Sensor Tower's AppMagic acquisition and Sega's brutal Rovio comments | Week in Mobile Games podcast

Hello, welcome to the pocket.biz podcast week in mobile games where we chat about the week's news and provide some insights. I'm Craig Chapel, head of content at pocket gamer.biz. With me as Eva is our new newly promoted features and data editor, Aaron Assel. Congratulations, Aaron. Welld deserved.
Thank you. Thank you. Congrats.
And our deputy editor, Paige Cook, is also here with us. We've had a two week hiatus. My bad. We've just been super busy traveling to games on the town. I'll talk about that in a bit in Brazil. Uh so yeah, it's been an interesting fun busy couple of weeks, as is life for everybody. But uh enough about me. Aaron, how you been? Where you been up to?
Yeah, not doing too bad. Thank you. I've had a bit of a a cold that's lingering on. So, if you see me in the background on mute sort of jolting up and down,

that's probably because I'm coughing.
Jolting up and down sounds like you're going to be having some sort of seizure.
Yeah. Well, you know, it can get pretty intense. Um, but you know, I'm a lot better now. Um, it's just trying to get rid of this cough really. Um, so, but yeah, I haven't really been up to that much exciting. Like I normally, as I say, I normally try and go out and do something so that I can talk about it on the podcast. Um,
you've had three weeks.
Yeah, I know. I was trying to think like what have I really been up to? And it's like, well, the bank holiday weekend, I sort of stayed in bed cuz I wasn't feeling well. Then I think the most exciting thing, like I've been playing some games on on the Switch, but nothing new. Maybe the most exciting thing like last week, I don't know whether any of either of you watched it, there was a like David Atenburgh like concert celebration thing that I just randomly stumbled upon one evening for his like

100th birthday, which was quite, you know, it's it was just on normal telly, but it was quite an enjoyable watch. I would recommend on BBCI player if you missed it. Not sponsored.
BBC is not going to sponsor anything. tight tight budget. Literally for for people that don't know, BBC's always having his budget cut. I swear to go.
Cool. That sounds I I hadn't actually watched the concert, but I did hear about it. Someone made the joke to me that cuz he's 100 that means he can no longer play with Lego.
Maybe just brought the Pokémon ones out.
No, can't you can't use them. 99. Um, all right. Thanks for that, Aaron. Paige, what have you been up to?
Um, yeah, similar. Nothing too exciting. But in the world of games, I've actually cuz I'm usually really bad at finishing like actually taking the time to finish my games. And I feel like lately I've been on a little bit of a roll. I think maybe it's cuz they're shorter. So I uh I finished Capcom's new game Pragmata.

That was
it was okay. I liked the game play. The combat was really good, but um I didn't really care much for the story. Like I've seen so many people like really loving the story and like this father daughter relationship and I was like I don't know if I'm just not great with kids but I I just was like I don't really care about them. So yeah I I thought the story was just a bit predictable but the gameplay wise brilliant. And then I finished another game called Ailion. It's on Game Pass. I thought I'd give it a go. It's like a sci-fi game. Again I was a little bit disappointed. It's there's lots of like I'ming around in it and the mechanics just got a little bit tedious, but I stuck it out. Uh finished that and then I played Mixtape which is like a narrative kind of just like story game. I think I finished it in 3 hours. It's super short. You can just do it in one sitting and I thought it was really good. It ended and I was like, "Oh, that was a like really great game. It made me smile a couple of times." And then over the last I don't know week I've seen so many headlines and discourse about this

game. like either people absolutely love it and think it's game of the year worthy or people are like this shouldn't even be classed as a video game like it's it shouldn't be called a game and people are very mad about it so yeah lots of gaming drama about that one I just thought it was good and then I looked online made the mistake of looking online and was like oh no
yeah your first mistake about the why why shouldn't it be called a video game
I think there's like some people have different issues some People say obviously it's too short. It's like three hours. There's actually not a lot of gameplay in it. So I get the argument of like there's not you don't actually do a whole lot in terms of controlling the characters, but it is it does say that it's a narrative story game. So
I kind of that's what I was expecting when I played it. Um you know there's plenty of games that people obly call it walking simulators and you would still say it's a game. It's just within its own genre. But yeah, I think a lot of people have issue with so it's like based in the ' 90s. So, I think there's

