TWIG #285 Squad Busters Busted? Destiny 2, Too?

[Music] hello and welcome to this weekend games 285 where we read and distill all of the weekly game industry news so you don't have to all right here's what we're covering today we're going to go over the PlayStation state of play and a short business update it as we're heading into the not E3 time of year there's lots of things to talk about on the console World get your popcorn out because aptoid launches an its first alternative iOS game store in Europe so we're going to see and watch what happens there with alternative app stores Phil is going to give us yet another Squad Busters update and this one's going to get spicy we're going to put some chili powder on the popcorn for the squad Busters conversation Discord and YouTube and by the way everybody else are launching quote native games so lots of of

platforms are experimenting with games where's LinkedIn we should have thrown LinkedIn in here I haven't tried that one game and I've haven't gone back anyway I'm Jen donaho strategic marketing consultant at beta hat and Jer Inferno and today we have Philip black game Economist at game Economist Consulting hey hey Eric Crest principal at goser Consulting Group what's up punks and uh Mishka is out for his birthday so at 6A he calls Laura and is like hey by the way it's my birthday um can you can you come and be on the podcast even though you were in Vegas and doing other things Laura Tanto senior director of product at Big Fish howdy hello anybody know how old he is mish 75 it's fake late 30s is a good guess late 30s is a generic guess I think he's early 40s he's not older than UK no his eyelin his eyelines are telling you know his eyelines are telling you can't hide that [ __ ] I got

creams for that I got creams for that oh that sounds funny all right uh what do we have going on Laura what are you up to I went to Vegas for the first proper time so London Vegas kind of a long flight Seattle Vegas is like two hours never I did Vegas for one day in in the past like first flight out last flight back from Seattle they just had lunch basically flew back this time I went it's actually a really fun place I had no idea like like it was really cool it's warm did you go get an Elvis wedding or something what happened I mean did something happen no no it just it was a friend's birthday I saw um Steve Aoki perform he was he was very entertaining I I quite enjoyed the show it like the the pool parties not quite my style but it was it was super fun like it's just the food was really good it was a nice break it was a nice break from Seattle I see why people go

just keep it to less than 48 hours and then things things get weird in Vegas after that EXA when things get get funky it gets sad sounds like a very different experience than when I go for Mau which is not quite as exciting and fun you're surrounded by all of that but you can't really participate because you're going to silly conferences yeah I go to basketball tournaments and you actively avoid the fun right yeah you don't want the kids getting involved all right no Corrections apparently per or no one reached out to yell at us which was shocking that this week that didn't happen all right so going into the quick hits for the markets So speaking earlier about all those native games YouTube playables are well playable on the browser IOS and Android with over 75 Games available as of launch day which was May 28th so last week I haven't really engaged with these I I tried it a long time ago I was in the beta I guess how many times how many times do we have to do this how many times do we have to

go through this [ __ ] and talk about this it doesn't work no one gives a [ __ ] okay stop it no one cares I plus one that I plus one that I am not going to YouTube I'm not going to Netflix why they wasting money on this [ __ ] anyway all right whatever they think it's engagement I guess it's you know it's LinkedIn now later on we're going to talk about Discord and and how they're trying to do the same thing okay so let me give you a little bit of mark your calendars update as we're entering like I said earlier the not E3 summer of games so Summer Games Fest is this Friday June 7th I think it's in the afternoon sometime but you know we're all different time zones IGN live is June 7th to 10th Ubisoft forward is June 10th at noon Pacific Time 9 C so maybe we should do another like uh watch and and Heckle like we did with the Xbox One or is it not enough fun we'll just recap

it and then Apple's WWDC is coming June 10th to 14th the Keynotes on June 10th so a lot going on Friday a lot going on on Monday I don't think there's anything game related coming from Apple but they always talk about you know sometimes I talk about scans sometimes they talk about other things that influence us all right trans media for the week Minecraft animated series coming to Netflix so this was announced on the tail end of the 15E anniversary can you believe that Minecraft has been around for 15 years like holy crap so the Animated Series clearly it's kid targeted because it's going to tell an original story with new characters and reflect on the world of Minecraft in a new light is currently in development by talented Studio wild brain creators of Sonic Prime Ninjago Carmen San Diego and will debut on Netflix Mattel who holds the toy license should be thrilled I used to actually make Minecraft toys when I was at Mattel it's it's a fantastic toy license so

