The cloud gaming debate, Pokémon Go revenue and Türkiye's $4bn market | Week in Mobile Games podcast

[music] Hello and welcome to the pocket gamer.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 pocketgamer.biz. With me as ever is our features and data editor, Aaron Assel, and our editorial director for events, Mariam Amad, and we also have a special guest this week. We have Adam Smart from Appsflyer. Welcome to the show. Great to have you on. Thank you for having me.
So, what have you been up to? What have you been up to this week?
I mean, at the moment, everything is centered around Gamescom Prep. You know, it's like one of the biggest conferences of the year for us are probably China Joy now. It's it's quite a size. It's quite a size. So, I think everything has sort of been geared up towards getting that up and running, making sure that we've got everything in line for all of the the events that we're doing and all of the the work behind the scenes there. Yeah, it's or trying to organize Gamescom is always a bit uh chaotic for me.
It's a beast.
Probably because I'm not the most

organized, but also the amount of emails late you have to exchange with people and then you finally think, oh, this year I'm going to leave space and then you just start fitting in more meetings more and more. So, you end up running around. It's also working out like the funny part is it's working out where the meetings are because obviously if you get if you get one at one end of the the cols and one at the other end you know it takes when the crowds are there it takes like an hour to get from end to end so you you kind of have to schedule that in for meetings
I always forget exactly where where any of the like the rooms are as well or the halls and if there's a meeting in the consumer area I think I I think these days we're going to have to be like I I might I can't make cuz it's like you say, it's actually it can actually be impossible to to find it and like the the directions don't always work. I followed them before and it led me to a wall. So,
the the first year the first year that I went to Gamescom, I think I got stuck in like an infinite loop going round like the corridors and the the two of the

business the business centers. I just got completely stuck in this loop and couldn't get out. Luckily, somebody rescued me at the end.
Sounds sounds painful. But yeah, China was my first experience and yeah, basically the same size. So yeah.
Yeah, that was really good event.
Right, great to have you on the show, Adam. We'll get to I know you've got a few things to bring up, so we'll get to those in a bit. And Mariam, how's your week you've been up to?
My week's been good. Not really gaming related, but I've been trying to fight for my life to get Odyssey tickets. And where I am, I don't know if it's just I know it's a massively f like popular movie right now, but every single cinema that I'm trying to find tickets that are just sold out. So that's like a side quest. Actually, a main quest of my life right now is just to keep So I want to see an iMac as well because apparently it was filmed on the camera.
Yeah, you've got to see IMAX.
Yeah, like I'm not going to see it if it's not an iMac. So that is what my life has been consisting of. Just trying to find tickets to this bloody movie.
It's like its own odyssey. I've been trying to do that as well. Every time I look there's like it's either sold out

still or two seats left at the front. Like don't really fancy that.
Or it's a seat where your neck is going to be like that is not great. Yeah. Has anyone here seen the Odyssey? None of us. None of us have managed to see it. But it says a lot about how
I've got three kids. What's your excuse?
Can't get tickets.
Yeah, can't get tickets. That's a solid excuse.
All right. Thank Thanks, Mar. Aaron, what you would up to?
Well, I've been trying to figure out how and when I'm going to see the Spider-Man film. Actually, that's higher on my priority list at the minute cuz I had a friend that we would sort of go to most Marvel films with, but he's moved away, so can't go with him. Had another friend who did invite me to go, but is incredibly fussy, not even in like an iMac situation, but just there is a cinema that they like that is more than an hour's drive away, and they will only go to that cinema and refuse to go to the one that's about 10 minutes away. So, they said like, "Oh, yeah, we're going to see the Spider-Man film. Like, you're welcome to come. We're going to

like a 1:00 a.m. showing that I didn't even know the cinema was open at that time." And it's like, "Well, by the time the film finishes and then like an hour's drive home, I'm not that desperate to see Spider-Man quite yet." Um, so I'm kind of holding out to see whether anyone else kind of hasn't seen it yet and is interested to be by the time that gets organized, it'll probably be out on streaming already. stuff comes out so quickly these days. But yes, a bit of a theme, I guess, if you're all struggling with the cinema as well.
It's nice to see the cinema regaining popularity though after co.
Yeah.
Yeah, I was going to say it's been like a real resurgence. I mean, there's some great movies out right now as well. That obviously helps.
That is quite funny that you will only go to one cinema. All right. Thanks. Thanks, Aaron. I I've actually I saw Spider-Man and I thought it was fantastic actually. One of the best Marvel films of a long time. there has a well I mean I like Thunderbolts as well not so much some of the others but uh it's just a genuinely good Spider-Man film and I don't want to spoil

