talk about this because we we have been talking about hybrid casual since I think 2019 Archer and now we and and also talking about the death of hyper casual and now kind of everything is is finally happening. It took us only like 5 years of saying this and um and we're seeing almost like 40% growth of inapp purchase in hybrid casual games and they feel like the future proof model in a post IDFA because they combine this monetization of both apps and ads high marketability

a and um you know and and very wide appeal. So what can you talk about the uh the hybrid casual's rising power? Yeah. Uh you know I I wouldn't go so far as to say it's the real future proof model. The the market is always dynamic. Uh and I think it still has ground to cover to really prove its place in the market. But it's pretty undeniable that I think the product model has seen a lot of growth in the past year and the past years. Um one thing I would say though is you know like you mentioned it's it's bringing a lot of lessons from other product models. Uh so I would say that a lot of product models are are they're kind of like genres. are becoming a bit more fluid. I would say that people are taking lessons from other places and applying it in their games. You know, just like puzzle games introduced metag games and narratives. This year, those Forex games are taking lessons from casual games and hybrid casual games took lessons from, you know, all sorts of different other uh places. So, I think product models will continue to evolve and change over time. Hybrid casual is the newest evolution. Um, and maybe it'll face challenges, but I fully expect developers to iterate and adapt and overcome those challenges.

When when you're doing this tonomy, um it feels like hybrid casual games are just becoming casual games. Like they might start with a little bit of a modest look and feel to them in terms of production values uh and maybe not so many robust meta mechanics, but after a while, like when you look at games like Magic Sword or others, it's like when there when is there a difference between a casual puzzle game and a hybrid casual games? like how how do you look at those? Sure. Uh so the way we define hybrid casual games uh we say that they blend the kind of the easy to understand active gameplay mechanics inherited from hyper casual games. Uh they they add in simplified long-term meta uh features and retention strategies associated with midcore games. Uh but maybe the the easiest way to to tell them apart is that they they use a combination of uh like the inapp purchase revenue and ad revenue. So we we typically would say maybe 50% of each. Uh so whenever you're

seeing a decent amount of ads, you know, rewarded ads, interstitials, whatever, that's probably going to be a hybrid casual game as opposed to a casual game. And another uh way that we look at it is hybrid casual games tend to have more of the generic assets. Uh whereas casual games can be definitely become more polished and a lot more more work put into uh more custom work put into what they put into the game. For sure. Yeah. It's just interesting to see how this evolves because we are seeing, you know, top hybrid casual publishers, the wudoo, the hom um, you know, the you name it over the world finding hits that are making well above $100 million a year already in revenue in purchase revenue. And so they are doubling down on those games and probably increasing production values to some extent, adding more metagame features, probably even skewing the revenue to getting, you know, 70% coming from the inapp purchase because the longer the player is in the game, the more important it is to make that game player monetize through inapp

purchase because essentially the ads become useless. There you already shown too many ads that there's no point showing ads for this one. This doesn't bring any revenue. So, I'm just always wondering when when do we get to a point where hybrid casual is just the new casual. Yeah, it's it's uh it's definitely not a a hard line, I would say. You know, 70% which one is it is is a good question actually. And there are I think there are games that actually have fully transitioned from being hybrid casual. They they you know, got the huge player base they were looking for that are really engaged and it just made more sense to just go full casual or full midcore actually in some cases. Uh, so I think it's it's interesting to to have the the hybrid I think it's important to show the growth of hybrid casual games. Uh, but also yeah, I would definitely acknowledge the fact that these games don't necessarily stay hybrid casual their entire lives. And we actually whenever we're looking at a taxonomy, we commonly look at games and say, "Hey, is this actually still hybrid casual?" And try to try to stay stay a breast of those of those trends. Oh, that's interesting. So you're transitioning off certain games off of