they must be thrilled to finally get new kid contact and then there's another movie coming with Jack Black Jack Black like a dragon Yakuza crime action series to debut on Prime video based on the game franchise so Prime is really stepping up in fact everybody is everyone's looking for games we should expect similar result to Fallout right the trans media truthers will come out I'm sure we'll be drumming up the da charts for Yakuza I'm sure we'll be drumming them up and celebrating them and doing LinkedIn posts and talking about sales uplift it's going to be great we do every time this happens remember we're rebranding it to franchise it's just a franchise plan that's right thank you thank you yeah it's just part of the plan okay uh let's go to Laura you want to talk about Investments m&a what's going on in the world yeah so we have an update from gamef fam they are going to launch a multi-million dollar fund supporting user generated content developers as the metaverse Creator economy grows so the game fam Creator fund will invest million into innovating for new games on

Roblox fortnite any other kind of ugc games while also providing access to game fam's expert advice and proprietary resources the investment sizes will vary between 10,000 and 100,000 it's really hoping I think to push forward creators and they're going to help fund all of that going forward one quarter of the funds are reserved exclusively for Investments and creators from underrepresented backgrounds and the program is also for veteran devs to take a chance to take some time off or hire some teammates maybe not work around the clock get a little bit of a break and have a bit more support I think it sounds like a very very nice move yeah Ethan Ethan go get some money yeah you don't have to paint the ivy anymore you can get help all right all right Chris what do you got uh by dance enters the second phase of video game business as new head of new verse unit says focus is on fun games no [ __ ] fun Gam come on I don't

want fun games what are you talking about the Beijing based company on Monday confirmed that Zang is new head of its video gaming unit newers the unit is expected to adhere to long-term goals and be more patient in product development and operation again this is one of those announcements that says absolutely nothing so we have no idea what's happening at bite dance right now and with new verse but something's happening I thought they were gone they exited the business this is why snap that's why I dropped this in here cuz it was like no no no no no no we're we're back and then they didn't actually sell Mo they kept it so there was a rumor that they were going to sell it and they were like well actually never mind so somewhere along the way perhaps what's going on in the US government right now they're like well maybe we shouldn't get rid of all the gaming stuff yet just in case so given this do you repaint Marvel snap and second dinner exiting from this relationship as more of a second dinner decision than a new decision of course

it was second dinner decision yeah especially with the Rays yeah of course dude they're going to self-publish like yep makes sense um UK retailer game will shudder its Rewards program on July 31st Avalanche group is closing its Montreal Studio it acquired just eight month ago Kingdom Hearts 4 will not appear at the summer games Fest I think there's been some speculation that game is a look closer than people think but is that a layoff no I don't know why that's on here but what ever um uh and then less than six months after laying off 40 people dead by daylight Studio Behavior interactive drops another 95 people yikes yeah that's not good po the French Canadians getting hammered yeah so do you think it's cuz they're predominantly horror games right like they're dead by daylight they're like no there's a dating Sim dating Sim extension in with vampires I don't know with dead by daylight really what when you have money and you have a live service game for long time you get

bored I think these middle tier developers are going to really have a tough time in this new day and age like all the data suggests that it's big wins right got it fundamentally Mak I agree with you from the puzzle mobile standpoint too and also like look I I these horror games they just don't do well def by it's an incredible live service franchise been around forever it's a regular top 10 steam franchise it's it's an exception though I think your your point is largely Tak ah dark by dark and darker though left for dead I I don't know Eric you think they'll come back I think you can have breakout hits in the genre and you've got the way that they've run the life service on dead by daylight is really well done they license out talk about trans media they'll go and they'll get all of the different horror icons from different properties and bring them in every season just like you know an OverWatch or Diablo or a fortnite they bring in seasonal content that people really want to engage in it's got PVP it's got multiplayer I think the challenge is that it's a genre that does have a cap to it you know it's what we talk about the time is how do you get new players