everything but just from the trailer the Punisher is it and I didn't I didn't know if they could like translate that well to the big screen and in like the MCU proper but I think they did a very good job and both him and and Spider-Man have a have great chemistry on screen so yeah they did a really good job good action good story brilliant film
does it does it queue up for Doom because I've been watching a lot of the the older stuff now and and certainly hearing the spoilers and stuff like X-Men, Dark Phoenix, that kind of thing to just remind myself of what happened in the in the in the space before Doom.
Yeah. So, I don't I don't think it really does. So, we didn't actually stick around for the postredit scene because apparently it's like right at the end of the credits. So, for anyone that's going, this is what I heard. Right at the end of the credits and it doesn't really tee anything up either. It's just really pointless. it it like focuses in on like this Spider-Man track here and then it zooms out and it just keeps zooming out and then that's it. Right. So, uh, thanks everyone for that.

So, we're going to jump into things, but first just a few shout outs as always for our events. So, we have the Pocket Gamer Mobile Games Awards coming up on August 25th. We are nearly sold out. Few seats left. So, if you want to join us, definitely book your ticket as soon as. Then we have PGC Nordics on Helsinki on October 20th to 21st. And we have the PGC Summit Montreal on November 10th. And we have a few other events coming up as well. And obviously next year we'll be back in London. So yeah, God, the year's almost coming to an end. I'm with it. Four months left. Right.
Yeah, the the rate things move, especially as you get older is more worrying, right? So that's enough of those shout outs. So, Adam, you got a few things to want to talk about. We'll start with you. What have you got?
I mean, I want to go on the Gamescom theme to be honest, cuz we, you know, it's it's an insane conference and I I don't know. Last year, there was about 357,000

people attended Gamescom, which is just absolutely nuts. you know, when you're it's the only business conference, business gaming conference that I've ever been to that is, you know, you get swamped with people who really really really enjoy playing games like and and cosplay and everything. And it's it's like one of the the most amazing conferences to go to to actually see like fans reactions to things and that kind of stuff as well. This year I think it's it's it's exceptionally interesting because you know you've got obviously in November you've got GTA 6 that's going to take over the world absolutely dominate everything. So everybody is trying to release in September and October. There is going to be huge amount of companies vying for attention for those releases over over Gamescom. Um so there's going to be lots of interesting conversation. There's also so many different narratives and themes that are going on in in you know what people are talking about in the gaming industry at the moment. And I think that's going to have an influence over what what is at Gamescom and the

conversations that arise from Gamescom. So I mean you got things like EA, you know, you've got the acquisition, but not only the acquisition, the fact that they're also branching into advertising as well, which is is phenomenal. And it's it's the first time that's kind of happened from one of the larger companies in that way. You've got Xbox's reset which everybody's heard tons and tons about and it's kind of scary kind of scary the impact on the industry and I'm sure you guys have covered that in the past as well. There's uh GeForce which is GeForce Now from Nvidia which is slowly sort of sinking into more countries. you know, they've just opened up in India, which is giving like a a very low entry cost to PC console and and sort of on the side really enhancing like Steam and Epic, you know, because it's all about you you can play the games that you've already purchased through these different stores. You can stream them online. So, it works incredibly well for that respect. We've got redundancies, redundancies, and more

redundancies, which again I'm sure you've covered on here before, but that's still rife, unfortunately. There was I saw another couple being announced recently, which is heartbreaking for the industry. PlayStation dropping physical games. That's, you know, I mean, that's that's a big thing that's going to be talked about a lot at Gamescom again this year. So, there's so many different narratives that are going around at the moment. It's really it's going to be very very interesting the conversations around the the event. So I I'm obviously massively looking forward to to games. I enjoy it every year and kind of like you say, it is really like a snapshot of where we are in the industry. Like as long as you get around to the the whole kind of trade show for consumer expo and like talking with people this year the expo space is sold out they said at least like the halls that they've opened up. I imagine there must be extra room somewhere but I hope so.
Probably open up a garage somewhere.
Exactly. Exactly. They could they could put up some uh they could put up something outside probably. It's quite big areas. It's such a huge complex.