this big argument of nostalgia. Like, some people think it's very nostalgic and some people are very angry about it that it's not '90s enough. There's like a scene where the charact like they get a tape, like an actual tape recording and the character rewinds it with a pencil. They put like a pencil in and they rewind the tape and I saw a video of someone recreating it in real life and they were like, "No, that's not how you would do it. That would break the tape." And I was like,
"Wow,
I didn't think that far into it. I just turned the tape." people really serious about this, you know.
So, yeah, just Yeah, I was just surprised that every day I see a new like discourse about it, but I thought it was a fun little game. So, I'm on the side of I enjoyed it.
Good. Good. Speaking of sci-fi games, I don't know, Ailion. I'm going to have to check it out. Maybe I've heard of it. I'm not sure, but I I saw um gameplay for Directive 8020,
maybe you call it.
Looks kind of cool. New game from Super Massive Games. I want to say I think
Yeah, it is.
Looks cool. Is that something you're

going to get into? Sci-fi horror. Is that your stick?
I want to play that because they do all the other It's like part of the Dark Pictures anthology. So, I've played all of the other ones, but I usually play them with a friend online because they're co-op and this one isn't. They've released this one's took like double the time to release, but it's only got like couch co-op, which I feel like is a massive, massively missed opportunity cuz most people are used to playing these with friends. So, yeah, we're kind of just waiting for an update so we can play it online. So, yeah, it does look really cool. I'm excited for it. But, yeah, shame it kind of doesn't have one of its core features at launch.
I'm I'm definitely looking forward to playing that one. However, I w it was yesterday. I just watched a stream of someone playing. I was, "Oh, I'll check it out." And it was just like it was like towards the end and like key plot elements were added and I was just like oh okay this that's that's one of the big twists. So I imagine like until then the whole game's like a big mystery. You just get this. So I'll go into

seen the one part where it all comes together.
Yeah. Honestly basically. Right. Thanks for that page. As myself, we've just been uh we're currently putting together these big reports um with Exola. We got a UK games industry report coming out soon, maybe even next week. We did a big report on the Nordics, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland that we're going to release. And we were also nearly finished with another report which is about uh like Iberia, Iberian Peninsula which is mainly Spain and Portugal and a couple other regions as well which is is really cool. So I've been learning a lot about what's going on there and we're also doing top 30s with those. So we've been taking a very deep look at who who's who there. Uh that's been really exciting. And um the big thing that I did recently is I went to Gamescom Latam in Brazil. As I mentioned at the start, I won't do a massive round up, but a few quick

takeaways. One, let's just, you know, there's a lot going on in Brazil. It's really cool, really cool to see. Gamescom Lat it's smaller than like the Mothership Gamescom event in Cologne, but it's a very big venue, but it's like in one hanger as it were. I don't know how how would that I don't know. It's almost like one to maybe one and a half, two hangers at Gamescom all in one place. B2B area is much smaller. It's it's like a a square. It wouldn't that's not even the same size as like I would say one B2B room at Gamescom if anyone has been there wanted to compare. But there's a lot a lot of meeting space which is which is really cool. Couple things about the industry. Two years ago, they had the legal framework for games introduced by the government and that basically laid the frame laid the groundwork for more industry support. So, I think they're kind of hoping to get some kind of tax breaks and we've been talking a lot on the site recently.