the hybrid casual. So it kind of that's you cut the most successful ones away. So the market size of a hybrid casual almost stays the same because once they reach the escape velocity, they just move to to a puzzle or RPG category. Yeah, we we look at our our definition of hybrid casual. If the game no longer fits that definition, then yeah, it makes sense to move it to a different definition that that fits. Beautiful. And in the data, are you kind of like skewing towards the other direction? We're talking about the CPIs. We're talking about celebrity campaigns. We're talking about Jake Paul or I was talking about Jake Paul. But um um I don't know why. Uh but do you see I was kind of combining these two. So do you see anything with people being anti- ads? Because in the latest Dream um you know $50 million ad campaign, they had all these celebrities basically repeating the same USP which is no ads. Yeah. U is is that visible somewhere in the data that people hate ads? Yeah. Yeah. This

is something that I'd actually like to dive into a little bit more because there's there's so much data in sensor towards it's not easy to to really dive in and see it all immediately. Um we have a lot of really good data ad data as well to to look at for this. Uh what I was immediately able to find was uh looking at downloads for games with adamization are actually down past four quarters over the previous four quarters. Uh although hyper casual downloads are actually, you know, we're talking about it's it's uh kind of declining. Uh downloads are actually up 2% which is interesting to see. It's goddamn cockroach to die. We'll be here after after the apocalypse for sure. No, this is something that I've I've noticed for for throughout the year. We're looking at, you know, new creatives that are able to get share a voice in all the different channels is that no ads, it's a really common trend. you see this in in a lot of different creatives, not just, you know, Dream Games, of course, is is a huge example, but a lot of other other uh other creatives have been using this. So, there's definitely a large audience of people out there who just cannot stand ads and do not want to see it. Uh, at the same time, you know, hybrid casual

has been seeing all this growth. There are a ton of games that do have ads. So, it's just a matter of, I think, segmenting your your audience appropriately and saying, you know, these people hate ads. We can target them. Uh, and you know, if you have a game that does have ads, you have to try to find the people that are okay with that. Mhm. Interesting. Okay. And just as usual with data, it is a some kind of a dichotomy where you have two things happening at the same time. So that's totally understandable. Um well, switching gears and talking about emerging markets. So this is something that has been coming up a lot and of course it was in in your report and as we're looking for growth when looking as a market as a whole quite often we're referencing to growth pockets and and one of the like two of those growth pockets have been Latin so Latin America and Middle East and we're referencing to the numbers of of fast inapp purchase growth in in both but when you put you know the actual dollar amount and make them visible. You actually

understand that despite rapid growth like in this case, Middle East was growing almost 20% year-over-year, uh, Latin America almost 15% year-over-year. Nevertheless, the size of that market, so in case of Middle East, we're talking about a little bit over a billion when North America is 28 billion and Europe is 12 billion. So, it is still tiny. like you could dominate that market and it's actually better to just be good in in in Western Europe. Yeah, that's definitely a fair take. It's if you look at total sizes as you mentioned, it's it's not as big for sure. Uh but I I do think they're still worth paying attention to uh at some point if this growth continues year over year over year. These are very big populations. Uh you know, a lot of smartphone penetration in in these these places. There's a big focus especially in the Middle East on gaming. uh so if this continues to happen then you know one day we're going to wake up and it's not going to be so tiny right so I definitely think it's worth paying attention to uh and even now there can

be opportunities you know for uh you can you can definitely find row as positive campaigns when executed effectively so there's real potential for growth if approached strategically yeah and and is there a significant difference like when we're talking about the size of the market where does it come from is are those markets smaller like let's say in case of Middle Is the ARPO still really high and comparable to the more advanced markets like North America and Europe or is it, you know, is it population or is it spending or is it both? Uh yeah, our poo is definitely not going to be as close to to to something like North America or as the the tier one Asia regions for sure. Uh but I think that also means that you know CPI is going to be low. there's going to be some less competition and some of the the top uh publishers out there have actually made major titles worked in in the region. I I think uh I think PUBG is pretty big uh in in the Middle East. Uh Game of Sultan uh and there are some Apac devs that really moved into to LA temperly like like Free

