The Sensor Tower / AppMagic deal unwrapped and Xbox's random rebrand | Week in Mobile Games podcast

Hello and welcome to the pocketgamer.biz podcast weekend mobile games where we chat about the week's news and provide some insights. I'm Craig Chapple, head of content at pocketgamer.biz. With me as ever is our deputy editor Paige Cook and our data and features editor Aaron Astle. How are you both doing? Paige, what have you been up to?
Yeah, I'm doing good. Nothing major to update on. My little reminder of what I've been up to for the week is as simple as played some Forza, burnt my hand and I'm seeing family this weekend. That's how exciting life is, but yeah, I'm not usually one for like a big person for racing games, but I thought the Japan setting was pretty cool. So, I've been trying a little bit of the new Forza Horizon. It's pretty good. It looks beautiful. And yeah, it's quite fun. And the burning my hand thing, I don't know why I found this so funny. I think because I'm kind of known as not being a clumsy person. I'm not the type of person that

I trip over and all these kinds of things and I just had the dumbest moment of I made my partner a cup of tea, went to put it on a coffee table, completely missed the coffee table. And as the tea spilling down my hand, rather than being like a normal person and putting the mug down or even just fully dropping it, I just proceeded to let it like carry on tipping over my hand. But I was worried my cat was under me and I was like, well, I'd rather me get burnt than him. So, yeah, I had to sit and like watch something for an hour with a pack of peas, frozen peas on my hand because it felt so bad. And my first thought was, am I going to be able to type tomorrow at work or am I going to have like blisters and stuff. But luckily, I'm fine.
Glad glad you're okay. Glad you can write. One of those brain freeze moments.
I just stood there. My brain just stopped working, but yeah, it it's fine.
Lovely. Random question, if you get a burn, isn't ice bad for it? Aren't you supposed to put cold water on it?
I did do cold water, but it like wasn't helping enough. And then I was so paranoid about my hands blistering. I

was like, "I can't just stand here with my hand under the tap." So, I went with the peas thing. I don't know if you're supposed to do that, but it seemed to help because it took my focus off the pain. So, even if it was just for the distraction.
All right. Oh, thanks to that Paige. Glad you're better. Aaron, what have you been up to?
Yeah, not a not a huge amount of exciting stuff, to be honest. I I went out last weekend to like a family do. It was someone's 25th wedding anniversary. So, there was a lot of extended family that I don't see very often. Had a bit of a catch-up, which was quite nice. Other than that, bit of a a quiet week, really. Obviously, we've got the long weekend now. So, I'll probably be end up quite busy over that. Actually, maybe the funniest um anecdote from the past week, so I was telling Paige earlier, um cuz I think is it is it still rumored at the minute that like GTA is getting delayed again? It's not official yet.
Yeah.
But, I actually I didn't see that on the internet. I heard it at the gym cuz everyone was complaining at about it

last night saying it's getting delayed again. Um yeah, that's uh gaming making it into the real world there.
That's when you know a game has broad reach, just at the gym and people are like, "Oh, I can't believe GTA might be being delayed."
Thanks to Aaron. Aaron, thanks. Uh we're going to move on to uh Before we get on to the news and shout-outs for our events. We've got Pocket Gamer Connects Malmö coming up May 27th 28th. PGC Barcelona June 15th and 16th. That should be a really nice with a lot of great speakers there. Expecting around 1,000 people. Got PGC Summit Shanghai July 29th. That is just before China Joy. PGC Nordics takes place in Helsinki. That's our usually our PGC Helsinki event, which is rebranded it at October 20th and 21st. Uh we'll bring together people across the Nordics for that one. Uh that's our usually our second biggest show, so that will be that will be great. And then we got PGC Summit bag called October 28th and we're doing Gran Canaria in November and we'll have some other events to announce in the near