It's crazy that they ran out of room. So, it's going to be it's going to be a great show. I think the things that I'm looking out for are like last couple years and you mentioned China joy earlier is the influence of Asia and how prominent companies from Asia are almost in comparison to everywhere like everywhere else especially US sort of western because that feels like over the years that's changed quite dramatically and there's so many of them personally curious of love and deep space will be there because of all the controversy they don't I don't think they were at China Joy they missed Billy Billy World and I'm not sure if they'll have that at
but my always there and they have I mean insane like that's that's incredible.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So there's going to be that's going to be really interesting. I'm also to your point about EA. I'm really interested about if there'll be more presence for the Middle East. Obviously in the business area, Savvy usually has a has a presence. And last year, I I'm sure I remember like at

least a couple kind of areas that were sort of Middle Eastern organizations. Um it might have been Kitty City or something.
I'm actually starting to see a lot more and I'm starting to see a lot more conversations regarding some of the the the governments and that sort of stuff as well. So undoubtedly there's going to be a lot more presence there.
You mentioned GeForce. Do you really think cloud gaming is going to be a big thing?
I mean, I have my experience with it and I absolutely love it. Like, it seems to work incredibly well. I can see in terms of in terms of people wanting to access and be able to play games that are, you know, much higher powered than than iPad games, that kind of thing, you know, the mobile games to be able to run it on a on a tablet or on a lowspec computer or whatever it is that you want to try and run it on, it works well. So I can see for for certainly some countries it will be a a blessing in disguise, you know, being able to access and certainly for Steam and for Epic for for customers to

be able to access their games without having to invest huge amounts in a in a high-spec PC with a high-spec graphics card. I think it it lowers that entry bar and I think that will be a big a big boost for a lot of these countries. Yes,
I I I I just have my doubts.
I mean, it depends what you're playing on it, of course.
[laughter]
It's like I'm a I'm a a real time real time strategy kind of player. So those kind of games are generally much slower and it's not as you know it's not first person shooter that kind of thing. So it it's it's easier to stream.
Depends on your RTS. I'm a big Starcraft 2 fan. So
they happily join you there.
APM is is very important. I I I just think like cloud gaming has never gone so far and the games are still expensive. So even if you break into these markets like I feel like the game
GeForce it's not that expensive like you're you're you have access to the entire Steam catalog. So you can you know any Steam sales whatever it may be

as long as you have purchased the game you can now start and you can now install those games on those servers and be able to play them. So it kind of it opens up a lot and it really it really enables you to be able to play your your Steam catalog.
Do you think it's good for competitive games? TBC.
It's I'm just grilling you.
Yeah. I mean, you're never you're never gonna use it to play esports, that's for sure. But as a replacement as a replacement to, you know, a PlayStation or something, it it gives families or or, you know, people access to be able to play these games that wouldn't necessarily be able to access to them. So, I I think it's very cool from that respect.
I mean, the price point is something that I'm interested in, too, because you're right, hardware is only getting more and more expensive, especially, you know, with what we're seeing. So I wonder if that will encourage people and it doesn't seem to be slowing down either. So I wonder if price point will be the sort of push that people need to start adopting cloud gaming more but
I mean well yeah there I heard I heard a I can't remember where I read the article now this earlier this week could

have been pocket gaming. Um but they were they were saying something about the you know the cost of memory rising through AI and going extremely extremely high and that subsequently
everything's got more expensive. Yeah. because of hardware.
Yeah.
Everything. Yeah. Like iPhones [snorts]
everything. Yeah. So from that perspective maybe this kind of reminds you of the conversation because I talked to Hillar who's the CEO of uh CCP now Fenerous Creations and we were talking about web 3 gaming and like the whole industry had cooled on web3 gaming but for certain companies like his they're only sort of betting on it harder. So I wonder if it's going to be a case of you either are or you're just not at all but and there's no sort of middle ground. But yeah it'll be interesting to see how that plays out. I don't know if you also I don't know if you've ever tried the the streaming on like PlayStation 5, that kind of thing. Sorry, I'll point it over there at the PlayStation, but you can't see that. So, but you know, you can now stream the games if you have a PS+ and they that I find works incredibly well. You know, obviously it depends on your internet connection and the speed that you have and everything else, but my god, playing half these

games, certainly like Genshin, that kind of thing, you don't have to go through like a 40 gig download to be able to play it in the first place, which is always a blessing. And whenever there's an update, you don't have to wait sort of an hour before you can play it. Uh, which is quite nice.
I feel like the main driver is going to end up being the actual platform holders themselves just of pushing us on to to cloud gaming because
you wonder if you wonder if disc removal is the first like first step in that anyway.
Yeah. So, it's more like it's not necessarily something that consumers were clamoring for, but then they have to do it anyway. Yeah. And then maybe maybe then consumers will be like actually this isn't too bad once they're forced to deal with it.
Like there's different ways of doing digital isn't there? And if you look at Switch and Switch 2 in comparison to like PlayStation in the form of digital digital disc management or digital game management. I think Switch have done a really nice job of being able to sort of have cartridges you hold on your or