Have a look recent mobile maven YouTube page about the kind of the importance of government support and Brazil's games industry has been clamoring a long time. That's why they started Big Festival, which is now Gamescom Latam. So Big Festival kind of exists within that as like a Games Expo and awards part. So I guess they've done a very good job kind of getting what they want. And they've also got like the Brazil games accelerator which takes which is new. I think this is his first year actually. And they take on like 40 games or 40 companies over the course of 10 months. Gets whittleled down to like 10 by the end. And then they help them launch the game, but up until then they help me with business and stuff. So that's cool. And then a couple quick fig is uh I when I've been like I don't know over over 10 years ago. I've been going to quite a few of these events. It felt like there was more mobile companies back then, oddly enough. And now the focus seems to be going a lot more to PC. There's still

some big mobile companies out there, don't get me wrong. I think Epic Games Brazil is is still around. There's Wildlife Studios and and and a bunch of others clap clap games for example. But uh I was talking to a few people about it about why and some of the suggestion was that it's just mobile's just too expensive to to do. It's it's too difficult to get into. The bar is too high and it came from a couple sides. So investment it's easier some people think to get investment to make a PC game even like a small PC game put it out rather than get investment for your mobile game. millions in UA if you want it to be a big free-to-play game. Anyway, so yeah, it's like quite a challenge there. So, really interesting. I'll have a proper article up soon once we got a few other things out the way, but really cool, right? Other than that, probably nothing else fun. I I've just been playing Starcraft as always. Oh, and watching The Boys, which is about to finish season finale after five seasons. Very very good show. Check it out. Right, we we'll we'll we'll move on to

uh the news and and our upcoming events. Uh we're bringing Pocket Gamer Connects to Malmo on May 27th 28th, Barcelona June 15th 16th and Shanghai July 29th going to the Nordics. So that's in Helsinki 20th to 21st, going to Bangkok on October 28th and we'll be in Grand Canary in November and we might have some other events to announce soon as well. The mobile games awards will be there in August alongside Gamescom and Cologne. Lobbying is open for that. You can buy your tickets now. Right. So the the we're on to onto the news. I'm not going to labor the point on this one. I just spent ages talking about Gamescom even. So I've spoken about market intelligence stuff before, but massive news this week. I would say Sensor Tower has acquired mobile app market intelligence rival App Magic. There were no really details of the deal. I am going to be speaking with them at the time of recording tomorrow. So hopefully

next week we'll have some more kind of detail on this acquisition what it all means. They said that uh sensor tower said magic will serve as its new small and mediumsiz business offering following the deal. And like says Tower, if you don't know App Magic, it provides estimates on mobile game and app revenue and downloads as a way of providing data on regional markets. And it has some other tools as well that you can kind of take take advantage of to get insights on competitors or just the market in general, etc. One of the reasons this is such a big deal is yeah, Sense Tower, this is probably Sensit's biggest rival now, App Magic, but at Magic even themselves would have said they are smaller, right? And then if we flash back two years, Censor Tower acquired their big rival, Data AI, used to be called Appani, and they laid off like a couple hundred staff at the same time from Data AI. That was a really strange deal at the time because while Sensor Tower had been the upandcomer like getting like headlines, I used to work

there, right? Full disclosure, data AI was really the number one player in the space by size and they just teleport bought it. We got into all that before. Um there's quite a strange I think it's to do with personally I think it's just to do with the investors of each company and trying to find a path forward for both of them. At one point maybe they'll go public or they'll sell to an even bigger data company. It feels more like they're trying to go public but I don't know. Um, sorry. The reason I say that, well, I guess it could go either way because they're snapping up rivals is really my my thought on that, man. I think this is a big deal because it really it consolidates a lot of power into one company. And I'm sure sensor tower might say that there are other market intelligence firms which there are like say newu or you can go like another kind of company like a neielson whatever you've also got companies like app figures game refinery some others but like some of those are just smaller

no offense to them like I'm sure they have great service and customers are heavy news and just just not the same at all. So, I think there's some concerns that people might have. One, what does it really mean for the future of App Magic? Don't know at the moment. So, I'll ask that. And two, what does it really mean for pricing? Like, they're calling this small and medium businesses. What does that mean for Sense Tower pricing? What does it mean for App Magic pricing? If you've got one company and there's no real, this is speculation, but if there's no real pressure on pricing, like this is the problem. If you ever have monopolies in any kind of business, right, or any kind of industry, there's no pressure on pricing. So they could potentially just squeeze customers and then customers just have to pay up. When I interviewed the App Magic CEO last year, we did talk a bit about pricing walls and how he thought because Sens bought data AI that would actually help with pricing for them cuz they could charge more. And so what happens now when you don't even have enough magic? Like you could just charge more. And I'm

