PocketGamer.biz Podcast Episode #4: Nintendo's mobile growth, Summer Game Fest, Skate 3 rumours

hello and welcome to the pocketgamer.biz podcast my name is rick cowley the editor of pocketgamer.biz and joining me today are matthew ford hello and kaylee parselton hello hello everybody is everybody doing well on this fine sunny thursday afternoon what day is it i had to take my time there because i couldn't remember it's pretty miserable where i am to be honest it's not the sunniest no it's beautiful here it's beautiful here as well beautiful sunshine and heat and warmth and everything like that if only we could go outside the same thing we say every week on the [ __ ] game without them is podcast that might as well be our tagline can we go outside when can we go outside the bucket gave it up this experience yes um it's all fun and games but we are still here literally talking about games which is good because there's lots of them to talk about um and we will be discussing those but from a businessy angle because we are a

business podcast and a business website um so we have some stuff to talk about from last week because we missed doing a podcast then but we've got uh jeff keithley's big summer game fest to discuss uh which he's announced and started doing reveals for we've got a bunch of financials to talk about mostly the the big ones nintendo and ea we've seen garden scapes overtaking candy crush saga for first ever time in terms of revenue and we're going to be talking about remote work and um certain studios are opening up moral jobs to being remote work only however it is streaming month on pocketgamer.biz where we are going to be doing some articles focused on uh streaming if you are listening and you're thinking ah i work in streaming and would love to contribute a guest article tupac gaming up is please reach out to me there's an article on the website you can find my email address on there get in touch we'd love to hear from our readers and anybody working in the streaming industry about what you're doing um the future of the industry all that kind of thing all very exciting

um but i just wanted to sort of start off by asking like what do we all think about game streaming and and cloud gaming and all that kind of thing matthew i know you're huge on stadia or at least like super into it uh yeah i mean i think it's a fantastic idea um i don't know if stadium stadiums nailed this um i i think i think you know people have to try it out and test and experiment it and then i'd actually go more to more towards microsoft with a project x cloud i think they're um way ahead of the competition in the game you know the likes of sony nintendo have known touching it at the minute in comparison i mean there's playstation and now i believe that uh does it to some extent but uh yeah x cloud i think is uh far and away ahead and and it's exciting you know to have the opportunity to stream on your mobile and the the quality of console games like that um and that's the only way right now i can see that coming to light

um with stadia they seem still quite far behind on a lot of their promises and um i just think by the time x cloud comes up with the next generation xbox with um what is it uh what's the next section series x isn't it there is x that's no but when that comes out i think they're going to push more into that and i think if staff you haven't called to date by then they might be in a bit of trouble yeah no absolutely and uh it's interesting that you'll sort of talk about the next gen because it's like when you think about xcloud i mean they're trialing it in all these different countries at the minute and and then you're just kind of saying oh well next generation is like well that's only a few months away really we're starting to see all the the new consoles being announced and stuff and maybe in like five six months we're going to see console games on every mobile phone i mean it will start

small i'm sure we'll have i think the minute they've got um the master chief collection so maybe it'll just be a million people playing that on their iphones for a few weeks and then we'll start seeing more games but yeah it's it's cool that this is coming so quickly as well and and i've heard lots of good things about xcloud no okay leave what what are you interested in or excited in the world of streaming and cloud gaming it is xcloud that's that's all i'm excited about i'm not i'm not it's not a secret to you guys i'm not a massive fan of study i don't think i don't think google nailed it no and um especially on writing on the pc site i've had to write loads about all the features that they've missed off and i don't i just don't think it was good enough really and i think it's taken way too long for them to even start rolling out the features that they promised on day one so i think when the next gen hits and when xcloud rolls out for everyone i think stadia um i think you are in a lot of trouble i really do i think i don't know if i've

mentioned this on this podcast before but certainly i think on the pocket gamer podcast i kind of have gone with the feeling that if google had just said this is early access and said it's a beta test of um if it's google studio or whatever you call it then then it would be fine and we wouldn't keep bringing it up and going oh this is terrible they've missed the mark on so many things if they just said we aren't where we're supposed to be so here it is just give it a try if you want i think it would we wouldn't get as much stick as it does i don't know yeah 100 it's something that epic has announced with unreal engine 5 they've said like for next gen it's gonna be rolling out in a beta phase i believe for the first three months and then it was uh by the end of 2020 it's going to be launched all together so it's even further away than that well there you go then even more so if you know study did something like that i think it's completely different outlook because at the minute it's just all a bit bad news with them um i think once they get around to launching games day and date like cyberpunk stuff like that and they

can maybe change the conversation um i i think they're struggling as well at the minute um circumstantially because everyone's stuck at home and the great thing about streaming and one of the potentials is to be able to go on the road and you know stream from anywhere you know you're in a hotel overnight you know putting your devices streaming you don't have to you know look your whole playstation 4 or xbox one around um but with nobody going anywhere at the minute um i think people obviously will result to you know use traditional consoles yeah okay i guess they've already got them in front of them so they probably just keep using them although that said like we have seen mobile games are still growing as well and and the joy of mobile games is you take them wherever so i don't know maybe maybe it is just the fact that the more we hear about google stadia the the there's nothing exciting or new or precious or whatever it's just oh that it's