future. And don't forget we have the Mobile Games Awards taking place alongside Gamescom. Uh details mobilegamesawards.com. Right, so onto the news. So last week we did speak about the Sensor Tower and App Magic acquisition. Just wanted to follow that up a bit. So if you don't know, yes, Sensor Tower acquired its rival which does mobile app market intelligence App Magic for an undisclosed fee and they said that App Magic's going to be kind of responsible for the small to medium-size business part of the company. Interesting, big deal. Remember 2 years ago Sensor Tower bought their rival Data AI, so this kind of further cements their position kind of at the top of mobile app market intelligence. I interviewed Sensor Tower Chief Revenue Officer Tom Smee about the deal. And so I just wanted to follow up with I guess with a few key details and and some of the things that he said. So he says that the App Magic acquisition includes both the team and the platform. He says that a large majority of the App Magic team, which is just shy of 100

employees, will continue in their roles. A very, very small number, as he said, of employees have been let go. Uh the plan for App Magic is for it to remain as a standalone product focused primarily for small to medium-size business. He said, "We're not going to sunset App Magic. We're not planning to turn it into an enterprise product and raise prices. We've acquired it specifically to have that SMB option." Worth and he said we're probably going to keep should keep the branding like past the old Pathmatics, Video Game Insights, Playliner. They all kept their names. It's a bit different than the Data AI deal. So that the long-term plan has been to initially run them as separate products but basically merge the data and then just have it as Sensor Tower. Whereas in this one, they're actually they're to keep running two different data methodologies. I said, "Are you okay with having basically two sources of truth from one company?" He said they're fine with that experience, at least in the near term. I guess on his actually why Sensor Tower acquired

AppMagic, he said that since the Data.ai acquisition that the firm has built more complex data sets and entered other categories like web, PC, console, moving away from his previous pure mobile app app intelligence play. And he said, "Along that journey, we have gone more upstream into enterprise and candidly we've done a bad job servicing the small business and indie developer community." There's plenty more in the in this interview. I obviously did ask him about consolidating a lot of power within one company. Do they have a monopoly basically in the space? His response to that was that there have been acquisitions by other web and ad networks in the app intelligence space. And he said, "These are not small companies making those acquisitions." I would also say that there's a lot of new mobile app intelligence companies coming up all the time, which is the reason why we acquired AppMagic to have our own SMB solution. I thought that was interesting. There obviously are some I'm trying to think of what he was referring to. I think he's referring referring to, for example, if I remember right I don't I didn't write it down. I think it Vungle acquired Is it Vungle

acquired at Game Refinery? That is like one deal. I don't know I can't remember MobileAction maybe got acquired. And there are other companies around like Appfigures, for example, that he's referring to. But none of them really are on the scale of Sensor Tower or Data.ai before that. And maybe even none of them really on the scale of AppMagic, to be honest. Uh but that that's my opinion. Yeah, so if you want to see more details, read the full article. The one last bit I'll say is that I mentioned again about direct-to-consumer platforms and if that messes with their investments, what are their plans for that? And they said they're going to roll out a platform, roll out features for that in Q2, where they are using their user panel, which is users that opt in to share their data, on device data, I think. And then, Sensor Tower is now able to track email receipts from direct-to-consumer platform purchases, and they'll then kind of come up with estimates of

revenue from that. Um, which is kind of similar to what they do for usage. Any thoughts on that? I think we probably covered it last week, though.
I guess it's good to kind of have that kind of semi-confirmation that like App Magic's going to stay as its own platform, obviously within Sensor Tower. Um, and so I do think that's quite interesting that yeah, they're happy, as you say, for there to be kind of two different data sources then. Like if the numbers, cuz obviously currently, you know, you'll get slightly different estimates on App Magic to Sensor Tower. At the minute, at least, that sounds kind of odd if you'd have, you know, one company giving you two different numbers on the same games, but yeah. Maybe that will just become the norm, or maybe they will like line up more than than they do at the minute. Who knows, I guess.
Yeah, um, also curious how that shakes out. He did say that on Sensor Tower's side, the state of mobile report that they do, the reports when they work with press, they'll be using Sensor Tower data. If I was to really get into the weeds of it, it's like App Magic and