not saying maybe it's the correct value that it goes up to. Maybe before competition drove things down too far. But yeah, it's an interesting place to be. I think Sis Tower is a great company, but I I I think it there's concerns there and I'm sure many publishers in the industry will have those same concerns, especially as their deals expire. Any force on that?
Yeah, that was kind of my first thought when I saw it. I think the news sort of broke on like Sunday evenings like when I came to work on Monday and saw it like on the site I was like oh like it was it was a surprise to see that because yeah my first thought was well obviously one what does that mean for app magic and how you use that service but also yeah like the word monopoly definitely uh sprung up in my in my head yeah I guess we'll we'll see what happens with it said there are others but they're very much so the dominant player in that field now so hopefully it's not something But like you said, they can

essentially just do what they want with pricing. Hopefully that's not what happens. Yeah, it's a it's a hard one to predict how what the outcome will be.
Right. So that's that's enough of me chatting for a half hour. So uh Aaron, what have you what have you got?
Uh yeah, so straight into some data stuff from me. So Nintendo's um financials have come out for the uh for previous fiscal year up to March 31st. And I think really the big headline from it is that um how well the Switch 2 is doing. So it's sold 19.86 million units and that's um in 300 days. It's not been out for a year yet. Uh, so that is 32% higher than the original Switch's full first year. Uh, so it's doing very well. You record-breaking console. It has been since it came out. Um, so yeah, just shy of 20 million as

of the end of March. It's probably past that by now. Um, it's also so it surpassed Nintendo's initial 15 million prediction for the Switch 2 and then they revised it to 19 million and it's ended up doing 19.86. So, it's even, you know, it's doing better than Nintendo thought as well. And yeah, the the original Switch sold over 15 million. I think it's 15.05 or something in its first year. So, yeah, new console doing very well. Um, and this all is all part of Nintendo's latest financials. Obviously, the Switch 2 was the main focus of those financials. Um, so they said like Mario Kart World is the bestselling game thus far on there. Uh, it has a 74% attach rate, which I think makes sense. Like it was the launch title. there was a kind of bundle option when the Switch 2 came out where you could buy them both together

at like a bit of a lower price than if you bought them separately. So, yeah, makes sense. I also had a look. So, I knew that like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was the bestselling Switch game and so it's always made sense to me they would launch with a new Mario Kart on the Switch 2 cuz the Switch one is also um like the bestselling racing game of all time, I believe. Um, but I didn't realize until I looked back at some of Nintendo's like older consoles that Mario Kart has actually been like the top seller for quite a few generations now. Like the 3DS's bestselling game was Mario Kart. The Wii U was Mario Kart. If you don't include Wii Sports, which obviously most people got as a package thing on the Wii, then Mario Kart Wii was the bestselling game there. So, like obviously it's a massive franchise, but yeah, I hadn't quite realized it. It's been on top of like basically every console for the last like 20 years from Nintendo. And I guess on the subject of like software and games. Um, so Nintendo also confirmed the original Switch

surpassed 1.5 billion game sales in its lifetime as of, you know, this recently concluded fiscal year. Um, and again, I had a look back at some of Nintendo's previous consoles and realized that this means the Switch has sold more games uh than the SNES, the N64, and the Wii all combined, which I think is a bit crazy. Um, and I've not seen this mentioned any
Yeah, the Wii was like 900 million software sales. Um, and then yeah, N64 and snares bring it up to about 1.5 billion, but less than the Switch. It's like few hundred thousand ahead of those three combined now, I think. And yeah, I don't know if I'm like the first person to count these up as I've not seen this said anywhere, but like I went over it multiple times and was like, "Yeah, it's definitely out sold those three consoles combined, which is quite crazy." Um, yeah, particularly with the Wii as well.