into that kind of a genre it's a bit capped so I don't think there's growth but if you can run a cash cow business like you should do that so maybe they're struggling with taking bets on growth it just doesn't make sense you're right this they maintained a pretty decent Revenue stream it's it's incredible it's an asymmetric game too um it's extremely unique by da in a lot of ways a lot of DLC too it's just not enough right correct right like it you know if to grow if you just want to figure out how do you run and maintain a solid business that's what it appears that they've been able to do and that genre does appeal to a lot of different folks I mean left for dead I used to love that game right like well I love Walking Dead I love anything in that universe so I guess I but I don't consider myself a horror game fan that's really interesting I think zombie zombies are Middle Ground I think you know I think we're getting into definition stuff here it it is the Gateway J maybe yeah I mean according to

newu I think they're around 60 million a year or something that's not enough that's not enough to maintain a studio and build new games no fair they have other titles as well but that's by far their their leader all right let's talk about more games more noon titles and it's our favorite favorite game publisher it's Netflix games they're back with 14 new game announcements and I I thought there was a strategy as I was reading this and as I got further and further into the 14 Gam it looks like it's just throw more crap against the wall but that being said it is finally happening we are getting an Emily in Paris game and they screwed the pooch on this one I can already say immediately because it's going to be like a story based game where is the merge where are the genres that we know excel in this target demo why would you not at least give that a shot like they're out there building match games for stranger things why are you not doing this for Emily Paris selling Sunset why are you not going to build an economy core around this that's again going to be a part of that Netflix stories sub brand fust there also is a Lord of the Rings game

based on the Hobbit that was in this announcement that was out of nowhere I don't know if this is like a middlee Enterprises embracer thing they're just looking for Cash Quick minimum guarantee line of coke as Eric would say I don't know that was very strange something's happening though I don't know I'm excited to see an Emily and Paris game no matter what it is incredible it took this long I'm excited is this the last ra ra before they shut this thing down that's just could could be can I ask about House of the dragons is about to start up so Game of Thrones is on the Mind Lord of the Rings which is kind of the same idea these these franchises like do not seem to translate that well into games especially Lord the Rings Lord of the Rings has had a storied franchise you know way back way back to like the PS2 era you remember Twin Towers was like everyone remembers the Twin Towers Rec play that on the PS2 oh yeah recently it's been a [ __ ] show there was an RTS that was really popular I thought I've gone over this at nauseum I I thought like oh it's been a while CR all right remind the fundamental point

that my understanding is is that in order to be successful with something like Lord of the Rings you have to replicate the quality of the movies right and the movies are such high quality that it's an impossible bar right both from a storytelling and from a graphics and from Fidelity and like epic nature of it right but they did so well with the movies it's just impossible to replicate but I do think that they did a good job with the Lord of the Rings God I'm totally forgetting the games that came out of Warner twin to Shadow M battle from Earth the shadow thing the shadow thing Shadow [ __ ] anyway those games actually clearly memorable no no no those games did a good job and they they innovated on systems and stuff it was really really cool and Phil is right is that those games that EA did ages ago were actually really really good but it's just hard it's really really hard to replicate that kind of quality and Fidelity that you see on the big screen and that's why embracer was never going to be successful at this so well you know what's interesting about this is so the competitor Amazon Prime had the you know

half a billion dollar Lord of the Rings prequel going and now Netflix wants to do games with the FR I mean I guess you know it's kind of like Star Wars or these other brands where there's enough to go around I guess but it just it felt really interesting I was like wait Netflix not Amazon Prime is doing a game based on the franchise I I can tell you a lot about that yeah I had the only thing I want to add you have these movies that are these linear story experiences you're going through you're watching this thing there's things already happening the only game I thought that did a really good job of this recently was Hogwarts Legacy they basically created an alternative timeline the story was there they they hit all the magic from the movie and the and the IP so they delivered on that it is so hard to do that though I know and yeah those type of games are like a half a billion dollars worth of investment right that this is what I'm saying in order to replicate that kind of fidelity and storytelling you need to spend like a gajillion dollars like who's doing that right embracer can't even [ __ ] pay