every because they did their that was their um they did a stadium connect recently didn't know that was last week um it was like 15 minutes yeah and i was watching the whole thing and i was like well this is boring because you had do maternal which is already out you had a bunch of other games that's already out yeah they finally hit some exclusives and it was like okay you've got a handful of indie games there's nothing there that i'm rushing to buy on stadium it was it was very peculiar it felt like it could have been a blog post um yeah again it's it's messaging with google i find is to be the um the most disruptive thing just because on the run-ups of this connects they were hyping it up you know their social media accounts were like make sure you tune in we've got lots of big announcements and they didn't yeah yeah they just there's too much bombast and not enough caution i think and obviously you need bombast to hype and sell stuff but like when the product comes out and they're like oh well actually it doesn't have this it doesn't

have this it doesn't have this we don't have these games we're maybe going to get these games it just it always seems to fall flat and the weirdest part for me about that connect was when they took like a full three minutes to do an ad break just right in the middle just like here's all the people who are enjoying stadium it's like why i should be enjoying stadium with all the new games you've just announced like it felt very turn deaf yeah when yeah obviously anything they tweet out they're getting lots of co i mean every tweet people to uh you know send out gets angry comments normally but they are getting people requesting hey where is this what you promised and they're just not responding yeah it's true it's uh it's very weird but yes the the future of cloud gaming and streaming i think is very exciting it's just right now we're still in sort of a beta phase and maybe uh companies need to start stepping back a bit um years off that way yeah probably i mean i guess when you say x cloud coming out at the end of the year you know i think that's a possibility i

think it's still going to take some time i think the main problem is we need 5g um that's the next big step is we need more countries adopting 5g and more widely and particularly in the uk and the us that's where it's going to be the big thing and we need to us especially yeah and we need to make sure people stop throwing fire bombs at 5g mass towers but that's a different story for a different time um in terms of hype though some one that has just about managed to nail it is uh jeff keithley who keeley is it oh god i knew it was keeley i knew it it's because i'm from the north and i'm not excuse i'm from the north it's because my grandparents live near keith fleet anyway jeff keeley i do apologize jeff if you're watching i'm so sorry and thank you for watching please tell all your friends jeff keely um has sort of helped band together and curate a new event um called summer game fest

which actually is starting in the spring and is rolling through several months all through summer uh he brought on board i am eight bit who were formerly working with e3 uh as a producer he's curating it all and he's brought on companies like ea bandai namco sony bethesda bungie 2k microsoft we've already seen some of the announcements i think uh we're going to talk about some of those a bit later um yeah so obviously we won't have an e3 this year and e3 doesn't seem to be going for any digital thing um this is kind of our e3 now is to have this digital event do we think that this is going to stay is is this just a stop gap or is this actually going to hold fire kaylee you seem like you have an opinion on this um yeah no i think this could be the um i think this could be the future of it i i think e3 made a mistake by not doing something digital

to be perfectly honest so i think digital events like this are going to become more common and they might take over eventually at the same time people like to meet face to face for the meetings with the publishers and developers so it's more personal to do it face to face which is what e3 gdc and gamecom have going for them yeah i guess it's interesting because like i get i don't know how many consumers really necessarily want to go to these physical events i guess the main draw for a consumer going to physical event is you actually get to play the games and what we're seeing not necessarily on mobile but on steam and mostly on steam is they are now like releasing demos so people can play these games yeah and have that kind of thing um but in a digital format where they're not potentially getting ill where they don't have to travel around the world where they don't have to um deal with accessibility issues and that kind of thing so i think that's really interesting um matt have you seen anything coming

from this that's like got you excited and making you think this is the future of reveals yeah i definitely think going to be the way i do think e3 is going to struggle to come back next year um not just because the face the basic base capacity is obviously great people meeting but that's not really what e3 is about for a lot of it obviously it's got business deals and stuff that go behind the scenes but it is you know the bigger reveals the four days of hype um announcements announcements announcements left right and center um whereas i think gamescom can take that place and we noticed that a bit last year with jeff keeley doing his own um games tonight one night live yeah it's called um so i think it's sort of it was in a little bit of transitional period and for years you know so many people have been saying e3's dying and this i feel like has helped yeah basically i i don't want e3 to die i want to go to e3 i've never been i'd love to it's one of my dreams but

realistically i can't see it being around um just be how in the past how they've treated publishers and stuff um obviously there was the leaking of um lots of journalists personal details last year um which was um pretty horrendous um so i it's very difficult for them to recover because now that every developer and publisher this year outside of jeff keeley's own summer gaming fest if they're not partnering with him they're doing their own event you know ubisoft have announced one ubisoft forward um ign are doing their own and with partners people you know um just every man in the dog's doing one basically so it just makes it makes sense like they they don't they don't have to compete for coverage they can just pick any random day and go look we're going to own this and then all the news traffic is theirs and they don't need to rent out these huge coliseum like uh stages and stuff to do all the announcements and they don't need to pay for all the xboxes that they shove