Amusingly, if you added the Wii U though to that old gen library, then it beats the Switch. And I think that's the only time you can say the Wii U's beat the Switch or something, but when it's part of a big group of decades of consoles.
Yeah, count.
Yeah, it's me being very generous there. And then so I guess looking at some of the actual like financial figures, so Nintendo's net sales grew by 99% year-over-year to 2.3 trillion yen, which is about 14.7 billion. 77% of that came from outside of Japan. Operating profit also returned to growth because the year prior their results weren't as strong cuz it was like year seven or eight of the Switch and they didn't release much because I guess they were, you know, building up to the Switch 2. So, it makes sense. You know, things have gone up a lot in the year the Switch 2 came out. But, yeah, operating profit up 28%. Um, ordinary profit up 46% to about 3.4

billion. Interestingly though, Nintendo's net profit ratio was down from 24% to 18%. Uh, which I guess would be reflected in higher expenses with manufacturing Switch 2. Um, it's kind of strange cuz we were talking as well previously about Nintendo shares going down while the Switch 2 is doing really well. In a single year, Nintendo shares have declined by 40%. And they've dropped a couple more percentage points since the financials because Nintendo confirmed the Switch 2 is getting a price increase. Um, which is also making me wonder, do I do I have to buy it now before the price goes up? cuz I've been kind of hanging on for a nice like special edition cuz I just don't it's just too plain and you know I like the colorful switch. I don't want a black switch too. But depends how much the price goes up by. Um that's a little bit of an aside. I think the final point I wanted to mention from the financials

was it's quite noteworthy to me. They didn't mention mobile like anywhere. Usually mobile games get rolled into its IP related business category which includes trans media, but they didn't kind of specify anything about mobile this time. And even though it's not, you know, it's not done particularly well. I at least thought they might have referenced they released Fire Emblem Shadows within the fiscal year and like it's their first mobile game of the decade, but no, there's just no mobile mentioned whatsoever.
Right. Uh Paige, what have you got? Yeah. So, first up from me is some news on the eBay and GameStop bids. This sort of happened at the start of the month, start of May. GameStop just kind of out of nowhere made a proposal to acquire eBay. The deal was valued at around 55.5 billion. At the time, eBay didn't really say much other than, yeah, you know, we'll review the proposal. Um, and now they've given a pretty clear answer, and the answer is no. So, they rejected the

offer. They were pretty direct in their response and their reasoning behind it. They raised concerns over the financing of the deal. They they pretty much just questioned if GameStop even has credible or realistic funding for a deal of that kind of size. Uh yeah, they had other issues too. They said about, you know, the doubts behind, you know, the risks of merging two very different businesses. Um, but yeah, one of the parts that stuck out was in I think in my head rather fair but also very blunt language. EB's chair Paul Presbler said that the proposal was neither credible nor attractive. Um, so yeah, pretty pretty clear response there. Um so yeah the board you know they pointed towards other concerns too like I mentioned you know that even if those numbers did work on paper which they completely doubt the execution risk of the whole thing it would just be too high for them. So yeah I just thought it was a bit of an odd

one. eBay is obviously just sticking of what it was doing before and this proposal that just seemed very out of the blue is, you know, basically dead in the water before it really even got anywhere. But yeah, I think for me I'm more I'm more just stuck on what was the thinking behind this in the first place. When I when I saw this deal, I did a double take and I was just like really I don't know. It just it seemed bizarre from the get- go. I guess eBay agreed. Yeah, just just an odd story. I think
there's a great interview on this with CNBC with the CEO of GameStop because they and and then they question him on it. So they get sorry they question him on it and they're like it doesn't add up. So you like saying like vastly smaller company to eBay and you've got this 20 billion credit up to line but like that's not like definitive. It's just a highly confident letter. So like if you took that into Dragon's Den, I

think they'd be like, "Well, you haven't got the money now, have you?" And then and then it's just hilarious. They keep asking for details in this interview. He just he just doesn't answer their questions. He's just like, "Just look on the website. We put a document there." Like what the hell? Like do you even know is what it sounds like. It sounds like he doesn't know the details of the deal. And he just keeps responding. They're like, "Right, but how are you doing this?" She's like half stock, half cash. He just keeps repeating it and they're like, "Right, but that doesn't make any sense."
Surely if they made the proposal, you know, that they would have anticipated these kinds of questions as well, but well, I guess not.
I don't know. I my theory and I don't know really how these things work, but my theory was that they thought, "Okay, we're a meme stock. Last time we went super high, that was that craze of meme stocks and day traders. Whole another topic. I And then it's I think it's still more valuable than it was before