digital cartridges you hold on your central account and then you can distribute them off to different accounts and that kind of thing which I think works much nicer
to kind of bring it back to late to to to to Gamescom and and with discless consoles. I wonder if over the next 5 years the the base of people interested in at least I'd say console games shrinks because one games are still expensive like I mentioned and two like it's actually without discs so people can't buy secondhand and I think actually they I appreciate the consoles are sold at a hardware sold at a loss so if you're a platform holder you probably don't really care about this and I know from least working at Jason 2 and sometimes on MCV like publishers kind of hate hated the secondhand market but for a lot of people they buy a game at like 60 quid or whatever because they know that they could get some resale value out of it and I think you might cut out that part of the market that is even just interested in these games. And so

our reporter Issa who focuses on the Mina market he he was saying like well fine get rid of discs but like I think only South Africa is served by Xbox Live and PSN. So unless the console manufacturers kind of get their act together and make it make these networks available across like new countries and regions where you think there might already be. I think that's a that shrinks the audience further and maybe in like five years you'll start seeing this impact at expos. Well, there's also a load of different problems surrounding like geo lockdowns and that kind of stuff with with a lot of the a lot of the vendors, you know, in terms of you can't if you if you happen to live in the UK and then move to the US or something like that, you can't take your games with you because your account won't support different geo games and that kind of thing. So, it's kind of a I think there's a load of problems that they have to iron out with that, but they have no choice but to iron them out

now that they've decided that's the route that they're taking. And to um to quickly add with your kind of physical games point and like whether we'll see that kind of audience shrink at all like I know a few people where you know I think that is going to happen just in my you know small circles of like you know they said you know they're getting rid of physical PlayStation games so immediately I think I know two people who just will not be getting a PS6 they're just not interested anymore. What would they do instead of interest?
They're just not going to play games.
They just completely cut games out because I I kind of wondered if people would move to sort of more retro consoles, that kind of thing, you know, pick up pick up
Well, I think
Super Nintendo games and that kind of thing.
Maybe they'll go retro. At the minute, they're just going to keep what they've got and, you know, if they don't get bored of the games they currently have, I guess they'll keep playing those ones. But yeah, and then like even with GTA 6, like a few people who've been really excited for that once they announce that's digital only, like they're just

not getting it. They're not interested anymore because like quite a few people I know do buy secondhand because it's cheaper and now that's not going to be an option. They just refuse to pay full price. So that's enough that they're just outright basically boycotting the game. So it will be, you know,
would only be, you know, that would be like, I don't know, sort of three months after the actual release, something like that. And the chances are you'd get a sale on Sony or something on the Sony store at somewhere around 3 months after release anyway. So does it actually like I mean, take away the physical aspect of it, the fact that you can't hold the box, does it actually change that much? I mean apparently like the
friends who do they do buy digital so it's for them it's more about I guess the opportunity to resell as well but also buying secondhand. Yeah I get your point with the kind of discounts and things obviously I'm more of a Nintendo player so I I don't really know what discounts are cuz Nintendo don't do

those. Yeah, certainly for the other kind of games and maybe they would be able to buy it cheaper if there's an offer on but yeah I guess then you are committed that like well you've bought it now you can't sell it on later but yeah it' be interesting to see whether kind of console gaming does become more niche going forward. So I I I guess in I guess in their defense slightly was it the can't remember I think I feel like the figures that they showed Sony like behind this decision was like something like 80% of people just download their games now like the majority do that. So anyway, we'll see if it affects fandom over the next few years.
Yeah, it' be an interesting one to watch.
Lots of different opinions. I love it.
We're gonna Thanks. Thanks very much for that. That was great. So we're gonna move on. So, Mariam, what have you got?
I have got a piece of news that I saw that just came out. We covered it. So, this week, Modern Times Group, MTG, the parent company behind Ra Shadow Legends, Balloons TD6, Forge of Empires, and a bunch of other mobile hits, just