under people's seats and they go look at me a seat you've got a 360 and everyone's ah the thing i think that's sort of kept e3 propped up really is is this sort of because when i was growing up and i'm sure this is the same for you guys and like you read the game's news and you go oh my god e3 sounds amazing it's this huge mecca where all the games journalists and publishers and developers are there and you get to play the games years in advance and all this kind of thing and and as i say like oh my god imagine being sat in an auditorium and you look down there's a 360 beneath your feet ah so great and all this kind of thing but i think that it it started to lose its luster after a while and as we went more digital anyway um as coverage of things went more digital because it was great for pr for press and print rather because you had this sort of delay between e3 and it was this mythical thing where it's all behind closed doors and then about a month's time you might hear about it whereas now you're at e3 and then it's just immediately live and the gameplay trailers are up and everything like that and anything kept behind closed doors is is just

left to die pretty much and loses all its focus and excitement which is when they started opening it up to consumers and stuff and i think it's that's the point at which they they really actually should have thought maybe we need to just scrap this whole thing and do something completely different i i still think it's going to be around for a few more years i just think it's going to be more like a pax east or something like that um whatever the taxes are um yeah just you know it'll be a more consumer-facing event it's more like it's when nintendo pulls out all together and um i mean x this is the thing sony have pulled out and xbox have to some extent microsoft do their own event next door which is sort of joining two of events so they're not actually technically involved with it um but if nintendo go it's just like why is anybody attending i mean nintendo isn't the be all and end-all of yeah microsoft are doing their own thing yeah they are the big pulls though you know um yeah obviously you can have

people like ubisoft and everything but again i just think if you don't have these big names there your third parties will attend either no that's true um and speaking of sort of the shift to digital and big reveals and stuff um we kind of were hinting at it earlier we spoke a little bit about it epic games has revealed um the unreal engine five uh big new um exciting woo look at graphics kind of thing i'm not a graphics person i don't understand any of it and i can't tell the difference between most things but the rocks rick the rocks look amazing i haven't actually watched the video but i mean are we are we excited did you did either of you watch the reveal and think wow this is like the future of games or yeah i did i thought it look stunning very impressed um what what the most incredible thing about this is apparently this was supposed to be shown at gdc and it was supposed to be playable which is that that's the most impressive

thing because it's like what we saw you're actually not just showing us like you know a cgi trailer or you know put something together this is full playable engine is already sort of gamepl mobile but i've never seen a game like you know as much as we love mobile they are there are limitations in on the platform compared to bigger consoles and stuff are we gonna see um mobile like those kinds of quality graphics on mobile in 2021 or how long are we gonna have to wait until we actually see that i don't know kelly have you got any thoughts on that without slagging off mobile oh i won't i like my job let's try and keep it um i don't think we'll um see it i know it's coming out for mobile in 2021 but i don't think it's got

the full impact and um use of it i don't think it's going to actually hit till the following year i don't you're going to truly see what you can do on mobile at release i think a year or two and then we'll get some very very pretty games and how good is fortnight you're gonna look like that's that's weird that's where the tech's gonna really hit it's due to um come out on android first is that right um i believe end of this year and then it's yeah yeah yeah that sounds right um yeah i think it's gonna be able to it's gonna be like anything you know with last generation the demos and trailers will get shown at the start and not what we get from day one it's what we get in the middle of the life cycle nearest the end you know stuff like the last of us coming out now it looks stunning you know and that's something that we were shown when originally you know games came out obviously that's on its own naughty dog engine and stuff like that but the same with unreal we'll be showing games like um this um

game that looks like um female prince of persia um or tomb raider as we call it yeah okay uh but like that sort of game i don't expect for a long time especially on mobile i still think that's a way off but um it's it's definitely exciting one of the more interesting things though that they kind of snuck out with that reveal it's like oh here's the big flashy unreal engine 5 for all the people to look at also they are now um increasing like the revenue cap before you start having to pay royalties so any developer using the unreal engine which is free to use and free to download and developing now has a cap of you have to have made a million dollars in revenue before you start paying unreal any money which is wild because how many games out there actually make a million dollars like the i think the question there is is that targeted more mobile developers who are more likely to hit these kinds of ceilings of revenue um or is this still like prestige games

and big companies use it using it for like proper console 60 dollars apart games because that to it to hit a million dollars on that kind of game you need to sell i can't do maths but at least like 150 000 copies of your game and that is increasingly becoming harder and harder is that actually right i wish i could do maths but i think it sounds like on mobile it feels like that's that's a more reasonable target because we always see games start developing and like getting that much money and they can have there's no limit to how many times people will pay in it because there's always iops and stuff i don't know like is it more faith in mobile to hit this ceiling or is it just epic kind of swinging their their big fortnight money around and going we don't need your cash anymore here's our toys go have fun i think it could be both um you know mobile definitely has the capacity but you know same with pc console um there's no reason why they can't take advantage of it and