then. And I think he just thought if we bid for eBay, our stock will go through the roof because we'll become a meme stock again. And then and then maybe they could even afford to buy eBay in a crazy world. That's my conspiracy theory. It's backed up by evidence.
It's not the most crazy theory out there. It's to me it feels like it's the only way that could work which I don't even know if that would technically work. Yeah, crazy crazy stuff, right? I couldn't really decide what stories to choose this week. So, I'll do a very quick one which is uh that I just found really interesting which was news publishers Time and Business Insider have both launched as we've put it puzzle destinations on their respective websites. So games um and they're really following in the footsteps of the New York Times games which has its own subscription service which has Wordle connections uh and other games. Uh they're very popular and now other news and media organizations are copying the same thing. So for the time for uh for time it has market movers which is a

fantasy prediction market game powered by real-time data and it also has a game called linked daily connection puzzle and then classic titles like sodoku and others. I feel like Sodoku. You have to have businesses inside BI games. Uh, sweet targets quote curious, ambitious people. Okay. With four daily formats: Boxed, Pipeline, Night Hop, and Tally. Designed for quick play during commutes. No idea what those are off the top of my head, but they sound interesting. Anyway, I I just find the whole thing really fascinating. It's worked exceptionally well for for the New York Times games. So we did the top 30 US mobile game makers earlier this year which we announced at PTC San Fran and we ranked the New York Times games at number four. If I was a look so according to App Magic estimates the New York Times games app specifically and this so this is spend that goes through the app store on Google Play pulled in $67.8 million in gross revenue in 2025. A rise

of around 22% year-over-year. monthly revenue hit an all-time high of 8.3 million dollars in December and that's again that's only including the mobile so it's done exceptionally well for them and it's kind of like in newspapers right in actual physical newspapers for as long as you can probably remember you get your little cross words at the end which I think some people buy a newspaper specifically to do those so they've just managed to adapt that really well online and now others are following it for engagement hopefully it gets more people more people engage with the actual news as well. But yeah, really cool. Worth highlighting. Check check them out. And obviously there's other sites that do it. For example, LinkedIn. Um I went through a phase now that I'm thinking good about it. I'll probably start doing it again. I went through a phase of playing those like every day and they're just it's just really cool. It sounds absurd especially LinkedIn to have games, but actually they're good games. It's just kind of cool to play for like a couple minute or

a minute here and there. play a few and then it gets you off the platform. Yeah. Really interesting, right? Um Aaron, what have you got?
Yeah. So, my other story this week is in a way a little bit like pages a minute ago with some quite sort of harsh words from one company to another. Like Sega's financials have come out as well. We're in that time of year where all the end of year financials come out. Um, and they were quite direct about how Roio is doing obviously since being acquired a few years ago. ROIO has been partially blamed for declining profits in Sega's latest financial year and they described the company as soft and sluggish in its performance. um which um yeah I was a little bit surprised they would you know not that you know there are certainly worse words you could use but you know they're not they're not great words to be associated with. So Sega said that it's failed to

create economic value through collaboration with ROI and named this subsidiary 15 times in its presentation in the context of an impairment loss and strategy for the year ahead for Roio and a need for restructuring at the company.
I just to quickly jump in. I think the restructuring word was a mis is apparently a mistransation. I think it's the word restructure. So they're saying which sounds like the same thing
which is rebuild. I think restructure might have taken place before and rebuild is like building for the future.
I don't know how I don't know if it really makes much difference in wording but that's what's been said. Sorry. Anyway.
Okay cool. Thank you. So anyway, yeah. So I guess however you word what Roio's doing for the year ahead, ultimately apparently that means they're going to be focusing on Angry Birds mainstay IP and like licensing opportunities. Sega