Fire is a uh in Brazil. Yeah. Yeah. who have been able to actually reach pretty significant scale uh while being at the same time sort of a you know kings of the third war third what do you call them third third world countries or third world countries yeah or I think we're referencing them as global south or something like they keep changing the name but but uh not but not the three key markets which North America, Europe and Asia basically. Yeah, absolutely. It's true. if you want to reach the the biggest scales, those are the big three markets are just unavoidable for sure. But we do like to point out that there are opportunities in these smaller uh emerging markets and they're worth paying attention to. Yeah. Yeah. And as you said, getting in there because it's um cheaper, CPIs are lower and then you can grow together with the market uh rather than fighting for the scraps in the uh existing market. For sure. Yeah. I think that when it comes

to almost anything uh in games, building up that proficiency over time, that that knowledge of the market, you know, uh Scopio was working on IP games for years and they were making IP games with with Hasbro for years before they created Monopoly Go. Uh another example that comes to mind is Love and Deep Space, which was created by Paper Games. They created these these games for for Asian woman for years and then they came out with this this one that now it's I think over like half of their the revenue. It's a huge hit for them. So building up this proficiency and this this specialization over time. Uh if if you think that these these emerging markets are interesting and you know maybe they're going to be huge in the future, getting in now might be a good idea. This podcast is brought to you by Apps Flyier. In today's digital world, understanding your app's journey from discovery to download is more than just insightful. It's essential. Enter Appslier, the leader in mobile attribution and marketing analytics that allows you to measure the full potential of your marketing efforts, making every ad dollar work smarter. With Appslier,

that's your new reality. Dive deep into datadriven insights that reveal exactly where your users come from and how they'll interact with your app. Appslier, where your app's potential meets performance. You know, makes makes total sense. Well, let's talk about the other genres like which one are succeeding. So, sure. I'm just going to show um I think this one is correct. So, this one is uh United States and it is I believe this is revenue. So, strategy puzzle and casino are bringing in the cash. uh what are we what are we seeing in terms of the the evolution of the market in west United States being sort of a representative 60% of the western market yes tier one market what what have been seeing in terms of how the revenue is being divided in purchase revenue amongst top genres on mobile yeah yeah uh so as

you mentioned the casino puzzle definitely still on top so you know casino we're seeing games like like uh Monopoly go coin master are doing coin looters are really big for sure. Uh puzzle, you know, the everpresent Royal Match and and Candy Crush and all those different puzzle games are doing amazing there actually for for growth though. Um I think strategies seeing some of the most growth even in the United States. So the the games that I keep mentioning last for survival, brawl stars, white out survival and then the the biggest launch of the year last year, Pokemon TCG pocket, we all uh we we've categorized those all under uh strategy and it contributed to pretty significant growth in strategy in the US and and globally last year. Um yeah, car battlers, build and battle and mobile. So basically Supercell, Supercell, and then yeah, Car Battlers is Niantic and then of course the the Chinese Forex games for sure. Yeah. And then century games for for white out survival. Uh for for for puzzle we don't did see um the

biggest growers uh Match Factory. Um Mhm. Uh Royal Match, Gossip Harbor. So yeah, the the merge games are still doing really well. Royal Match still really doing really well. And uh some of these more hybrid casual games like like Match Factory. It's interesting. We're seeing a lot of the the casual publishers actually branching out into hybrid casual and seeing a lot of success there as well. And what happened to RPGs? Like I felt like just a few years ago everybody was playing RPGs. Like you had the Marvel, you got the Star Wars, you got way shadow legends, it was it was you AFK journeys and so forth. It was like the genre to be in and feels like they have been declining, right? It does. Yeah. It's it's definitely something that we have seen a decline in. RPGs uh as well as tabletop and sports were were three three genres in the US that that's been seeing decline in the past year. Uh, as for what's behind that, uh, I don't have any specific data to back this up. Um, but I feel like a lot of other genres have been taking what made RPG successful and applying in their genres and making it, uh, you know, all the