the bill anymore you know like I mean Netflix isn't going to put the money no hell no hold up hold up hold up let's talk about something that's much easier to replicate Star Wars or at least the current state of that franchise Star Wars Hunters is out this is zinga's first console game it's on switch IOS and Android which isn't a bad strategy because it's very easy or at least it's much easier to port to switch than say the normal consoles because the switch has such poor Hardware that resembles a two 2016 mobile phone this is by natural motion if you remember the famous Dev of dawn of Titans which had an Infamous DF article published about it and they of course also have CSR Racing which is really what's what's kept them alive and if you you went back to our in Dawn Titans launch I don't think you would have made that bet this thing has been in soft lunch for two years two years this thing has been in soft lunch it's a third person action MOBA if we didn't have enough of those announced in the last couple months I mean we were talking about Marvel Rivals a couple weeks ago we talked about valves deadlock game which just got a bunch of trademarks filed against it which

appears to be a third person shooter this is really really weird it is supported by heroic Labs our partner so we know it's going to be an absolutely smooth launch technically and we'll look into this next week but this is happening it's out I actually played it it was it's not bad it's like it's pretty cool I just think as someone who has been very involved in the Star Wars franchise I made toys for many years I just know everything there is to know about this franchise the one thing as a fan all of the characters are made up like there is not one character that is like from the lore and I struggled to find that like connection it sets it up like almost like a tournament where you've got these game show hosts that come in and are like you know like welcome to the arena I did love that there's two Jawas that run around jaas are the little dudes and there's like two of them that stack on top of each other and run around that were pretty fun it looks okay I don't know it looks it looks like OverWatch it looks like you know any other game just third person if you're doing a c metic economy

like this shit's not going to work as far as I can tell and maybe it will correct me if I'm wrong next week but like the whole thing is built around cosmetic economy I think they sell characters but that's still horizontal it's not vertical it's like if you don't have a depth of spend you're not going to get the big audiences like it's over before it began like I I don't understand why people keep making the same mistake make the MOBA point though I think the MOBA point is far more important than the building more M it's a team based is it well it is listed as am MOA when I looked it up I was like oh wow you claimed that I think the challenge with all of these hero Shooters whether you call him a MOBA or not third person or first person is Crash you're you know you're kind of dead on in that if you are running a cosmetic economy and you're not running loot boxes or other kind of pay to win areas the overall spend Revenue that you're going to get out of this kind of a game is going to be capped right it it's capped in the play and uh actually we'll talk about it a little bit later but PlayStation

announced Concord which was yet another sci-fi third person hero Arena shooter it's like oh my God Phil is this the new extraction shooter we're going to start doing these and everyone's like ah I gave up on extraction Shooters because that's like too limited I mean we did it was called battleborne remember it was battleborn versus OverWatch that was like the huge like who's going to win who's going to win and uh no one remembers that anymore and I'm not quite sure what's behind the Resurgence I guess there's blood in the water OverWatch looks weak people smell it and uh they think they can eat something I'm I'm not so sure I mean valerant did a good job right Val's great that was that was going after that's a tactical shooter though that's a tactical shooter that was going after csgo or at least trying to expand the Tactical shooter Market that thesis was really well defined I'm not quite sure they really executed well in that game Apex is still doing well I mean OverWatch is Battle Royale yeah Battle Royale is the new one their other modes have not been that great they've not given them the list they've needed this looks like a fail but honestly it's a beautiful game it's really well done could credit where

credits do but it's not going to make money dude how much money have they spent on this game like it's been in development for four years right like a full team but like at least two and a half of that Jesus Christ can you imagine and the Star Wars license is one of if not the most expensive license so you're you're above 20% you're like in the 20 to 25% royalty rate on this thing and the Fidelity of this game is amazing right so like it's not they didn't skimp I don't know it looks like train wreck elevate your game development with heroic Labs The Cutting Edge platform for building multiplayer games and you need an edge to be successful in today's gaming landscape their scalable Nama server empowers you to create compelling realtime multiplayer experiences effortlessly benefit from features like in-game chat leaderboards matchmaking and more all designed to enhance engagement and retention whether you're developing for mobile console or PC heroic Labs gives you the tools to bring

your community together unleash the full potential of your game with heroic Labs where every developer is a [Music] hero this podcast is brought to you by sensor Tower sensor tower has acquired mobile analytics company data AI formerly known as we all know and love app Annie four things you should know significant advancement number one this acquisition represents a major step forward for sensor Tower it expands its customer base mobile marketing and app intelligence products and Global presence number two Undisputed leadership position sensor Tower strengthened its position as the leader in digital marketing and mobile app intelligence through this acquisition number three combined insights this merger with data AI allows sensor Tower to offer customers even stronger and more detailed insights on the Digital customer Journey and last consumer