it depends on the it's it's a game by game basis for a lot of it so it's hard to just do a blanket statement and just say yes this will work for it but yeah mobile definitely has the potential yes good also can i just correct myself female prince of persia is princess of persia so [Laughter] yeah no i'm corrected thank you i mean tomb raider also works it's the same game these days the trailer was not tomb raider i can guarantee you that well i haven't watched it because uh i'm not interested in graphics but you know there we go i'll take your word for it uh the other thing that epic also revealed is they are i believe adding their online services as part of the the development tools which is also very cool and interesting um i wonder if people are going to start adopting unreal more than they do unity because i know the unity is still hugely popular particularly on mobile

um i guess because i but i don't know why i've like i've never i've tried to develop in unity before but i'm very stupid so actually like making a game it's really really hard and i've tried to i've looked at unreal as well and it looks like even harder and stuff so i'm just wondering if like this is going to attract more developers which is probably what unreal one like epic wants is more developers on the unreal platform spreading it spreading the word rather than unity so i'm wondering if that's actually going to draw people away but i'm not gonna that's probably why they're willing to take it as well yeah uh but we weren't banging on about that too much because we do have things that we like super want to talk about such as uh nintendo who you may have noticed we are big fans of on the podcast and just in general given how much coverage we give them every time they so much to sneeze uh they released their financials lately um lately recently um and we saw i should have this open in front of me i think it was 11.5 percent increase in mobile revenues uh over the last year is that right

matt you did the story that is right yes yep switch top 55 million nice that was uh unit sales no not dollar value because that would be bad times indeed um and yeah i believe you would say someone was saying i think it might have been daniel ahmad on twitter that mobile now makes up four percent of uh nintendo's revenues whereas previous quarter made up three percent of nintendo's revenues so we are actually seeing nintendo growing um it's in its mobile thing is anybody surprised i am a little bit if i'm completely honest but um i don't know has anyone sort of been looking at nintendo games recently and going man these are going to be huge these are going to make it four percent of nintendo's revenues in a few minutes i i think the difference is if you look at the uh 2018 to 2019 the games they put out um it just makes sense why you know they've made more this year um they put on pocket camp in september 2017 i think

that sounds reasonable yeah no i think it was november 2017. so they put out pocket camp then and then they also put out dragalia lost so they were the only two mobile games they put out that year now compare it to last year 2019 where they put mario kart 2 and dr mario world so you know animal crossing is a big deal there's no doubt about that but it's it's definitely blown up circumstantially here i mean mario kart is on another level well i i don't know about that i haven't seen any because we've seen center tower figures and stuff like that in estimations nintendo's never properly revealed um a breakdown of revenue but i don't think mario kart has done like fantastically well whereas animal crossing continues to do consistently well and is the second highest grossing game meanwhile dr mario which you mentioned failed completely it was a massive yeah that failed did really well yeah did it i mean i haven't seen any figures lately of like how well it's particularly done pocket

camp started well but then it it went off and it's just come back recently yeah that's just because of the uh trend mario has actually continued to be to do reasonably well and i think just overall dragalia lost did very well as well but what you've got to think is it's pocket cam came out in 2017 so you've got to think financial years and stuff like that how much is actually been took into you know accounts and for these financial um results here so i think to say it's gone from three to four percent it's not that huge of a jump and it sort of makes sense why with the games and you've got to think they've also got the existing catalogue on top of that yeah that's true yeah yeah when you when you put mario kart on top of fire emblem heroes animal crossing regalia lost like that's that's where the revenue is really coming from is that additional stuff the thing that i found interesting in is that they didn't say anything about like new mobile games that they're going to be releasing over the next year they've kind of focused on we are going to be um focusing on the games that we currently have although i believe in sort of the q a

afterwards um someone has said that they actually are developing mobile games and they're just really not ready to talk about it i mean do they do they need to start releasing more mobile games or do they need to start focusing in on the ones that they've got should they take the supercell approach it's kind of what i'm going with for i mean yeah i think they should focus on the ones that they've got to be perfectly honest um i don't fit like i'm not might not be as massive nintendo fan as you two but i do i do still love it and um it's like last year as an example they released mario kart but less about dr mario well the better so go with what works and build on that rather than release any more duds yeah i agree to some extent i think games like mario kart tour and pocky camp you can definitely build upon you know they're two huge ips and and with animal crossing being the craze it is right now it would

make sense to you know make a bigger deal of that yo hey look we're doing an overhaul here's some new features here we took out a few things and you know made some improvements i think this would be the time to strike the same with mario kart but i think you could do that any time to some extent just because mario kart is in the league of its own you look at switch sales it's nearly at 25 million i believe and yeah i think the second closest is about 18 million so it's in a league of its own altogether um apart from that i think we need to get a zelda game oh hell yeah what does zelda mobile game look like though that's i've always i've been wondering this for years and years and years like how would they even do that i don't care as long as it's older i think you go to small dungeons and do miniature experiences something like that 2d you obviously can't well i mean then again ocean horn did it quite well on mobile um but i think i'd go 2d i think it's the easier one to transition to mobile yeah that makes sense