strategy games I just mentioned, a lot of them have have these like gotcha kind of elements that really allowed RPGs to monetize so well. Uh, and they they do a lot of things that RPGs haven't done yet. uh they're able to do like capture a younger audience by having more like bite-sized uh engagement. You can just play these, you know, Pokemon TCG Pocket, you can log in for five minutes twice a day, and that's that's good enough for sure. And they they have all the thrill of uh of of a gotcha game while while still, you know, they have the unique advantage of their nostalgia for all the millennials, of course. Um but this is something that a lot of the RPGs, they want to monopolize all your time. I feel like they want to you don't they have so much to do in these games. Uh, so yeah, I feel like a lot of players are getting fatigued whenever they see an RPG and they think, "Oh, this is going to take up all my time. Why why why should I give them all my time?" And you mentioned the sub genres like the Forex strategies and match swaps or dominating on the revenue side,

but you know, how how niche should the developers think about going when when they look at all the sub genres? There's plenty and of course sensor tower tool is is amazing in in seeing all the uh all the smallest subg genres and and how they're evolving. But what's your suggestion like how niche should a developer look when choosing a genre? Is it better to look at something that is smaller and kind of perhaps insignificant for many? Or is it better to look at something that is large like strategy, like slots, like match swap and try to take a small piece out of that? Yeah. Yeah. It's it's always kind of a fine balance, right? Trying to understand your audience size and and get that innovative gameplay that'll that'll get a really niche audience super that who are super engaged and will spend a lot of time and money in your game. Uh you know the problem is of course the more niche you go the smaller the audience. Uh but I I think in in this the post EDFA world it's kind of difficult to find niche audiences. uh there are you know ways you can get

creative but uh what I would say is I think it's you can try to target a niche try to target this audience with the high outs of LTV but make make steps to sure that your your audience is broad enough for you to find them and get them in the game uh so you know all these games that I constantly talk about yeah last for survival it's a it's a 4X strategy game which is traditionally it's hard to get people in involved in these games because there's there's so much going on in them you know there's there's 10 different systems and progressions and all these things to keep track of, but they, you know, they get people in the game with these more arcade style ads. Uh they have a really really slick 2y like task system that lets people know exactly what they're supposed to do when. So being able to take these steps, you know, things like IP uh to to get people into the game and get get that reach uh can allow people to find that balance between niche and uh audience size. M and is it so that I mean on the other hand when you think about it the uh the more competitive a genre you choose the larger genre you choose the hot the bigger the LTVs will be so the

more you have to actually focus on monetization and live ops and and innovating on your marketability to bring down the CPI so it's kind of like it's it's tough in order to enter a big market that is growing like match like strategy you have to have quite the operational model to even take a small piece. And at the same time, if you don't do that, then you're relegated to a niche genre where yes, the entry might be easier. Um, you might be able to establish a certain type of position, but even being a notable player in that niche genre is still a very small not always very small. It's still a limited amount of revenue. Yeah. Yeah. It's a challenge for sure. I think uh these these high LTV players, they're harder to find. They're more expensive to acquire. They're going to have high standards for they want to commit all their time and money. So developing games for them is going to be expensive as well. Uh so yeah, it's it's definitely true. I think targeting and keeping these players is is a high

rollers game and spending money, you know, is no guarantee that you're going to get them either. It's it's definitely a challenge and I don't have any any easy answers for that for sure. Yeah. And I think it just plays out with the whole um I mean you were helping us to get the the data for the annual predictions and and part of them is something that I like to look at is the new games being launched since 2012 every year. And again, we're just hitting new record lows. Like the amount of new games is lower than it was in 2012, which is when Sensor Tower started pulling the data and basically we got the the first free-to-play games in. So, it feels like there's less and less games coming out because it's just so challenging to establish a foothold in a mature market. So, you have you just can't launch that many games. Yeah. Yeah. It's there's so many amazing games out there and if you want to to stand out and and take a take a place, you have to be really high quality as well. Uh it's it's difficult to it's a risk as well, right? Even if you create something that you think is great, the the market might might disagree. Yeah, it could be a better product, but