Trends with increasing time spent on digital channels the combined company is well positioned to capitalize on the growing trend of inapp purchases driven by platforms like Google meta Tik Tok YouTube Instagram and snap exciting times lie ahead for sensor Tower and data AI as they join forces if you're a customer reach out to your account director for more information not a customer yet no problem schedule a call to explore the Innovative digital marketing products they offer go to data AI or sensor to.com and get on board with undeniably the best data partner in the [Music] business last week we were going to talk about a recent announcement from roio I think it makes a lot of sense to start with where stumble guys is so they have been on a decline ever since scopely hired them which makes a lot of sense it has hyper casual Vibes you know these things don't last long but in the

context of you know a hyper casual game I mean the performance of the thing is insane it's actually had a really slow growth and there was explosion period kind of at the beginning of 2022 it has stabilized in recent months scop has started to stabilize it I'm sure scopely knew this was going to happen I'm sure they knew that that downloads looked like this but they are on the stability train I think the question is is like where is the competitor to this game on mobile so if you look at their ma right now they're pulling in 30 million Ma on stumbl guys which is like bat [ __ ] crazy batch it crazy to pull off 30 million Ma so like where is the mobile competitor to this and it was supposed to be eggy party but that completely flopped in the west and we know that mediatonic had a mobile skew for for Fall Guys which was in testing in China I don't think they developed in house because it was testing in China but they've failed to ship their products on mobile which has been just an incredible Miss not to put Fall Guys on mobile just an absolute mess and so I think this helps contextualize where Roo's heads space might be with this Sonic announcement I actually did a little comparison between

the two so just to give context to everyone listening eggy party lifetime revenue is like 350 million stumble guys is 157 million but eggy party as Phil said mostly in China versus stumble guys markets are the us. Germany and Brazil and ads are crazy on stumble guys from what I've heard crazy crazy Revenue yeah Dow is like neck and neck I was actually looking at their downloads I wanted to see what they did in terms of pushes when I was looking at Sonic and I was hoping to see you know there must be push in UA and I was looking to see if there was a revenue Spike following a download spike but even though stumble guys actually has more downloads but overall less Revenue there was some bursts but for stumble guys it doesn't look like the download bursts are working whereas for eggy party on seem to work so there's a little bit of difference in strategy for how they're planning to bring in users and monetize them I mean they are similar core games but eggy I me eggy party is intense have you played it Phil yeah yeah I played a lot of it oh my God I it it's it's very Eastern it's it it has a lot so when I

played Sonic Rumble I was like oh this is eggy party fallu with Sonic IP I think you're entirely right they are looking to make a play for that type of game in the west because eky part is not not hitting it and there's obviously an opportunity I think they're going for the same player base but looking to expand lower UA costs via the Sonic IP it is still the Sonic you know and love you there's tons of nostalgia it looks like Sonic even though you are there's different battle modes you still have elements that you are playing a platformer and collecting Rings good multiple game modes Throwbacks and level design the controls are generally good they Incorporated a form of wi streak which I was really impressed by because they are taking a page out of the puzzle Playbook which I thought was very clever it's also Live Events ready the bad the controls they're good they're not great they could definitely be improved the character speed needs work the level differentiation isn't enough it's granted it's a beta but it needs a lot more because it was starting to feel too much like a grind and honestly in the

first version if unless they look to expand it it feels like it should be a multiplayer mode in like a larger Sonic game the way it stands now hopeful but I think there's a lot of work to do so something kind of fun let me just promote the deconstructor of fun slack Channel go to the website and apply to join the creative director of Fall Guys joined last week and so that was pretty fun to have if you really want to ask some Fall Guy questions uh the creative director is now in our Channel I was like ooh we should get his feedback on this segment and see what he has to say all right moving on multiverses we talked about it last week it was out last Wednesday it was not Squad Busters but it was a company to buy it it's out we have data from Steam multiverses doesn't look that bad um it actually looks pretty decent it's probably around 500,000 diu on Steam but remember it also distributed through EGS and I'm sure this game is doing well on consoles it is a Super Smash Brothers type brawler I'd probably put around 1