rebranded its entire midcore games division, and they're now calling it Play Amp. So, essentially, this means that six studios, which all previously ran under their own names, are now unified under this umbrella brand. So, it's a rebrand. It's a rename, but I think what's there's a lot going on underneath and I kind of wanted to unpack it with you guys. So, one of the things that I thought was really interesting and Craig, you've covered this before and I and indeed did a talk on it at PGC Barcelona on DTC. So, the CEO and from their press release that they sort of released to the industry, they said that 51% of their revenue now comes from DTC. Now, if those numbers are correct, that's more than half of Playamp's revenue that's now comes from their own launcher, their own web stores, and user choice billing, not the App Store or Google Play. So, that's a huge threshold to cross. I don't know if you guys remember, I'm sure you do, in the early days of DTC when these conversations were sort of just being thrown around, most publishers were sitting within the sort of single digits and the low teens. So crossing 50% officially means for MTG that they've built a second storefront that sort of rivals the likes of the App Store and

the Play Store as their primary sales channel. So that's huge and I think that's really cool. I mean I don't distrust them. I do trust those numbers but it's it's like I said from from just two years ago that's a huge sort of progression.
Yeah. But when you when you think about it, it makes a lot of sense to push very very hard for that because there's a you know it's minus the 30% tax.
I mean it does naturally any business would be wanting to do that. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
But it's more for me it's more to see it actually happening because like I mentioned in the early days it was oh we're just hitting these numbers. We're just hitting these low figures but now we've officially crossed the 50% threshold or so they have. So who's to follow suit? That'll be really interesting to see. It's going to be interesting to see what happens with the DTOC front. The super interesting part of this is if you look, you know, if you install RAID and have a look at at RAID, certainly on the US, you know, install in the US,
you can see just how hard they are pushing people towards D2C. You know, there's a persistent banner in the the bottom left which is pushing people to the D2C store page and they're trying,

you know, they're trying everything they can whenever you go to make a purchase within the game. They're asking if you want to purchase through Apple or if you want to purchase through D2C. it's in in giving sort of benefits to purchasing through DTOC. So I I think as long as you can push that value of being able to you know the the logic of purchasing for me going to rather than going to Apple purchasing directly through D2C as long as you can show the value in that which Raid have done incredibly well. I think it opens up all sorts of doors and also they've got Ino as well which is pushing very very hard on that respect and they've they've been
rage shadow legends is they're lucky that they've got this example because like you said they've been sort of notorious for that aggressive push towards that and I wonder if they're going to use that as an example because it only makes sense you you get to save on all those costs
but then Ino Ino have had web they they've been on web for a long long time which means they've had to do their own sort of DTOC payments essentially and they've been doing that for a long time So, you know, they they have experience

in these fields. Like a lot of these companies from uh MTG have have really really really good experience of being able to do D2C even before DTOC sort of became a thing for mobile.
Yeah, definitely. And that's also considering that RA Shadow Legends is 9 years old and they still, this is according to their own press release, they grew 9% yearon-year in Q2 to $111 million in 2026. So, that's kind of the flagship proof point for it all for it all really. Another point that I wanted to bring up is the CEO Oliver Bullis. He said that AI integration has happened across 60 games. That's kind of a given at this point, but to see it actually happening in real time is really interesting. So they've admitted that AI tooling is now a core for how they run live service games at at scale. Now the thing that I found interesting about this is that if you look at it from an economic standpoint, this is the actual economic logic sort of behind the whole rebrand. So a mid-size studio like Snowprint which is under the umbrella or future play can never really afford to build an enterprise level enterprisegrade AI tooling on its own but by centralizing it under play amp

they've essentially turned AI investment into a sort of shared cost spread across dozens of titles instead of a burden that each individual studio has to make alone which makes this sort of consolidation make financial sense beyond just branding which it never was just branding but you know another plus point for them and final point for me is I think it's pretty amongst all this doom and gloom, it's nice to see a rebrand that's not sort of driven by disaster and it's just because all their titles seem to be doing fairly well. I mean, you said Ra Legends is one, but they've got a few heavy hitters in there. So, it was it was an interesting piece of news that really caught my attention with a lot of sort of subsections within Yeah, it's really interesting that Hybrand and a couple interesting things there is I feel like we were kind of saying it there anyway, but I think Raid in particular have been doing this for a long time and that perhaps pushes the number up quite I know we know games has been doing it but like perhaps pushes the number up quite substantially that acquisition to above like 50%. how quick uh these public