actually I don't know. It's kind of hard to say because if somebody has been on the market for years, they just have such an extensive amount of content and such a uh audience base that nobody will leave to play your game that might be, you know, better production value or more interesting theme, but essentially the same experience. Like you're launching a new shooter. Okay, what do you have? Okay, it's like the same game but less significantly less content. And I kind of have to start from the beginning and I don't have my social graph here so that everything plays together and so we end up in a place where we have older and older games but then again these games have almost infinite amount of content because of the live op investments that have been the companies have been doing. For sure. Yeah. I think I don't know I I go in and open Candy Crush and it looks a little bit you know dated to me but it's still doing amazing. These players clearly love this game. and they love this experience and they they just keep going back, right? Yeah. Switching costs are really high and so because of that you have to

be innovative both on marketing and absolutely design. Yeah. Huh. Fascinating. Well, another thing that is growing uh when when when looking at the u the market is of course the uh the Gen Z audience. So uh we had we had um uh Tobius from from Google and he talked about the uh the Gen Z audience and he talked about that this year actually Gen Z audience will be the largest spending audience on mobile. Um can you talk a little bit about designing for Gen Z because you had this this interesting graph uh in your report? For sure. Yeah, it's uh whenever we're talking about Jenzi, I think it's it's interest good to take some lessons from from even outside of gaming, maybe from Tik Tok, that that app you guys might have heard of. Uh one thing I think people have learned from Tik Tok, of course, is that making things snackable. Uh making just the the the little the small time investment uh for players is going to make it more uh platable for for Gen Z for sure. So,

make it snackable, something that will continually capture their attention, something new and interesting. Uh, another thing that I think that Gen Z players enjoy is is social uh, elements. So, making it social with things like PvP, co-op, guilds, being able to to message each other and help each other. Uh, you know, if all your players are or if all your friends are are playing this game with you, I think you're much more likely to retain uh, in Gen Z or actually any generation, honestly. Uh, the last thing that that really comes to mind is kind of a a modern style, hitting a tone that that resonates with with Gen Z. Uh, they're they're for better, for worse, not looking to play uh solitire on their on their Windows 98. Um they have younger tastes, you know, in terms of art, music, dialogue, tone, and and hitting hitting those tastes, I think, is a good way to to attract these players. What's the typical Gen Z taste? Because it feels like all the companies when you say Gen Z, they're like, "Okay, so you want a purple-haired girl with a with a cyber tone." Like, is that what we're going

for? Uh yeah. I mean I mean there there's some of that for sure. Uh I don't know. I'm a little bit hesitant to try to put on my opinion. I'm actually uh in in the generation above Gen Z, so I'm afraid of showing showing uh my knowledge on on Gen Z. But yeah. Okay. I don't know much about specifics, but just in general. Yeah. Trying to trying to target them is in this way. Yeah. I'm I'm just I'm just curious because like I get immediately like like this is not for me. But but then I get so many of these games that look exactly the same. It's like okay now she has a ping hair. Now she has a like they and kind of like 80s vibe but then again with a little bit of a cyber bunk and and everything just looks so generic. It's almost like they ask AI like can you make this character Gen Z? It's like say no more. Have shaven head purple hair on the side. Web stores. You've seen what good looks like, but have you seen great? App charge is the direct to consumer platform backed by the likes of