Sensor Tower, one, as we're saying, they have two different kinds of estimates for revenue and downloads, right? So does App Magic keep doing their own reports and blog posts? And then from the net revenue, they actually calculate differently, so uh, Sensor Tower gets the gross revenue. This is so specific, I'm sorry everybody, this is so boring. They they uh, they at least they used to, and I think they still do, they get the revenue figure, the gross revenue figure, by dividing the net number by 0.7. To take into account the 30% fee, which we know has been changing. And that's what we do all pocket gamer all this, but maybe you should just go to net cuz at at some point in the future and maybe cuz maybe that's all changing. Anyway, all that magic for reasons that I don't understand, but I'm not very good at math, they divided by 0.6. So, [laughter] uh even the you're going to get even more like kind of strange numbers coming out of both of them if they continue to do that. Anyway, yeah. Personally, that

is interesting to me. Right. Um anyway, enough of my uh boring yabbering on. Page, what have you got?
Uh first up from me is quite a big story this week. Um kind of the continued fallout from one of gaming gaming's long-running battles. So, Fortnite is now officially back on Apple's App Store globally with one exception being Australia. I think by now we've spoke about it so many times on the podcast, everyone knows kind of the the long history of it, but in a very quick way, 2020, Epic added its own payment system to the iOS version of Fortnite and Apple very swiftly uh like nope, that's not happening, removed it, and that's kind of triggered years of these legal battles and you know, talking about developer rights, platform fees, all that kind of stuff. Fortnite did return to the US App Store last year. That was after nearly 5 years. Um it kind of shot back up to like the top of the download charts, which I think a lot of people expected. So, I'm very intrigued to see

what happens with it now that it's back globally, like how that game does um and how many people are playing it. Epic said that the global return reflects a belief that once Apple is essentially sort of, you know, forced to show exactly how its fees are calculated and how that works, that governments won't allow for what Epic describes as Apple junk fees to stand. But yeah, the game also returned to Google Play earlier this year. So, that could border with being back on the App Store um obviously outside of Australia, which it isn't back in, but for everywhere else, like that's a pretty big turnaround for Epic. But, and we've discussed this on the podcast before as well, I guess there's the question of at what cost? Literally, in terms of what cost. It's a lot of money to do all of these legal battles, but it's been years of not having Fortnite on these stores, so that's also a lot of money lost there. And obviously, Epic have also recently had like heavy layoffs, so yeah, it kind of feels like a win for them, but then when

you look beneath the surface, there's also a lot of wounds that have been suffered along the way, so you kind of have to weigh up what the cost has been. I guess for the wider perspective of it outside of just Epic, it does show that these, you know, bigger battles against platform holders and fees and that kind of stuff, like they're still very much so ongoing and trying to break those things open a little bit more, so I guess we'll see what the larger impact is across, you know, especially like, you know, for mobile over the coming years. But, yeah, it just feels like this has been going on for years and years, so it's always strange when it feels like you're getting towards the back end of what's happening, even though I'm sure something else will still happen. But, yeah, essentially, it is it is back on the the stores, so pretty big deal.
I just uh just agree with what you said that it it kind of after all these years and after all that pain that Epic has suffered like with the Google deal, it very much felt like, "Okay, we've we've reached the end of the whatever we can do. We'll take what we

we can get and we'll go forward." With Apple, they've probably done a I don't know. It feels a bit more successful, whatever happens. I I think they're they're just sort of kind of giving up and being like, "Okay, well, we've got as much as we feel like we can. We cannot afford to lose money anymore. We need to start making more." So, yeah, it's all coming to an end. I mean, it has to come to an end at some point. They did a very good fight, you know? What else could they have done, really?
Yeah.
And to carry on is is like you said, very expensive. We are where we are. Curious to see now what uh what happens uh with Apple fees in various regions. Right, uh thanks for that page. So, Aaron, what's your next story?
The first up for me today is another new Nintendo game. It's only been like just over 6 months. We had like a 6-year drought, and now they're doing like two in a year. And you know, I I don't think anyone saw this coming, especially not the game itself. It's kind of a new IP, I suppose. So, it's called Picto Nico {exclamation mark}. So, it's basically like a collection of mini-games around