companies are kind of doing that and I know it's because they kind of have to and now things are easier to do that thanks to a lot of regulatory changes and legal battles finally kind of coming to a head really interesting and MTG interestingly is of those like kind of public companies of maybe like that size they're the one that actually I think their share price was the only one that didn't crash because when you said like oh the rebrand didn't come about is like something terrible It did make me think like, oh yeah, like it's kind of like a restructure, reorganization that this that took place a little bit before and then this rebranding of this particular division now is is whilst they're growing as a company rather than at least share pricewise, what that matters is in decline.
It's a smart move on their part. Really smart. Yeah. The only thing that that I was like a bit skeptic about and this is a very minor point but as I was reading the press release uh I guess this is just PR speak but uh out of six mobile titles that they were that they have now the CEO said that preserving a unique

culture is like one of their sort of high points that they want to maintain. But I don't really know how you're going to do that when all of them kind of come under one umbrella. But yeah, the unique culture is an identity they said which is what I guess like every single publisher says before centralizing everything. But let's see. It'll be interesting to see how that plays out too.
I think a big part of it is to centralize the tech element of it. So everything, you know, all of the the platforms, they take learnings from each of the companies that exceeds in one specific area and they're they're pulling those all together to to build a platform that works really well for for everybody there, which I I mean, it makes so much sense in in a company that's had so many acquisitions and so many so many great studios added to it. It really it really they they they can build a really good platform underneath everything,
especially from AI's perspective. For sure. Yeah.
Right. We're going to That was great. We're going to move on. Thanks. Thanks very much for that, Mariam. Aaron, what have you got?
Yeah. So, this week I've been putting together a bit of a data dive into like July's mobile charts. I'm looking for

some of the biggest stories and takeaways for like revenue and downloads. So firstly like for a bit of context around how July was overall mobile games. Oh this is all based on app magic data by the way. So it's Google play and app store. Mobile games collectively generated $6.8 billion in July which was down 4% year-over-year but up 9% month over month compared to June. And there were also 4.5 billion new downloads that occurred uh which was down 2% year-over-year but up 4% month overmonth. Uh so in both metrics down from July 25 but up from June 26. And it also means on average then for every install that took place like players spent just over like $150 just for interest. And um yeah, to sort of look at some of the kind of big contributors, like I I think July's biggest success story was probably

Pokémon Go on the revenue side. Um obviously it's a 10-year-old game now has made billions of dollars. Like I'm hardly saying it's like an underdog, but um it's actually been quite some time since it's made its way kind of right up towards the top of the monthly revenue charts, which it did do in July. So yeah, the month saw it celebrate its like 10y year anniversary. It had a go fest which is kind of an annual event. This was the first free one. So while they missed out on ticket sale revenue like everyone got to participate and I guess get tempted to spend during the event and yeah so ultimately spending kind of skyrocketed to kind of figures that haven't been seen since the pandemic. So, the game made 141.5 million, which was a 29% rise compared to June. And yeah, it's the highest sum that it's made in more than four years. It also shot the game up through the charts. So, in in June, Pokémon Go was

19th and in July, it was fifth. Uh, so yeah, quite a big improvement. Its first time in the top 10 even in like about a year. I think August 25 was the last time it ranked 10th. quite a big improvement there. I've actually written a couple of stories on Pokémon Go over the past like month, like kind of following this rise that it's been back through. So, yeah, there's a few stories that are worth checking out on the site. Yeah, overall I think it's really down to the like anniversary celebration. There seems to be a lot of like nostalgia for 2016 anyway, at least in kind of Gen Z. And yeah, the free Go Fest I think was a a smart move because kind of giving players access to so much more content. It probably encouraged people to like buy Pokeballs and raid passes and the bundles like storage space because you can only have so many Pokémon at a time for the Go Fest um sort of dispersed the biggest variety of

Pokémon species ever like at the same time in the wild. So I can imagine, you know, for a lot of people there would have been Pokemon they hadn't caught before that um yeah, they might have needed to buy more storage to keep. So yeah. So that's Pokemon.
Do you think Powerorld's success and and renewed success has had any impact on that?
That's an interesting question. I hadn't really considered that. I suppose it might have done. I I'd sort of imagined it more of being Power World taking away from the Pokemon audience. But equally, the kind
you know, if you start playing Power World or or you continue playing Power World on on PlayStation or PC or whatever, then you you start playing Pokémon Go on mobile to sort of fill your time. It kind of
Yeah, I guess
there's a correlation there. Yeah, particularly obviously with it being like free-to-play mobile game like certainly yeah could see someone picking up Go as a result of playing PAL World maybe that has had some impact because the version 1.0 update came out quite