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Here. So, here I have it. And then gender target development. Yes or no? Um this is an interesting. So, you have gender breakdown by genre and you have age breakdown by genre. Yeah. Uh, so we're looking at this. Sorry, I need to make this a little bit bigger on my screen. Yeah, no worries. We're seeing, you know, in the United States, no surprise, puzzle lifestyle, lots of women playing those games. On the other side of the board, sports, strategy, a lot more uh male dominated. Interestingly, some the some of the top uh strategy games that grew in the past year are a little bit more well balanced than than what this uh chart would suggest. Um, so it's whether when we're talking about whether you you should target a single gender or not. Uh, the sad answer is that it's complicated and it kind of depends because there are definitely games out there that are really focused on a single gender. You know, Brawl Stars is uh for the past quarter in in the US, it's about 88% men. So Brawl Stars is all about getting

getting male people in their their game and uh boys. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, Last War is like 77% uh males. On the other side of Love and Deep Space, the um the interactive story game for for women uh is 84% women. But then there are also games that are a little a little bit more well balanced. Royal I was surprised to see Royal Matches is 64% women, which is, you know, it's it's balanced there, but it's it's there's actually a decent amount of men playing this game, too. Yeah. White Out Survival, it's 54% men. It's 46% women. So really that much in a 4x game. Yeah, it really surprised me as well actually, especially compared to Last War. Um, Last War, I would think they would be quite similar, but yeah, I I didn't have a chance to dig into this more deeply, but I think it's really interesting that even in the same genre, you can you can find games that are able to to target both or genres or Yeah. or a single genre or genre. Yeah, this is an interesting because

like I'm the the moment when you say genre genre targeting gender targeting development. I'm thinking about games like um what's the u there was a space ape game that was Chrome Valley Customs and the uh the whole hypothesis was really clear. We're going to make a puzzle game. Everybody loves puzzle and like mostly puzzle 60/40 and then we're going to make it for dues because it's going to be all about fixing cars. And I believe Hutch made a similar type of game. It was Forza. It was also kind of like puzzle m puzzle game with cars. Something like that. I think it was I think it with Forza IP. And both I believe tanked. Yeah. And so I had this and again it's just like because you see the market as a whole. I see like individual games I'm like I don't know if that's the best way to go to find but but you're saying like no actually it is like there have been cases like white out survival where you're making a 4X game and half of the

audience could be women. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's a apparently it happens. It's definitely I don't know a welcome surprise for me too. Those two games that you that you mentioned specifically. Yes. I I don't uh maybe it didn't work out for them. So, I think Chrome Valley Customs did did pretty well for a while, but uh it's maybe a little bit less promising at the moment. Another game that I did look at though that's kind of similar is Century Games is Truckstar. Yes, true, true. Century Games is a Forex developer. Yes. Uh they actually made this Truck Star game, another male focused puzzle game, and I think it's still doing quite well actually. Maybe about 2 million per month since October 2024, something like that. For a puzzle game, that's kind of like that's puzzle. It's better than the other two. Yeah. And and for other two, like if some game is doing okay and then it kind of goes down after that, it's basically that they were trying to figure it out with CPIs and the rorowass and they were kind of overspending and at some point they're like, "Guys, we can't do this anymore." And the whole game kind of deflates immediately. So that's that

feels like Yeah. Yeah. That that story tracks, huh? Yeah. But they were good games. Couldn't care less about fixing cars, I'll be honest. Sounds like again like maybe as much as Gen Z would care about a purple-haired girl and this is how much I as a male care about like fixing cars, but um yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know about you, but might be a fantasy for somebody else. Yeah. It's not one that particularly targets me, but I guess a lot of fixing cars. Fixing cars. I just love fixing trucks so much. Yeah. I want to do all day. I'm a man. I need to fix trucks. Um uh here's another interesting graph that you had here is quality over quantity in new launches. And this is kind of going through uh number of new releases. And what you have here is not only the the decreasing amount though the decrease have significantly slowed down since 2020 uh but we're also seeing um what