your photos. So, yeah, basically you might take a photo of, you know, I might take photo of you, say, Craig, and then now I can like stretch your face around. Or the the options are endless, or there are 80 options cuz there's 80 mini-games. Yeah, very very strange. In a way, it feels a bit Nintendoy. So, I wrote a piece on this. So, it's being um developed with Intelligent Systems, who funnily enough also made the last mobile game, which was Fire Emblem Shadows, which obviously we've talked about quite a few times. It hasn't really blown up. So, this is a totally different kind of thing, but Intelligent Systems also make the WarioWare games, which this feels like Basically, if they just stamped Wario's picture on it, this could be a WarioWare game, but they just haven't. It's a new IP, which again is funny cuz that's kind of the opposite of Fire Emblem Shadows. That feels like its own thing with some Fire Emblem characters in it. So, yeah, a bit of a strange one. It's

also I guess it's not quite premium, but apparently you can only play so many mini-games for free, and then to unlock others you have to buy like packages, potentially plural as well. So, you might have to make like multiple I guess bundle purchases to get all 80 mini-games, which maybe I'm not the target market, but to me I I sort of struggle to see people downloading this. I say like, you know, stretching someone's face or whatever and then being convinced like, "Yeah, I'll I'll buy, you know, a bulk load more of these mini games." I mean, I guess we'll see. I think it comes out next week. So, for all I know, I'll be eating my words and this is the next billion-dollar game. So, it's it's just a it's a bit of a strange approach. I really It looks like a kind of free-to-play game from the trailer and stuff, but yeah, then you kind of read on the Play Store page and it isn't. It looks like quite varied. You can take photos of groups of people as well and

um yeah, there's all kinds of just like wacky mini games that are made out of it. Like, there's one where it shows someone's face put onto like a cartoon baby and then you have to try and get them to eat a lollipop while they're like crawling around the screen. Maybe this will do better in Japan cuz again, I I don't know how many people are going to be like willing to pay for that in the West, especially I'd say if it's not kind of tied to another IP. So, yeah, I mean, they Nintendo have described it as a kind of silly title. Um and apparently, they they are targeting all age ranges with this. Um I guess in a way like um if I were marketing it then, it kind of feels like a maybe safer version of Snapchat for lack of a better word. Just that you can take a picture and you know, modify stuff. That's kind of what Snapchat's all about, but obviously, that's a social media platform. This is just a yeah, like a fun little thing you can

spend 5 minutes on.
I guess it it does follow like it's like a trend of like these non-gaming apps are just kind of like starting to not starting to. These non-gaming apps for a long time now have been doing really well and You you some games publishers or at least like people that work at games publishers kind of moving into apps and then now you're seeing um Duolingo uses gamified stuff. Voodoo has moved into games with the acquisitions of Be Real and the other app that it owns, can't remember what it's called. EA has its EA Sports app for example. Monopoly Go has got a chat now, although that's very much tied to the game. So, I guess it kind of makes sense, okay, we've got all this talent, we could move into the app space, do a games thing with it, and see what it does. I doubt it's I don't know. I doubt it's like very serious and they think, oh, this is going to have a massive impact on the whole company, but it's kind of I guess it's fun. And like I said, we'll see what happens. Thanks for that. A really, really interesting one. I wanted to move on to some Xbox news and I just have a

little rant, I guess. But firstly, I'll do the rant. So, this it's just some odd decisions coming out of Xbox. And for example, you know, there's been a rebrand to Xbox in all caps. Okay, fine, whatever, but it came about because of a poll on X, formerly known as Twitter. Although, to a lot of us it's still known as Twitter. And it's yeah, they they voted to go Asher Scharma put up a poll for some reason, do you want it in all caps or not? Okay. And it cuz it used to be. And it was voted to have it all caps. And then I I think that might have ended on Friday night and suddenly marketing, like this massive corporation, they have to adapt to this it's seemingly small change, but then all the branding has to now change overnight because a few people on X were like, yeah, do that. Okay. And I think I I think I'm going to steal a quote from Matt Piscitella. That's a sorry. But I think I saw him comment saying like, you know, what happened to kind of uh sorry, he made a comment of like, moving fast and breaking things, but what happened