um and in terms of other games that nintendo have been talking about lately and actually releasing um we are in sort of a very privileged position in that about an hour and a half ago nintendo decided to just randomly announce that they do actually have a paper mario game coming out and it's coming out in two months oh my god which it's just it's ridiculous it's like oh yeah we've got a mario game here's a tweet um it comes out on july 17th are you kidding me that's no time to build up everyone it's just like it's like beyonce suddenly dropping lemonade or whatever i don't i'm not done yeah yeah it's sorry apex legends i mean is this is this is this the future of game reveals just tweeting it out there because like you know we've had nintendo switch we've had switch directs and nintendo directs in general before but there's always at least like 24 hours warning um i mean do we think that this is going to be just how it goes from now on or all the big all the big developers just go oh yeah

uh this game is just it's out there we go it saw it fifa 21 is available now and they just put it on a tick tock video or something is that how it's gonna go or i don't know um i quite like it though to be fair i just it's just a shock of it it just makes it just like it for you to obviously made your day i've never yeah i mean paper mario is like my favorite ever series so it's i'm ecstatic for this like i just think this is what i mean that i was just like literally looked at my phone and there is nintendo america tweet here's a new paper mario game the origami king i'm like what you can't just do that to me um i'm hugely excited if obviously that's not coming across which clearly is um it's a little disappointing though because it's not as exciting as it could have been if it wasn't indirect as we're saying you know when they have their e3 presentation normally when they stick this in that is you know

you get hype moment that that is you know what people look forward to in the games industry all year round these amazing reveals and just to drop it on a thursday afternoon just by hey this game's coming out it's exciting it's just nowhere near on the same level it's see when they do this kind of thing it always feels to me like they don't actually have faith in the game so it was like it was similar with um yoshi's woolly world or not yeah what was that what was the switch yoshi game it was the woolly world and yarn or something yum yum i don't know i just know it was jano she won it was it yeah no i think that's a ds one anyway it doesn't matter crafted world crafting world that's it the cardboard one yoshi's crafting well i remember when they were kind of announcing that and it was just like um oh it would just be in the middle of a direct there it'd be one of the casual announcements there oh we're making a yoshi game anyway moving on and it always felt to me like when they do that it's because they don't have the faith to put like a huge marketing push into it and like i feel like that kind of makes sense for paper mario because as much as

it's one of the best series that nintendo has and it has a huge fan base like of hardcore fans who are definitely gonna buy this one they kind of screwed the series a bit over the past few games um it's because they've experimented too much and taken away from what people actually love about paper mario or matthew i know you're going to defend color splash no no yeah no no yeah it is debatable to some extent but yes the um arguably since super paper mario have been changing the format so um there isn't really a format for paper mario to some extent now um because three out of five i mean four out of five have all been different yeah like um so it sort of does make sense um i know i mean five are different than the fifth one's different sorry what i mean is so you've got the first two you've asked me to do this now so i've got to do it so you've got the original and thousand-year door which are the turn-based you know general adventure and everything like that which everyone loves then you've got super paper mario which is more like

your 2d traditional mixed in with 3d so like your normal super mario brothers games mixed in with that you've then got sticker star which we don't like to talk about um brings in sticker elements which nobody likes and then colour splash sort of built off that a little bit but then changed it up a little bit more um and went source back to how the original work and it was sort of a mesh of them but it still wasn't right and now this new one seems to go back even further to the original two while bringing in uh color splash um so while that's out of the way um i i know you mean about the casual announcements um i think the thing is paper mario is not a game you end on in a direct um yes it's got a big fan base but it's not it is as you say a yoshi game where you it'd be you know they have the 40 minutes announcements here's you know lots of new games papermirror is somewhere in the middle there and everyone that loves it gets excited then but you just drop it on the thursday

um i i just wonder if it's circumstance you know with covered 19 and everything as well yeah that's true because they don't they've sort of there's been lots of rumors going around that nintendo's just not doing big uh directs not doing any e3 style thing but obviously he's got these games and needs to release them and make money and keep people hyped so maybe this is how nintendo's actually just going to keep doing this in the future it's just at least for now and this the rest of this year if it's got a game just go here's the game and then try and keep moving on because i guess the the thing as well is that nintendo i think it's already spoken about is that um or not necessarily spoken about but because one of the rumors of the reasons why they push back a direct is because they are not used to working from home and they're not that all their games have had to end up delayed um obviously paper mario clearly hasn't been delayed that badly because they've renounced it with two months to go um so that's probably going gold sometime soon but i think um i completely forgot my point i just i knew i was going somewhere with this um hang on yeah so what they're actually

doing is they kind of just they'll have to sort of look at what games are actually ready and available to them and then go right i guess we just have to announce that now um because i remember i i i think i don't know if this was technically public information but i know that um the starting period of their mobile time um fire emblem heroes supposed to come out like third or fourth in the roster it just happened that the uh i know super mario run in fact was supposed to come out third or fourth and it was supposed to be fire emblem but fire emblem was taking too long and super mario was basically done so they just they just sort of went okay we're announcing that instead and threw it way forward and and just pushed that forward so i think nintendo has the capability to do that flexibility but it still just turned out yeah it still just feels a bit weird um to not have this big build up in this big hype um yeah which i guess is what we're also losing in e3 so i mean yeah but i just can't see why they can't do a direct still because if they they have the announcements as