genres have been have been coming out. So 2020 202 like 2021 seemed to be the year of puzzle. Uh 2024 again more more puzzle games. Uh but what can you talk about the the type of uh genres that are coming out and and how companies are are thinking about new game launches? Uh sorry I don't recall having to prepare for this question. No worries. Uh let me let me uh yeah we'll just remove this. But I can ask you about this. So the new game launches are decreasing, but there there's success of titles like Pokemon TCG Pocket that shows that their fresh hits still possible. Sure. U so so my question is more like what is the time a successful game these days spends in soft launch compared to what it was just a few years ago? So has the time in soft launch decreased or increased? Uh from what I saw uh after pulling it, it looks like

it's been increasing actually. U I think developers are really trying to make sure that their games are are ready to go for the most part at least on average. Uh maybe not every developer uh but Supercell probably releasing just just out of pocket all the time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But uh on average looking at more across the the market, I think uh successful games that have been seeing a decent uh per month revenue rate is have been seeing Yeah. they've been trying to spend more time in soft launch trying to hit those KPIs and make sure that they're they're ready for the market. Um the average that I that I've managed to pull for these more successful games uh was actually 200 days which is higher than I expected. Um I I think it might be skewed by some outliers there. Uh yeah, it's it's definitely been getting longer over time is from what I can see. And what about IPS? Is there more IPS that you're seeing already with new games coming in or or is the IP trend more around scaling games uh when they are

already live? No, there's definitely been a lot of IP games being being launched. I think I took a look at uh for games launched in the past four quarters uh 20% of the top 10 uh had an IP, 19% of the 100 top 100 and only 5% of the top 10,000. So, I I guess that's also a factor of, you know, if you're not one of these big bets, you're probably going to have a harder time having an innate IP in your game. Uh, but I I think that there's a lot of Yeah, there are a lot of games that are are seeing IPs in their in their launches. There's al also IP collabs that have been really popular as well. I think um out of the these top 10 launches, uh 30% of them, three of them had had IP collabs with them already. Uh which is really interesting to see as well. So, you said 90% of the games in top 100 have an IP. Sorry. 19 19 I was like, "Yeah, because 90 I think that's Korean market where it was 90." I remember something like that like 90% of out of all the new games being downloaded have an IP and that was already several years ago and it felt like you know our markets are even

though we think we're very advanced but really it is the uh the probably the Korean and the Japanese markets that are the most advanced in terms of mobile China as well. So it feels like we're trailing towards that direction where it's IP or bust. Yeah. Yeah, it could be. You definitely saw a lot of IP games launching launching in the east. Uh there was a solo leveling game. I think there's a Jiu-Jitsu Kais. A lot of these like anime kind of games. I think a lot of success over there. Um you know, loves anime. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to be too too generalizing, but I I think that's definitely fair to say. Um to see, you know, even even games that uh that have traditionally not been super or maybe even try to build their own IP. So like uh Hankai Star Rail has a collab with with Fate State Night, which is really interesting to see considering that Fate is one of their biggest competitors on on mobile with uh with a Fate Grand Order. Uh yeah, it's it's uh yeah, definitely I think it's interesting to see we're we're kind of trending in that direction with like the Pokemon releases this year. Um and all

the all the IP collabs. Well, last last graph that I have here is about market concentration. And this is again really interesting one. This is something that I like to look at with with all the graphs whenever analyzing the uh the markets. not only the uh the growth or decline of downloads and revenue, but I really like to see is what's the level of concentration because I feel like if the top two titles are taking 70% or more of the overall revenue, it's kind of almost impossible to break through. It couldn't happen, but it's just like it means that the audience is already being taken. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's definitely tough to break in there. That's a trend that I've seen over time is for the most part if there's a single, you know, or a couple of games taking up a large percentage of of these genres or subg genres. Uh, a lot of times it's going to actually increase over time. So, I actually dove in a little bit deeper. These, we're looking at genres right here. I I started looking at some subg genres specifically. So, Roblox is subg genre. Sandbox uh for all time their uh inapp