to like moving slow? And it's kind of like, yeah, why not? You you don't have to just make these kind of crazy decisions like an Elon Musk was saying those decisions fail necessarily. You don't have to do that. And then I just like, we can't have a quiet period where Xbox doesn't make any announcements. I know that they're trying to They've got a new exec executive team. They've kind of been Oh, going on to that in a minute. They're kind of reshuffling the leadership. Ash Schah is new CEO. It's okay to be quiet for a while and then do your big announcements. Cuz also, they're going to have some pretty bad stuff coming up, probably. They're probably going to do layoffs, arrange studios, close them. I can't see why that not happening in the future as as real decisions get made. So, picking up these These seem like easy wins, but it seems also kind of really pointless, but whatever. Then, they've done this player voice thing, which I think is insane. Basically, it's a message board for Xbox ideas that's public that players can put in. So, you're giving players a voice. That should be a good thing. But, this is all public, so what happens when you

don't follow through? Like, you And also, for example, if that bad news comes, what happens when you close a studio or cancel a game, something? I don't think you'll like the results that appear on that message board unless there's real good moderation on that. I think it's going to get pretty toxic. And Forza is a very classic for getting toxic. So, see what happens there. Maybe maybe it's not an issue, but the top voted one right now is exclusives for Xbox. Like, okay, I think I agree personally. But, that does mean if they went through with that, that does mean a big strategy shift for for like Game Pass or just in general. Does that mean those games don't come on PC? And what are players meaning and what would they be happy with? If Call of Duty is Xbox only, and then what does that also mean? People have voted for it, but then you're like, okay, but there's more people that have a PlayStation. I'll just get it on PlayStation. I won't even bother getting on Xbox. This is things like And this is top of it. So, do they have to go like are they just not going to listen to their players now? It's like you're just putting your I feel

like you're just digging a hole. That's an own goal that's totally unnecessary. It's like an easy win at the start, but when you have to follow through or don't follow through, that's where it becomes an issue. I think PR-wise, this could turn in potentially could turn into an issue. I know it comes from a good place cuz players should have a voice, right? It's good to see a company communicating with the fan base. But I think the suggestion that they're actually going to enact on what players want in this case, I think is going to backfire quite massively or or at least has potential. Other things that people want is like to make online multiplayer free to access. Like I kind of agree, but also okay. So, you're just going to make How you going to sell that to the to Microsoft? We're struggling with Xbox. Now, we want to lose loads more money. And then backwards compatibility. Anyway, a little rant. I thought that was really strange. And then the other thing is really big hires. So, Xbox has hired Matthew Boot as its chief strategy officer, which I just think is a very interesting move. He obviously does have

experience in various companies, but they're doing strategy. And as we know, he writes those massive state of video games industry reports that are very, very well researched. And I've spoken with the guy. Like, when you speak to him, he's just so well-spoken and so clever. There's no There's no brakes in what he says. Just you ask him any question and he'll just kind of come out like that with a at least a really interesting answer. I don't I guess I don't have an opinion one way or the other. It just feels odd to appoint him as chief strategy officer. I'm curious how that goes cuz I guess there's a difference between knowing all the industry trends, having ideas where we're going to go, but then actually implementing that into a massive company like Xbox, following through with what you want to do, cuz what what you think is a trend, where the industry is going, and then if that pans out or not. I It's a really interesting hire. And there's been a couple of other leadership changes earlier in the month, I think. Or a month ago, they they had some other leadership changes.