recently, didn't it? So that
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, that's good point. I I just like that it's like I'm sure many times over the years I mean you hear like ridiculous things like Pokémon Go's dead which obviously it's not or like it's on the decline and maybe although as we discussed previously they at least claimed to us that while the headlines were like revenue is going down they said it's actually been on the up like consecutively for like a few years they're very obviously very good at monetizing their audience and I know that players have in the past I think there's a bit of a tough time at least from a community management perspective of after the pandemic and lockdowns when they had opened up Pokémon Go to then sort of I think there was a challenge of like well how do we
not do that anymore so people have to like basically go out and pay for stuff a bit more
and I think there was probably a bit of tension there for a while so it's interesting that once they kind of opened things up again like they actually made loads more money I

appreciate it's a 10 year anniversary so it's maybe one doesn't equal the other but it's interesting that like the result was such a massive revenue boost.
Yeah, I was going to say yeah to your point on the um like lockdown and kind of changing after that because it it seems kind of uh backwards at a glance that you know the walking based Pokémon Go like it had its best month ever during the lockdown when people couldn't really go outside. But yeah, I think it's because they they made some quite big changes while everyone was locked at home that evidently paid off because they had a massive revenue surge and you could like catch a lot more Pokémon from home. I think they increased the radius of the like Pokémon that would spawn so you didn't have to go outside. So yeah, I think when they when it was like well lockdowns are over, you need to go out again and they kind of reset everything. People were, you know, in the habit of being lazy basically and didn't didn't really like it for a while. They have this sort of they have I guess the luck of it's a 10th anniversary and I wonder

how much of the Aaron you mentioned is sort of based on nostalgia and how much people just inherently love Pokémon and I I'm an old school Runescape player and it kind of reminds me like this one phrase that is said a lot came to my mind because I mean Runescape doesn't have as much clout as Pokémon but arguably because it's I don't know it depends who you're talking to but you know you never really take you never quit Runescape you just take a break and I wonder if it's like the same sort of attitude towards Pokémon because I mean I'm not even a super fan like you Aaron but I it still holds like a very dear part in my in my heart and my sort of like gaming story. It was like one of the first the card game was like the first game I ever played. So they have sort of this they have this in their arsenal. I guess that they're just an iconic brand and it's a 10th year anniversary celebration in July as well which obviously helped those numbers. So and I'm sure there I don't know if you know much about what their live service looked like during this month but I'd imagine they were really pushing live ops to sort of highlight that 10th year anniversary. There were quite a few like timed events that so they were trying to get kind of like a season pass system in a way of like try and catch so many like

Pikachu a day or something to get in-game rewards and things like that to keep people coming back. And in the week building up to Go Fest, which was their big annual event, they had a bunch of like legendary Pokémon in raids like every day to kind of get people, I guess, back into the the habit of playing before that weekend where like everything went crazy and it was the big, you know, kind of 10 year celebration. And more broadly, like this year is this year is the 30th anniversary of Pokémon as a franchise. They've been, I think, kind of leaning into that as well. And the whole nostalgia thing, like it's timed quite well. 30 years of Pokemon, 10 years of Pokemon Go to just kind of go all in on the nostalgia.
So, have you got a couple more key takeaways from the charts?
Yes, I do. Yeah, it wasn't all um a Pokémon piece. Um so, so yeah, also PUBG Mobile um did quite well this month or last month rather in July. So it was 10th in June, moved up the rankings to fourth in July and thereby stayed ahead

of Pokémon Go just about. Actually performed very similarly. So yeah, PUBG Mobile also made about $141 a.5 million. It it beat Pokémon Go by $4,000 according to the estimates. So yeah, that that was a successful one. Uh Netis' Eggy Party was kind of back on form as well. at its highest um player spending since February 2024. Goddess of Victory made 37 million. So that um more than doubled its June earnings. There were quite a few I guess kind of older games that kind of moved their way back up the charts. Zenless Own Zero was another one that had its second anniversary and that was its best month in over a year, made almost 31 million. There were a few kind of successes from Turkey in July. So, Smashfest, which is by Flow Games, that's like quite a new game that um quietly, I would say, launched like last December, I believe,

and then it started getting a bit of momentum in May and has really rocketed up the the downloads chart since then. In July, it moved up another 248 positions. It was the 16th most downloaded game. And another one from Turkey is Grand Games. So, um they had quite a good month. two titles made the top 30 for installs. There was Magic Sort and Block Out, which made 9 million and 8 million downloads, respectively. So, yeah, obviously Turkey seems to really have a bit of a hold on like the the puzzle genre these days, which yeah, it looks like that's kind of continuing at the moment.
Yeah, really really interesting. Thanks for that. Do encourage everyone to check that out. Right, time is getting away from us. I am going to do I usually say I'm going to do this quickly and spend 20 minutes talking. I will I'll definitely try to do this very quickly, but I had a bit of a bit of news from us. So, we have just released our top 30 Turkey game makers list for 2026. And

