Summer Game Fest thoughts, Supercell kills US projects, Xbox chat, EA's mobile misstep, more

Hello and welcome to the mobile gamer.biz podcast. I'm Neil Long and every week I go for a walk and tell you what's happening in the mobile games industry. This week recorded in part in Los Angeles, California, I am at Summer Gamefest and there are no mobile games here. But let's go for it anyway. As I'm in LA at Summer GameFest, I thought it'd be worth including some thoughts on mobile's place in events like this. And it seems that there is practically no place for mobile games in events like this. Last year, there was Pokémon Go. Exa has a presence here, but beyond that, there are no mobile game developers. at the press and creator event play days which takes place over the weekend after the big showcase on Friday. I will be writing up some of these thoughts into a proper article. But yeah, there are no mobile games here. And I think it'd be interesting to

talk through why and if that's a good or a bad thing or if it's just fine. It's fine that mobile games don't have a presence at what is now the games industry's focal point now that E3 is dead. There was a weathering waves section of the presentation on Friday which was quite funny in itself because it was all based on the cyberpunk show that's on Netflix and people in the crowd around me thought it was a new cyberpunk game for a little bit there and then when the weathering waves logo popped up they were all very disappointed. So yeah, that I think was the only mobile game apart from Fortnite, which is obviously a mobile game, but not primarily a mobile game. And then over the weekend, there's a load of other ones. There's Day of the Devs, the indie focused one. There's

Wholesome Direct, women led games showcases, Latin Americanmade game showcases, obviously PlayStation State of Play. No notable mobile games across any of those. You know, you need to support events like this if you want to be considered part of this world. But mobile continues to operate outside of these traditional spaces. Games on phones and tablets are over 50% of the games business in terms of downloads and revenue. And really, without being too blunt about it, these are the games that normal people play. As I noted in the write up for gamesindustry.bbeers, there's a couple of children in the row in front of me for that Summer GameFest presentation. And there were some frankly horrific murders in the trailers in that

showcase. Really horrible stuff that I would not want to put in front of any children. And overall, it was very loud, very murdery, horror games, swearing, and I'm a big boy. I'm not shocked by any of this, but I think the games business does have a responsibility to put its best foot forward at times and make sure that video games aren't seen as simply the preserve of boys in bedrooms and all of those cliches. And mobile is really the way to do that. Mobile games are played by everyone, moms, dads, kids. It's everyone and there is no focal point for the mobile games industry as it stands. Is that a problem though? I'm not sure it is. Mobile game marketers have spent years and years honing UA campaigns and

looking at the data. Yes, there probably is very little return on investment for getting your trailer included in the Summer GameFest showcase or being at Play Days. But it also in my opinion is a bit of a shame that mobile game makers who are the ones with frankly all the money right now. They are just completely checked out of being part of the wider industry and seem to be happy catering to their players and more often than not the players that spend a lot of money. But then if you imagine the hypothetical where loads of mobile game makers throw a load of money at Jeff Keley to be part of Summer GameFest, would Jeff actually want them here? Would the press and the

creators here bother to cover these games knowing that more often than not, mobile does not drive traffic to your website or your YouTube channel. They're not going to be streaming Candy Crush anytime soon. you spend a load of money for a showcase which is really for PC and console players who actively resent mobile games anyway. Maybe the conclusion here is mobile games aren't at these events for actually quite a lot of good reasons and that's fine. And when you look at it that way, whisper it quietly, but maybe it's events like these that are kind of dated. Putting on a big expensive event like this to hopefully receive some press coverage, which is less and less relevant in today's landscape, is a very roundabout way of getting to the right players. And if you've got half a million dollars to spend on getting a trailer in Jeff's big

showcase every summer or spending that all on UA and getting real paying players through the door, that choice is pretty clear. Then actually mobile has in some ways solved that problem because you can if you have enough money target the exact players you want to reach through user acquisition and you don't have to go around the houses by spending a million dollars on a trailer in a 2hour showcase that will probably get lost in the noise. Do mobile games need a showcase like this or is that money better spent on user acquisition anyway? It probably is better spent on user acquisition, but I don't know. It would be nice, wouldn't it, to have a similar moment for mobile

games. I know that mobile games don't inspire the same loyalty, don't inspire the same passions, but as a giant and very successful part of the games business, to have our half of the industry completely anonymous at events like this does feel like a little bit of a shame. So yeah, I would like to see mobile represented at events like these, not just to give me something to do, but also because the games that people play every day that are right there in their pocket should be represented, I think, in some way at big industry events like this. I will think about it a little bit more and write up an article which will be live once this podcast comes out so you can get more coherent thoughts on the website.
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On Monday, we published a story about Supercell and its US game development projects. One of them is definitely winding down and the other seems to be missing in action. Supercell US project co-founder Steve Desilelet announced on LinkedIn that the game he was working on for three and a half years with Matt Morcowski has been killed and its team has been disbanded. Seeing this, I had a little poke around on LinkedIn and looked at the other US

game team that Supercell announced had formed back in 2022. And as of end of 2025, early 2026, all of that team are gone as well. That team was mostly exot Candace Thomas, Charles Lee, Maya Kilm Mama, and Kevin Bray. Obviously, I asked Supercell to clarify and confirm and send me a comment about this, but they have not responded as of yet. So, given it's been 4 days, I don't think we're getting any confirmation on this, but the LinkedIn post from Steve seems to explain it all. Anyway, the US team was announced in 2022, and at the time, Supercell said those teams would be making games you wouldn't expect from Supercell. So, maybe console, maybe PC, I don't know.