Some serious decisions being made. At least decisions are at that level are being made. It's not all just about changing your brand to capital letters. Yeah, we'll see we'll see where it goes. There's a lot of There's a long road ahead. So, I guess we'll give them a chance.
Yeah, like silly things like the the Xbox rebrand. Like, I don't want to like speak too badly of them, but it just just felt like they're trying to pull the wool over people's eyes in the sense of like, "Here's the illusion of change. Like, we're not Xbox, we're Xbox now." Like, that doesn't mean anything. That's just It literally change anything at all. Like, you're maybe you're trying to be like, "No, we're listening to the players and things." Like, I don't know. Like I said, I kind of agree with the thing of, you know, obviously when you have a a leadership change, yes, they're going to come out, they're going to make lots of changes, and they're going to be very vocal about it because there's a lot of new things going on, but I agree with it is then okay to have a period of just quiet. Doesn't mean you're not doing anything, but it means when you do say something, it's a little bit more substantial. It just feels like, yeah, these are kind of small changes that don't make a difference, and actually

maybe just cause way more unnecessary work. Like, you know, it doesn't really matter which if it's uppercase or lowercase how it's said. And the player voice thing, yeah, I think again, like on the surface, sounds like a great idea. Like, you know, you want to listen to your players, of course, and give them the things that they want, but it's also a business. It's not always that simple. And yeah, um I agree with you in the sense of it could It could get messy on there very quickly, especially if it's like being public. So, yeah, I guess we'll see what happens with it, but yeah, I think like for now, we've had so much Xbox news that I'm kind of at the point where it's like, "Okay, we'll just we'll just see what happens with it." It doesn't have to keep being these I think it's like every week something small or trivial sort of changes. Um I'm obviously not going to see any significant change for a long time. Uh I think that's It is kind of, you know, pretty short-term wins don't really feel like they're doing anything. I think it's a lot more about the long-term. But yeah, we'll just have to remember from now on we've got to shout

Xbox all the time.
Right, Paige, what else have you got this week?
So, this is actually one we didn't cover as news on the site, which I don't think I've ever spoke about something on the podcast we haven't covered, but I just found this one quite interesting. So, it's basically a console, and when I saw a picture of it earlier in the week, I had to double-check it was real because I would just I'd never seen it before. And I don't know, I guess like it just looks like this cute little thing where I was like, is that real or is it a mock-up thing? So, I checked it out. It is real. Um and it's the next playground. So, it's a little console. It came out in the US last year. Um and it's now arriving in the UK and Ireland. So, it's basically like a controller-free motion games console. You plug it into your TV, and it's got a built-in camera, and you essentially act as the controllers. You know, you move around, you jump up and down, do all those things. And going back to Xbox, sorry Xbox, obviously not speaking very nicely about you at the moment, but it just really reminded of essentially what Xbox

were trying to achieve with the Kinect back in the Xbox One era. Um I actually remember picking up an Xbox One at launch back when it came out in the UK, and you had to buy an Xbox One bundled with the Kinect at the time. There there weren't any versions that didn't have the Kinect with it because they essentially pushed it as such a core part of the experience. You had to have this camera. And the execution was terrible. They Like I said, they essentially forced you to get this thing, which made the bundle prices really expensive at the time. So, I think a lot of people just didn't get it. I know like I can't remember how long later, but eventually they did start selling bundles without the Kinect after they'd kind of realized that one, it's too expensive, and two, people aren't really enjoying the Kinect. It just It didn't work great. You had to have so much space. I remember setting mine up like in my bedroom because that's where I played games. And my bedroom was quite big, but it was always like, you know, you need more space here, you need more space there. Okay. So, you make the space, and then the