next week, we'll be publishing our full region reports in association with Exola. Uh if you drop by the Steel Media booth at Gamescom, you can pick up a print copy. People are still doing print. I know it's kind of crazy. Interestingly about the the top 30 was like it turkey it's an incredibly hard list to make for Turkey because it is the market is moving so fast. So like every week, every month you look back at the charts for example or in the news reports and you'll just see a new company has emerged with a new game that is scaling like the ones that you mentioned Aaron like in particular flow games there. I think people know about the grand game story now, but then they've got new games that are kind of coming out and doing well and you can never count a Turkey developer out. So, if their last hit was maybe a few years ago and they're not currently like they don't currently have a hit, next month they could just launch something probably in the puzzle genre and it'll do really well. So, a couple quick points I really wanted to make which is from our report is like you know for

years now I think Turkeyy's basically risen to be one of the hottest hubs in the world. is basically Turkey and China are the the ones that people talk about the most. Not to say there aren't really great companies elsewhere. There are, but as a hub is great and the government support is insane. Like if we had that in the UK that would be good. It's really targeted as well which is incredible. And I think it's like 50% off like certain tools effectively like in terms of like tax incentives, UA support. They've also jumped on the the the support that actually makes a difference to to sort of revenue generation as well which is is really quite incredible like the the business logic behind it rather than rather than focusing on you know giving subsidies for studios and that kind of thing. They're going straight after the bits that are the biggest expenses for studios and a lot of that is user acquisition driven.
There's definitely a lot to learn I think for other countries that want to have targeted support. I'm not saying like general funds that we have in the UK aren't good or useful like I guess they are but like just seeing how

Turkeykey's done it and it looks like it's been done very differently.
I did a I did a panel at the Yuki conference recently towards the end of last year and sort of saying exactly this it was like you know this is this is a playbook for support for for countries from now on. Now we just have to get the ministers to listen. Exactly. And then whoever's going to be there support their support just extends as far and not there's nothing wrong with this but their support only extends as far as like university grants or sort of funding for a university program but like you said Adam this is like targeted stuff that actually matters when it comes to UA and monetization with mobile games. Where's that for us? It's
for for smaller companies a 50% discount on user exps insane. like they
insane.
You would be able to to have a massive a massive boost
for a small studio that doesn't have like a large overhead or it's a it would make all the difference. Yeah.
Yeah. It's to your point about scaling like they're kind of capturing the right side of it to create that revenue could maybe come back really really interesting over there. A couple very quick points from quotes in there. One

of them which was great was from Toge which is the trade body took Ole who who's who leads that and he was saying that they had an ambition years ago to reach $10 billion in revenue generation and he said that people laughed that's ridiculous and I think in the last was it 10 10 years ago they've gone from B or 10 or 15 years they've gone from like $100 million to $4 billion from Turkeykey's games market which you might actually almost in a way to me it almost feels like that's low compared to what's been going on, but like that's where they're at. And like $10 billion is a massive massive figure, really big ambition, but it it seems feasible given what's been been happening there. And the other thing I I just wanted to say is there was a really good quote from Babagit from Arcadia Gaming Partners and well, he had two quotes. He said he mentioned that every time someone declares that it's too late or too crowded in mobile games, a new Turkish developer emerges. And but I I guess to be fair that is specifically in like

casual really casual puzzle at the moment. And then he also made some other comments about how highly competitive that market is. So this isn't like Finland with a rising tide lifts all kind of approach. It he said the insane competitiveness that makes these games companies so great can also sometimes be the Achilles heel. There is zero cooperation knowledge sharing and instead everyone is always trying to screw each other over. But for all that, it it also seems to be working. So yeah, that's the last figure I I'll probably say on that if anyone has any more thoughts on the Turkeykey's market. But yeah, really exciting and interesting.
Yeah, I was going to say opposite to the Nordics, which are really collaborative. They're kind of just doggy dog going after each other.
Yeah, interesting how two different kind of approaches can work. I know that in Finland it's they're struggling a bit as they used to compared to what they used to, but you know, still some successful companies there. Right, that brings us to the end of the week mobile game. So, thank you everybody uh for all your insights. Thank you for joining us

today, Adam. It was great to have you on the show.
Great to be here. Thank you.
And thank you everyone for tuning in and listening. We'll be back again next week. Hope you have a great weekend. Goodbye.