like a paper mario just like that they could just do a paper mario direct people would be excited for that i don't think you could talk about paper mario for 20 minutes and hold but they've done xenoblade and stuff like that so yeah i think i think matt could talk about him if you're watching miyamoto sam um if you are watching why thank you um okay let's move on from nintendo before we we we lose matt to the thrall of faith too much um and we'll move on to something which i think kayleigh's particularly excited by um not necessarily the first bit of this but the second bit uh ea is um their finances have also come out is financial season um and they have announced so quietly in the in the footnotes of their their presentation um that there will they will be soft launching two new games this year um it might have been three new games and i've i've sort of discounted one of them because we already know about um plants vs zombies three which they didn't include in there when they said oh we're soft launching games they

didn't mention plants vs zombies three which we do know they have soft launch um i mean first of all well hang on that doesn't my first of all doesn't make sense unless i introduce the second of all um the second of all is there's also been some rumors going around that skate three a 360 and uh ps3 game might be coming to mobile for some reason kaylee you seem super psyched about this oh yes do you think it would actually work on mobile though because skate three to me is a very particular style of gameplay with the whole trick stick stuff and that kind of thing like one why are you excited and two do you think it would actually work okay so i'll start with number two i think it i don't think it's gonna be to the standard of a console obviously because i with any skateboarding game there's hundreds of hundred and hundreds of tricks there's loads to it but um i think it can work it can work on mobile i do believe that but just not to the standard console

but i'm i am i grew up skateboarding like massive skater when i was younger grew up on tony hawk i loved the skate games and um so to find out that one could actually come to mobile i don't it could be bad and i'd actually give it praise it's because just because i love skateboarding games skate three um actually celebrated its 10-year anniversary three days ago um yeah yeah um yeah may 11th so i think it might just be yeah just something to tie in with the anniversary although you think they've announced that by now yeah i was going to say like if they were actually going to do this that would have been a great time to say oh by the way skate 3's on mobile now i mean it it's an odd choice um i mean everyone's still waiting for a skate for right i mean yes the amount of excitement that came out for the new tony hawk remasters pro skater one and two um which was part of jeff keeley's

uh summer of gaming yeah um that got skate three trending just because many people you know want it and everything um a remaster or anything like that new iteration um i just don't think anybody happy with this to be honest i think it can make some money i think it could do well but i don't think the vocal again is it a vocal minority or not but i i don't think the people that have grown up playing these games want it for mobile and then they want the concert one absolutely but um i i'd settle for a mobile one just just to have something new to be perfectly honest yeah i feel like a straight port of it onto mobile just wouldn't work and maybe but like if you take it away from skate three and it's um it's a completely different game now it's like at what point does it stop being skate three and start just being skate mobile which i think that could also work but there have been mobile skate games like i think it's touch grind is uh the big series where you just you it's just your fingers on the skateboard and you do the tricks and all that kind

of thing and that's but that's kind of cool and fun but very very lightweight whereas skate 3 is always a bit more in depth and and that kind of thing so i i'm curious to see if this actually happens and and how it does work for something like this i always find um for something that's an established console brand that makes his way to mobile which obviously much of the internet will um jump on and hate immediately it's great to have a console game ready alongside that to go look hey we're making skate mobile but we've also got skateboard ready or like he's coming next year do you know what i mean so then people are both camps are happy maybe that's what they're waiting for maybe we're just holding off on skate 3 because skate 4 isn't ready yet i need to make it i need skate 4. i need that in my life [Music] sorry to just disappear from mobile but yeah skate 3 is the best one of the best games ever made so a fourth one would not go with it uh in terms of the ea soft launch games

i mean they have all these franchises and stuff is there anything that we would particularly want to see or is anything we we are well you might expect i mean they've already got the fifa game locked down and they just update that regularly now i wonder if they're going to do anything for the nfl or um i don't think they have the nba license that's with 2k isn't it so that's right yeah yeah and i know that um nifty games who are a smaller young upstart publisher of um of sports games have just got the nfl um license they just got the mba license they're probably going to start getting other licenses based on who's investing in them wink wink take a closer look at that one boys uh and yeah i think it's it's interesting i wonder if ea are gonna either start pushing harder on the the sports games they do have or if they're gonna start looking at other um licenses that they have because i feel like there's been a whole bunch of ea star wars games or star wars games in general that have been like talked about but not soft launched yet i feel like there's one that's like

jew at some point i wish i could remember what it was called oh it's going to kill me someone else talk about what they want in their games for a sec while they google this i i'm looking forward to apex legends on mobile of course yeah i'm a huge apex fan i've played probably 200 hours of it on console it just seems ideal for mobile and we've seen how fortnite and um has transitioned to it incredibly well and pubg as well you know they're both behemoths on the platform and apex legends just seems a perfect fit yeah that makes sense um the star wars game i was thinking of is rise to power which is in a closed pre-alpha test on google play at the minute um i feel like if it if they're taking so long on this i imagine we're going to start seeing that um getting some sort of traction soon and if they're if they talk about game soft launching games i reckon that's going to be one of the next ones at the