games were kind of just rubbish anyway, and it just turned into being this sort of gimmick thing. I remember the only time I ended up actually using my Connect at some point, I used to stream on Twitch, and I just used it as the camera. It would just be on me. That was it. I didn't play games with it. So, yeah, the next playground, it kind of made me think of that, like is that what they were trying to achieve with that back then? They wanted people in their living rooms, you know, families playing all these fun games and things. And yeah, so it's just interesting to see how this motion-based console is actually kind of working. It looks really smart and compact. It kind of reminds me of like a Rubik's Cube with a camera attached to it. But yeah, it's it seems very much so designed for families, like big get-togethers and kids and things like that. It already has like a bunch of party games for it. And the launch in the US actually did really well. Um I think it was a bit of like a hardware sales surprise. Um I know I was looking into it, it said that it had outperformed Xbox sales during Black Friday, like the Black Friday period last year. So, that's like

pretty huge. So, I'm really intrigued to see how it does here in the UK. Like it's the kind of thing, like my sister who has children, it's the kind of thing I could 100% imagine her grabbing. So, you know, I'm intrigued to see how it does. And yeah, it just reminded me of the old Connect that just the Starlink I think I still have my Connect somewhere in my mom's attic.
Just as a a slight aside, going to the Connect, that that device is nearly killed The Xbox One is so terrible when you look into it, like other than what we all know. So, it nearly killed Rare. I think they made a Is it Connect sports game? But that game was just so badly for them that it And it was so expensive. I think it could have destroyed that studio. They They around. It's like a Uh is not allowed to close Rare, I think, cuz too too well loved in the UK specifically. And then, I did an interview once with like the architect of of the Xbox One Xbox One hardware. And I asked about, "Did you ever

consider just building the console with Kinect like it inside it?" Cuz you say it was bad enough that you had to get the console with the Kinect, but at least it was separate so they could eventually shift strategy and ship it without it. Well, they did consider Sorry, not nearly necessary. They did consider building like Kinect within the actual hardware itself, which mean I don't know, you'd have to ship completely new hardware after that. So, the terrible Xbox One launch, which has basically kind of This is too extreme, but destroyed Xbox since since then up to now, but they're still recovering from that, could have been even worse. But anyway, really interesting like the next playground of what it's doing. You can tell like how the major at least Sony and Microsoft have just ditched families, children. Fair enough. They had their target markets. But how big potentially this other market is and that even like I think we were discussing, Aaron, you had better sources than me. Was like you had like the Wii Sports is massive. That is something like you're saying about you get your Kinect out

like with the family page. Like the Wii Sports is something you just roll out at Christmas for the family. And I don't think there's really that much like that at the moment that's that popular. And that's the gap that this fills.
Yeah, like this is the kind of thing I could imagine at Christmas. Like everyone gets out and they they play on it.
All right. Uh yeah, really interesting what Uh thanks that page. Aaron rounds us out.
Okay. So, yeah, um my last story today is about Melon Sandbox. And this is a game that I think is like flying somewhat under the radar. It's been around for a few years, but I only heard of it like fairly recently. So, I interviewed its publisher, Playducky's founder, Ivan Fedyanin. Sorry if I'm mispronouncing that, who talked about uh yeah, Melon Sandbox's um kind of position in the the casual mobile space and kind of straddling the line between sandbox game and UGC platform. It's kind of evolved more into the latter over time. So, it's had about

90,000 like UGC creations in it made by approximately 35,000 creators. And originally this started off as a game where you could just kind of make things in it for fun, but as I said, it's evolved into more of a platform. Combined, apparently these creators earned more than a million dollars last year uh through like their creations. And apparently this year, so just in Q1, it's nearly done like half as much again in a quarter of the time. Uh so, obviously, you know, it's kind of scaling in 2026. And some other stats, um so like the game's seeing peaks of over 70,000 purchases a day. It's got over 150 million downloads, uh 19 million monthly active users this March. Apparently average session time is like 40 minutes. So, you know, it seems like this is a pretty, you know, big thing amongst its players and community. But again, it's not not one