expects Robia ROIO to launch Angry Birds 2 in mainland China to release new Angry Birds games within this year and to uh leverage the Angry Birds movie 3 in its live games. the film. I think it's December it's supposed to be coming out and it's expected to be a fullscale trans media expansion. It's the quote for the Angry Birds IP. Obviously worth noting this is going to be the first Angry Birds movie post acquisition by Sega who have done very well with the Sonic movie franchise. Uh so I'll be kind of curious to see how this one performs compared to the other two movies from kind of preandemic times. you know, trans media was a thing then, but I think it's exploded since. Curious how it does in that kind of context. So, yeah, I think the the Sega stuff was maybe the most noteworthy. There was also mention of Sonic Rumble in the financials. So, Sega said that basically

its existing free-to-play titles were performing steadily, but new free-to-play titles like Sonic Rumble have struggled. Um they said its performance has been weak so far which obviously it was in soft launch for maybe a couple of years and then it was delayed like the week before it was going to come out last year and eventually did come out towards the end of 2025 and then it sort of struggled to meet expectations since then recently underwent a rebrand. So it's Sonic Rumble Party now. Um, and yeah, obviously it's still operating, but as I say, Sega said that, yeah, new free-to-play games have been struggling. And the report also noted that over a 100 free-to-play development personnel have moved into Sega's full game development team, which I guess possibly reflects a shift away from freeto play, I guess, if they're reducing the the workforce on that side.

Yeah. overall. Yeah, compared to like Nintendo's financials then doesn't look like quite as good a year at Seagga. Um I guess yeah to to throw in a few numbers quickly. So like the the group overall generated about $3.1 billion in the fiscal year which was just shy of its forecast but only by um a couple of billion yen basically the same in dollars. And this this did represent an increase. It was almost 14% up year-over-year. and ordinary income was up 2%. Um, operating income declined though a little bit, that was down 2%. Um, so, you know, not a disastrous year, I guess, but just the the kind of ROIO acquisition. I think they've talked about Beacon before not panning out quite how they expected for Sega's games. I guess there's just still work to be done, shall we say, on making the Roio acquisition pay off.

I It's It's just kind of sad to see this this that Sega really laying into Roio. I hope the team does right. I mean, you know, throughout Roio's history, they've had to kind of adapt to changes. This is another moment for them. I hope it doesn't hit as hard as the premium freeto play sort of change. There's a lot of layoffs during that time. I I just I just trying to think what was Sega trying to get out of this acquisition in the first place. Um and then also since the since the deal maybe it was already in development. It really surprised me. I've said this before that Sonic Rumble wasn't developed by Roio that you just bought just spent all this money on this mobile studio to specialize in releasing global casual games and you and you've got like another team doing it. No offense to that team, but it just surprised me. And then it seemed like they didn't do enough due diligence to understand the beacon platform and how it would be integrated into the rest of the company

for games like Sonic Rumble. I don't think that's not Roio's fault, right? Silly down to Sega. So, we'll see where it goes from there. It's been interesting that Roio like one of their upcoming games, I think it's Bounce, which is being developed by OB. Is that how you call it? They say OB a French developer. I thought that was interesting that Roia is not developing that technically either. One of the things I wanted to say, I don't know if you Sorry if I missed you saying this. I was looking it up. I can't do two things at once. I'm a terrible person. uh on the Sonic Rumble Discord, which I am a member of only to be nosy, uh they mentioned about the earnings to players on the Discord and they were like so you know they said the roughly 100 personnel transferred from free-to-play projects within the organization did take place but this number is not exclusive to Sonic Rumble party. This does mean, however, that the Sonic Rumble party team members were included in this restructuring and the team did some

adjustment and then they said they're still going to release content. They still got stuff planned. It doesn't really suggest there's going to be less, but I don't know if that's insinuated or not really. I don't think so, but yeah, they're obviously working with fewer people. Right. Thanks for that, Aaron. Paige, what have you got?
Just a quick one for me to round us out on news. This kind of ties with um what you were talking about earlier, Craig. Um NBC has officially green lit a television adaptation of Wordle. Uh again, thought this is quite like a fun little interesting one. So, obviously, you know, as you were saying earlier, uh Wordle uh you know, it's from the New York Times, became very viral, and like like you said, yeah, people just you know, it's one of those games that you sort of play every single day. But as for the show, it looks like it's going to premiere sometime in 2027 and production is set for later this year. Uh it's being produced by Universal