very least that makes sense yeah cool it sucks when stuff makes sense because then we all go quiet yeah you're totally totally killed it that was logic [Laughter] this is why it's hard doing a podcast about about business is that you have to be logical when you're too logical everyone just goes yes and then you have to move on uh speaking of moving on so um playrix is a is a big developer um kind of came out of nowhere a few years ago with garden escapes and then it's kind of grown on that with homescapes and stuff now one of the i would argue probably one of the biggest um casual developers in the world and that has been kind of proven by the fact that recently uh apparently data shows that garden escapes is the first match three or match plus uh build game to take a title oh sorry match plus build i always say match plus in my head as if it's like oh it means match four which used to be a thing for about two days um match through a match plus build game

to take the title away from candy crush of the highest monthly global consumer spend there is unfortunately a lot of couching in this story it's it beats it but only in terms of it's a match three game um and it was for one month in revenue however i still think that's really impressive because uh garden escapes is in essence a completely different game to candy crush um because candy crush saga is just this constantly evolving game where you just get more and more levels whereas gardenscapes has a full narrative involved in it as well um anything can if anything can topple candy crush it's always worth reporting on because it you know what is it november 2012 the last time since this yeah i think that's right broken you know candy crush is just incredibly you know the legs it's had and continues to do so so whenever you know something comes in and managed to supplant it like garden escapes has it's absolutely worth shouting about yeah

uh and the other interesting thing is that player x we've got some data from sensor tower which is suggesting that playwrights has now cleared 1.1 billion downloads across its entire catalog off games with gardenscapes i believe is the top spot yep 324 million stalls of gardenscapes and then you've got homescapes which is a very similar game with a different narrative which is 312.4 million downloads and then township and fishdom which continue to do well for both of them um yeah i mean like why do we think that people are turning to gardenscapes and homescapes instead of the typical match 3. i have an opinion about this but i'll let someone else talk first um does that has anyone even played gardenscapes uh i think i have hey finally i think [Laughter] you pressed a memorable impression apparently oh yeah you probably played something similar to it because i think

a lot of games saw gardenscapes and went hang on a minute they've got something here yeah give me a second it might even be on my phone i haven't played games games but i have played this latest game and mana matters yes they're because they're pushing it to that last week yeah that's a whole different genre for them isn't it because they're moving into um he didn't object yeah yeah people are weird it's on my phone hey so you haven't played it i haven't played it but you don't remember it i guess now i've played another game since then um i mean my experience i got really into homescapes when that first launched um i don't know why it just i think so this is my feeling on why these games doing really well and particularly now when we're all sort of inside and not doing anything the narratives of these games are well first of all they have narratives so you have a reason to keep going back and they have this energy system where you win sort of like the ability to do things by winning matches in the game so

you you solve some match three puzzles and it goes and it gives you a star and then you can spend that star on building something new in your house or your garden or whatever and then you just keep going and going like that um i think what's appealing to people on that sort of front is that we can't go outside and i mean some people have gardens but they can't go out and start playing with them um or some people don't have access to like wide-open greener spaces anymore so gardenscapes i imagine gives that sort of release where you can go oh i'm gonna build a little garden and it's gonna be lovely and peaceful outside and also i'm gonna play this game and spend some money on it um and the same for homescapes as well where you're building up a mansion instead it's like you have some that's it you have some control over your life [Laughter] as sort of distressing as that is i think that might be it because it's not having control over something and being able to go right i want to put this there and this there and this there while still having the core gameplay loop bringing you in that might be i think why it's going on also probably playwrights are spending a lot of money on user acquisition in a minute because it seems like a

open goal um for making money yeah that makes sense to me um you know you know the us came out on top i think they've got say two billion um of the total figure they've accounted for um that's two billion dollars in in revenue not uh downloads just yeah thank you uh so i didn't make sense you know uh just with everyone being locked down and everything like that to have some way to express yourself um through a garden or the projects anything like that and if you've got a narrative hooked into it it goes a long way yeah absolutely um again all-round agreement that's why i'm the editor because i have all the best opinions [Laughter] except for things that aren't mobile games um right we do have one final topic and i'm going to take a quick quick my water tastes like tomatoes and it's

awful um quality yeah pro tip so we're going to do a new segment now it's called pro tips of uh lock down lifting pro tip don't leave an open tune of tomatoes in your fridge next to your uh brita filter anyway that's the end of that segment kwali is now opening more roles to remote workers um so quality obviously is a hyper casual developer i say obviously quality is a hyper casual developer based in lemington spa in the uk um and um they before had never done any kind of remote working everyone sort of had to move to the bloomington spa to work at their studio they are now opening up to 14 new positions that will be exclusively for remote workers or i think you get the option basically but they will be the capability of working entirely from home is there and it's a something that they've sort of learned from whilst all working from home they've learned actually we can run a company like this and still make money and still make it work um which i think is really interesting