that I was really aware of before. Um so, like AppMagic estimates suggest it's made just under 17 million on mobile. That doesn't include its web shop or ad revenue. Um I think like maybe that's kind of why I wasn't aware of it for until I'd say quite recently at least. Cuz like obviously nearly 17 million dollars is nothing to scoff at, you know, that's a good chunk of money, but you know, it's not anything unprecedented in the mobile space certainly, you know, when we we talk about games that have made half a billion in 6 months or whatever or you know, billion in a a year or so faster. 17 million doesn't really that's not the standout thing in that perspective. And so we kind of touched on this in the interview when I was speaking to Ivan. And he says that a few years ago there was more kind of celebration around install milestones, but he thinks yet today the industry has sort of moved

more towards celebrating revenue milestones, which he said is a healthier change, but not the full picture. Um so he said that he thinks it's the the market found the install model was often better for ad networks than for publishers, and that millions of installs did not automatically translate into durable profit. So that could be why people are focusing more on just revenue numbers rather than games with massive install bases. He said for a creator-led product though that a large audience is not just a vanity metric. It covers distribution for creators, liquidity for the content marketplace, and fuel for organic growth. So basically obviously now that Melon Sandbox is basically a platform where people are making content, obviously the more players you have and creators, the more of that you're going to get happening. And then obviously monetizing it. The game also runs ads, so obviously if you've got 150 million installs,

that's a lot of people to potentially be seeing your ads. But then we don't see how that translates into revenue on the player spending side as such. Obviously there will be players spending. You can pay to remove the ads or for in-app purchases. But yeah, like the pure ad revenue I imagine is pretty good if you've got over 100 million installs. He also said on the player spending side though that retention is very very high among like spending players. Like after if it So a player who spends in the game, 50% of them are still playing after a year, of which, yeah, seems pretty good. He said that other, like, bigger competitors in the UGC space can have higher metrics than that, partially thanks due to multiplayer, which is something that Melon Sandbox is kind of working on, implementing multiplayer. But at the same time, that kind of led us on to discussing regulation and kind of online safety and things, which is sort of increasingly prevalent these days. And so that kind of makes it a bit more difficult to, like he said, they

can't just switch on voice chat, for example, because there are a lot of young users and it needs to be kind of done cautiously and safely, obviously to protect them, and particularly with the increasing regulation around it. And at the same time, if they're marketing to younger users, we talked about Australia, for example, banning kind of under 16s from social media, and he thinks, you know, there's going to be an increase in regulations and things worldwide, obviously, if if young people can't go on social media, marketing strategies via social media become a bit pointless if they're for younger players. So then you've got to come up with new models. So basically, I'd recommend reading it, of course, cuz it's, you know, my interview. But, yeah, I think it was quite interesting to hear him talk about how regulation is kind of changing how, I guess, game makers need to think about the game they're making. Like it's not just, what's this cool new feature we can add? It's kind of, yeah, can we do this? How do we meet the kind

of legal requirements to do it properly? How are we going to market this if marketing changes? So, yeah, I think it was all quite interesting, really.
Yeah, it's a really interesting platform that I I until until this, basically, I just never even heard of it, as you know. It's one of those things where there's quite a lot of games platforms that it's flying under the radar, you don't really hear of, and then massive. Like Roblox was that for quite a while, until people are like, man, this this platform has like a ten 10 billion people playing it. It seems pretty big." And nowadays it's
Mhm.
well, depending on all the legal stuff, possibly the future of the industry. One of the futures of the industry. Yeah, really interesting.
Right. I think that brings us to the end of the weekly mobile games. There's a lot of news we could have chatted about this week. You mentioned some of the social media bans, the Ofcom statements this week, today even, uh warning that uh children might exposed to online safety risks across platforms, including Roblox, TikTok, and YouTube. Uh we had a brilliant uh Mobile Mavericks article from Paige on the site today. Uh thank

you to everyone that contributed to that. So, kind of some insights on are the barriers to entry for mobile too high? I heard a lot about that in Brazil, and really interesting to get some uh more industry experts talking about that. Big topic um in the industry. Right, I'll stop it there. Thank you everyone uh for tuning in. Thank you for listening. Thank you, Paige and Ara, for being on the show, as always.
Yeah, good to be here.
And we'll catch you on the next one. See you later. Bye.