Television Alternative Studio and is being executive produced by uh Jimmy Fallon. So the actual show itself, it seems like the format will be that contestants work together in teams to solve obviously word puzzles and then they'll eventually be competing against each other for cash prizes. So, I feel like they've obviously tried to stay as close to what Wordle is as they possibly can, whilst obviously also turning it into a bit more of a fun and competitive game show. But yeah, I I it's just an interesting one to me because obviously we're in a time where trans media projects are like they're everywhere at the moment. You get so many video games to movies to TV series, you know, be it liveaction or animated, you know, not a lack of this kind of stuff out there. But this feels like another extension of that where even puzzle games, like a simple daily puzzle game, is now going to have an entire game show based around it. So yeah, it also makes me wonder, is there room for more of these? So, we're

going to start seeing just casual puzzle mobile games becoming full-blown game shows or is this just a very niche one because like it has just become this viral sort of phenomenon that people have been playing. But yeah, just a small one, but I thought it was quite interesting. I would watch it. So, I guess I'm part of the target audience. So, I was smiling a lot because uh one before I get into this other thing. One, I don't I never watched it, but people might remember Candy Crush Saga had a TV show which was like a game show. Must have been a disaster cuz we've never heard of it again. But secondly, this is the kind of perfect thing for like British daytime quiz and game shows. And right, for anyone in the UK, there's a game called there's a TV show called Lingo. Look for video games. was about to bring that up.
I will describe it. Sorry, Aaron. I've taken your thunder, this is all in reverse. It looks like this. What does this look like? It looks like Wordle.

And so there is all basically for people that are watching visually, it's a British game show where they try and guess a word and then they have five letters to guess this word and so and they have to I think yeah, they just have to say a word and then it'll say right this is there or it's not in the right place. So it' be like yellow this or green if it's in the right place and then you get x amount of guesses. I can't remember if it's in a time frame or uh you get x amount of guesses.
It's it's both. I think you have so much time per guess and you get like five guesses or something.
Yeah. And so you usually have like a couple people and they win money etc. There's a few rounds. It's all very lovely. Goes on for like a half hour or whatever. Uh maybe even an hour actually. Can't remember. So this already effectively exists. So, the format is there. So, if American viewers are up for it, it it should be a success. It's already a success in the UK through Lingo. Sorry, Aaron, you might have more details on the show.

Not a huge amount else to add. I was going to say, yeah, lingo is a thing. They do mix it up. I think some rounds you get like sixletter words or four letters, but
right.
Yeah. Whether whether the word or one will do that, but I hadn't heard. This is actually my first time realizing they're making a Word all adaptation. I hadn't I hadn't seen our our news on this, I must admit. And initially when you said it, Paige, I thought you meant they were making like a movie based on word.
I wonder what the plot would be.
Yeah.
I'm really trying to picture the word the movie.
Yeah. I don't know what it would look like.
Alternate dimension. A more like Lego movie take a bit more meta.
Yeah. Or it's someone like a really dramatic movie like uh someone is actually on the game show like the fake fictional one
maybe
they've got to win $100,000 to keep the community center open to save grandma's house. Sorry.
The goal is we've got to get one of us on Word or the game show. That's what we've got to make happen.
Yeah. You know what that has got to be

an ambition, hasn't it? pocket gamerbiz coming to or or we'll just get a lingal lingal combining the two lingo ling's the next one sounds like sounds like something totally different anyway right yeah that's a good one to end on thanks to that page there's been plenty of other news but we got limited time yeah we'll be back we'll try and get these back consistently thank you everybody for tuning in for the return of the week in mobile games thanks Paige for being on the show as always
yeah nice to be back
and we'll catch you all next time. Goodbye.