do you think this is going to be the beginning of a new trend are we going to see even more developers sort of looking at their current systems and going actually we can make this work i think so that's um one of the silver linings to covid19 is obviously before everyone said no you can't work from home you can't work remotely it just doesn't work and actually no this is proven that you can and you can do it effectively and this week i've been fortunate enough to do a couple of interviews and um both of which said yes they will same as kwali be happy to move remote working into their structure because they've realized there's benefits to it and um it's actually not as difficult as they thought it was going to be excellent yeah i think funny enough um saw this week the co-founders of respawn they opened a new studio and they announced it's going to be fully remote working yes of course yeah um and then you've got the likes of like

uh roll seven um who made the ali ali series and other such other wonderful games they have always been remote working and they're sort of thriving in that um i saw the um media tonic who made gears pop and other stuff they've started they've started saying like they're hiring in the minute but they're also saying well we are kind of open to the idea of remote workings i think we are already seeing developers sort of take that on board and make it happen the thing that so i um as you may well know obviously you in the chat uh and as our listeners and watchers may know uh we hosted our first ever pocketgamer.biz roundtable this week and the discussion there was around um how covered 19 is affecting the games industry and also the shift to working from home and i think there was a lot of actual trepidation uh in that um chat about are we going to see more studios offering remote working because i i sort of posed the question like is

is how much of things change how much things being um affected and it sounds like everything across the board of the development pipeline even beyond just like getting art assets to other people when they're like gig of huge file sizes getting that kind of uh pro like code and assets and that kind of thing is proving difficult but also the publishing side of it and talking to people um the hiring side of it because people like to like actually meet people in real in real life before they hire them which is was very unique to me having um the still media way of uh just do it online and then you're done and then never meet anybody until we do power gamer connects in london um so yeah i think i think i don't know if if everybody's gonna latch onto this i don't know if the bigger companies like i don't know if we're gonna see ea turn around and go right um remote working for everybody kind of thing um yeah i i don't think for everyone i think it would just be more up and more accessible um

and hopefully it would be better for everybody you know um we work from home it's definitely much better for my situation right now and i think you know there's so many people out in the world that would love the opportunity and the other benefits from it is that being able to employ anybody from anywhere you've got a wider um range of talent to pull from you know not everybody has to be in london you know you can you can pull from the whole of the uk for instance yeah and um you know it's it's it also means that people with like accessibility issues as i was saying before with attending events they they can easily well more easily uh presumably get set up in their in their home offices and as long as the companies are supporting them in that way and providing the right equipment and stuff it means that you can have just yeah as you say like basically anybody as long as they're the right fit they don't have to then uproot their entire lives that you don't have to think oh well do they have children do they have family that kind of thing do they have a reason to stay in and can they just

uproot that and move halfway across the country or halfway across the world or whatever yeah more options the better yeah i'm wondering if i don't know how far this will go though if we'll see like studios opening in los angeles who say oh we'll accept remote work from anywhere or if it's still gonna have to be okay well we're gonna do it but you have to be in the right time zone well that kind of thing i don't know if how far we're gonna take remote working um but i think i think it's fun i'm really interested uh fun i think it's really interesting to see like where this is gonna go and how it's full involved it's a bit of a laugh in it you know everybody's just getting together on zoom and chatting and making games it's all it's all fun virtual backgrounds you know if only i could get my virtual backgrounds working my virtual background game would be so strong i will be buying a green screen soon i swear just to make it happen um right i think that's that's kind of everything that uh that we had to talk about today uh which is great i imagine this has gone on way longer than i thought it has i did not have a track of the time

or the day or the date or anything at the moment is all just one sort of ceaseless sludge of time moving forwards and please god let me go outside sometime soon uh thank you all for joining us uh all of our wonderful listeners and watchers on youtube and just in your ears in the background uh it's always a pleasure doing this and chatting to to these folks about all our thoughts and stuff like that um i should probably do some announcements about our upcoming digital events next week uh on the 19th so tuesday 19th at 4 p.m uh british summer time we will be doing another round table this uh one will be about pitching and we'll feature uh people from lockwood publishing and deca games and we've got sophia from our team who's also going to be doing uh we're just going to sit down and talk about like pitching in this time and uh how any advice on doing it and all that kind of stuff um we'll also have another one of those in a couple of weeks and i think we're going to try and keep that on sort of a weekly basis

um we've also got pocket gamer connect digital number two coming up that is i always get the date wrong but i think it's june 8th someone correct me no it's june 8th uh june 8th to the 12th thank you uh tickets are available for that right now midterm pricing on that is going to end soon so if you want to discount a ticket now is the time to get one um we have just announced that we are um improving our meeting system that was one of the sticking points of the last one but this time around it's gonna be vastly improved we've got a whole other rafter features and of course all the wonderful talks and chats uh we may even have a digital uh podcast going live during that as well i will have some roundtables during that time as well we've also got uh blockchain gamer connects coming up digitally and we will have more events to talk about in the future i'm sorry i'm sure both digitally and hopefully physically um and i think that is everything so all that leaves me to do is to say thank you to matthew for joining us thank you thank you to kaylee thank you

and thank you to me thank you for for organizing this and doing such a great job as a host of a podcast uh this has been the gamer.biz podcast please do check us out on pocketgamer.biz uh if you don't already to find out even more about all the stories we've talked about and great interviews news all that kind of good stuff and we will see you next week goodbye bye bye