purchase concentration is 80%. For the past four quarters, it's 89%. So, it's actually increased over time. uh other other sandboxes haven't really been able to to compete on that front. Although to be fair, Minecraft is uh has been still sees a ton of engagement. It's just maybe the the product model there that's uh doesn't drive as much in that purchase model as uh as the as the model play. Uh for other other subg genres, you know, Clash of Clans, uh for the past four quarters, 81% marketing concentration, alltime 70%. People have tried to come in and dethrone them for for over a decade now, and it's just it's not it's not happening, right? Um, but there are some some interesting counter examples. Not not many, but some. I think the biggest one that comes to mind is is Monopoly Go. Uh, Censor Tower, we we uh True, true. That's a good example, right? Yeah. Coin Master in 202022 had 83% of the market. Uh, and then in the past four quarters, Monopoly Go has 58%. So, they're able to to come in and and take a lot of that market share. Interestingly though, Coin Master

is doing just fine. It seems that Monopoly Go more expanded the sub genre than than took share away from the others. That's that's a very interesting analysis actually. So when looking at highly concentrated market, it's not the strategy to come in and try to take audience from the existing players who have already kind of cemented their position, but it's more of a question. Can you expand this market? Is this still a very profitable niche that could be twice as big if we just come in and bring in more accessibility, more um relevance to it by having perhaps the right type of an IP? That's an interesting take. Yeah. Yeah. I I I think that's a really interesting insight that uh you can see across all the other examples as well. Yeah. Is there a data point that could show you that way that this is a market that can be expanded in terms of an audience? Ah whether whether a market can be expanded or not. Yeah. like how does Scopi let's let's give them the the benefit of the doubt cuz they're a smart organization

and they looked at Coin Master raking in Moon Active just printing money and they're like we got to get in we got to get a piece of this one and they they figure like I we found it if we bring you know the world's most famous tabletop game and we marry with the exact same mechanics not saying that they copied it but definitely got uh inspired by them and now they've expanded the market because they brought in a lot of new players. Yeah. Yeah. I it's tough to to say that there's a data point that that can point to that. You know, all all historical data doesn't include any innovation, any anything new you're going to do isn't included in that, right? Uh so it's hard to to say that Coin Master had was very different from all these other close to monopolies that I that I've mentioned just now. Uh and I'm not going to recommend anyone go after Clash of Clans or Roblox. uh many have tried with IPs. Absolutely. Yeah. It it's it's tough to to say there's a specific data point in there. I think it's I think it

might be become more more qualitative than that of of like where where is the the innovation? What where where does the new take where is the audience going to uh you know what are what's going to hook them? What's the new new take uh that's going to drive the the market expansion? H well let me know if you find that data point. Don't let anybody else know. I'll just keep using it in our consulting. The um Sam, it was a it was a pleasure. Thank you so much for for sharing uh insights about the uh the just a fantastic report that that you've built. When is the next report coming out on on game? Uh I believe we should have another report coming out in uh in July if I'm remembering correctly. Uh so yeah, look out for that. I don't want to give too much away right now, but I think yeah, it's going to be it's going to be really interesting for for the market actually. Well, that's awesome. So, come back then and let's focus on purely the uh the positive takeaway from the uh from the summer games report.

Yeah, of course. Yeah. Hope this was at least a little bit useful to to the people out there. Thanks so much for having me. For sure. For sure. And the link to the report is of course in the description below. Uh so if you want to get get the uh the full version, that's where you get it. It's interactive. You can choose by different uh chosen ge geographies and and and selections. So it's a amazing well-crafted report. And Sam, I wish you happy travels to the Far East. All right. Thank you so much. All right. Enjoy your time and thank you everybody for tuning in. Thanks for listening to the full episode. Now, did you know that Deconstructor of Fun isn't just your favorite industry podcast? We're also a bit of a consulting powerhouse. Now whether you're launching your next hit, scaling your live ops, or vetting your next acquisition, we've got you covered. From market research and go to market strategy to live operations tuning and due diligence, our team of experts works with the top names as well as the rising stars of the industry. So if you are

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