But Steve Deslay and Matt Macauski, prior to Supercell, were working on a top- down survival shooter called Deliver Us, which looked like it had some sort of co-op multiplayer element. Hard to say what the other US team was doing, but it doesn't look like they're doing anything anymore. Couple of other nuggets to come out of summer gamefest in particular the game business live which was on Monday and was the industry facing portion of the week. I was there writing up the Matthew Ball interview for my friend Chris who runs games business. You can read the newsletter on that that was sent out Monday afternoon LA time. And I also pulled out the mobile focused bit from that interview in which Matthew Basically says he knows mobile is the bigger market in terms of

player numbers and revenue, but his job is to fix the Xbox business first. This is very much in line with all the other chat that's come out of Xbox in the last couple of weeks and months. And there is a lot of chat coming out of Xbox at the moment, it seems. But a bit relevant for people in mobile, the people who work for King, the people who make mobile games for Activision, Blizzard and so on. I think the quote here from Chief Strategy Officer Ball is the reality is most players and most revenue is on mobile. Second to that, we have the most hours and the most players on PC but less revenue than mobile. Console is a 40 to45 billion business. Is it growing as fast as PC or mobile? No. Are there as many hours? No. Is my bet that the platform is substantially larger tomorrow or in 28 or 29 than it is today? No. But to paraphrase, he

continues, "We like console and we're going to do our best." And then he concludes, "We have no desire to move away from the console business." So yeah, I pulled this out because it's quite funny. Ball is a numbers guy. He knows the addressable market and revenue numbers here. I think it's quite an odd thing to say. Our strategy is to concentrate on the part of the Xbox business that has the least potential for growth. I know it's what the Xbox fans want to hear, but does seem a little strange. I don't know what to make of this Xbox thing. They're doing a lot of talking. A lot of it doesn't seem to add up. And overnight, it seems there's going to be a load of layoffs coming to the Xbox division. The internal memo that leaked suggested that it's not going to be Activision Blizzard King that sees the full force of these layoffs. And that also makes sense. That is the part of

the business that actually ships and maintains successful live games. the rest of Xbox, the first party studios, they're the ones that seem to be struggling to get anything out on time. So, that kind of makes sense as grim as it is. But, yeah, first week on the job for Matthew B. And he gave what I think is a really good interview. You can find that on the game business at some point, I think. Another quick nugget from the game business live. EA's Laura Mle was on stage with Chris as well. Her chat was a little bit more broad. Not too many news headlines coming out of that one, apart from this nugget about Command and Conquer Rivals. The headline here is fans were so unhappy with Command and Conquer rivals that EA remastered the original and released its source code. within the chat there was a

question about meeting fan expectations and her example of where EA had not hit the mark was with Command and Conquer Rivals which was announced at E3 2018. That just upset a lot of Command and Conquer fans. The quote from Laura says, "It was a valuable moment for me that we didn't really have permission necessarily to stray too far from what the core PC experience was." And before that, she explained that her team internally had a cool idea for a mobile game, competitive Command and Conquer, which makes a lot of sense, but the franchise had been away for a while at that point, and fans were clamoring for a remaster or some sort of new spin on the formula. and EA delivering a competitive mobile game just upset that fan base. So what happened was MA gathered together some ex Westwood colleagues who had formed a new studio

anyway and asked them to remaster the originals and that came out as a remaster collection two years later. They also released the source code for Command and Conquer and Red Alert which is a good thing for the modding community. So yeah, I it's slightly grim that releasing a mobile interpretation of your beloved franchise can upset that many people, but this is where we are and EA has learned its lesson, it seems. Late on Friday, Metacor confirmed some of the details of the restructuring and layoffs set to take place at the maker of Merge Mansion. So, it said previously 160 jobs were at risk. It turns out it is going to cut 159 jobs in Finland. It's also closing its offices in Germany and Sweden. It's

not clear actually whether that means job losses there. Certainly sounds like it, but Merge Mansion will live on. It will become part of Supercell's live game portfolio. So yeah, hopefully as it has before, these layoffs mean that lots of new interesting studios pop up afterwards. But yeah, 159 jobs gone, studio closed in Sweden and Germany. Merge Mansion to be part of Supercell's portfolio in the coming weeks and months. In data digest this week, even more graphs than usual. Report from App Magic about Turkeykey's mobile game market that grew 6% in 2025. But maybe the more interesting number is worldwide inapp purchase revenue from Turkish developers grew 25.5% yearonear, 2.76 billion in

2025. Downloads were up a fraction, 0.45%. four five% 2 billion. So, Turkish game developers making a lot of money. Pokémon Go drew over 700,000 players at Chicago event. So, basically, everyone in Chicago played Pokémon Go during that Pokémon Go Fest. There's also more UA financing news. two Desperados which calls itself the largest independent mobile gaming studio in southeastern Europe. They make nonogram crossing logic puzzle, marble shooter, Versus Quest and Marble Walker Walker. Some fun game titles there. They have secured 20 million in UA funding from PBX partners who seem to be leading the charge in this particular market. There's a report from the ESA saying twothirds of Americans play games.

Mobile leads the way there. Loads of graphs there about North American gaming habits. Asia and MENA are forecast to top 100 billion in market value by 2030, says Nico Partners. App Store ecosystem hit 1.4 trillion in billings and sales in 2025. That is everything that goes to the app store and most of that is not in our purchase. is direct consumer billing. So that's why that number is so large. Basically anything bought on iOS. And then there's more detail on the King report that we ran last week. So have a look at the delightful graphs on the site for more. That's it for this week. Thanks for listening. Goodbye.