to two million da with console the other thing that's kind of nice about it is it's been a week since it's launched and PSU hasn't gone off a cliff yet and I think a lot of that is because they already launched the product so I'm sure the tourists who usually just download new games have kind of exited and it's a much more stable player base let's see how this one does doesn't look bad on the gate you know let's see how they live Ops it let's see if they can keep this one alive but I'm I'm a little surprised I called I called my buddy Bobby and I was like hey man first of all he was like oh my God I can't believe you're talk you talked about my game and I'm like okay well I'm calling you back next week to hear how launch went and he said it went great all of the kpis are on target for them uh everything is looking good that everyone's very happy especially coming out of WB where you know Justice League kills The Suicide Squad didn't hit the mark for them and I think that's being generous you know to have a win so far with the launch good on them I'm I'm really happy to hear that they've done this a lot of really good IP in here so

let's see what happens speaking about seeing what happens Squad Busters it's been out for a week and supercell has not given us our creator code yet so we'll begrudgingly get through the Section it has been confirmed by Supercell that Squad Busters has hit 30 million lifetime downloads although we see sensor Tower report 40 million which makes sense there's there's a couple extra data points in there this is really close to brawl Stars this is within a couple million of brawl star we of course have the ad Campaign which we talked about out with Chris Helmsworth which has accumulated over 29 million views on YouTube I will say this though and we were talking about this in the deconstructor of font slack this looks really weak for 40 million pre-registrations this looks kind of embarrassing actually in terms of download Volume and if you look at the daily trends of download Volume it's already starting to go off a cliff so a lot of that front loaded spend uh or at least a lot of the spend looks front loaded I've been kind of surprised there's weird stuff going on in the Google Store play ratings which I haven't quite wrapped my head around but it's around three stars rather than normal four stars which you actually

need for featuring but someone had said there's a lot of shenanigans that go into how Google does ratings but it's still really bizarre to me when we look at Revenue which I'm sure Eric would love to talk about it looks okay it looks a little soft in terms of Revenue so far again like Revenue takes time to stabilize with third party estimates so I'd put an asterisk around making quick conclusions but in terms of brawl Stars it's pretty similar it's it's around 9 million net so far brawl Stars was like 9.5 this game isn't going to have the monetization velocity of something like Clash Royale or Clash of Clans because you don't have loot boxes it's very hard to spend large amounts of money very quickly in this game you have to use consumables which is tied to engagement very much like a match game match games don't have high spend velocity either and so I think it's going to take time for the revenue of this game to fully emerge the sustainability of the model is pretty impressive exactly like Match 3 I mean Match 3 we don't talk about the game economy enough but the match 3 game economy has been sustained for over a decade basically on the same mechanics

and that's what I see here I see a lot of potential for sustainability rather than Clash Royale which went off a cliff you know in kind of its its middle era so I don't know um I do think there's a disturbance in the force I agree with you Eric there is a disturbance in the force something doesn't seem right here things just feel weird but I think you're jumping the gun on any monetization comments I'll let you make it first problem with writing notes ahead of time you can anticipate what I'm going to say uh revenue is [ __ ] I mean let's be honest like Revenue like when you're at you know the top five part of the chart right you can't really estimate what the revenue is this is not top five like this is like actually probably realistically close to what the actual revenue is at 25 cents per download for your loyal fans you know your golden cohort it's not good dude and then why do we start caring about vanity metrics like downloads like everyone knows that supercell can get the [ __ ] downloads they can shovel out crap and they'll get 40 million downloads right so it's like who gives a [ __ ] about downloads if the revenue is not good and then also the da is getting

weaker and weaker falling off a cliff I I don't know it's like is this going to have the staying power it just doesn't seem like people are sticking around I'm gonna take the under on all your estimates 250 million seems like absolutely insane the noise is from the Cross promo stuff that to me is generating a lot of noise because Cross promo is always really lowquality installs because you're trying to take someone from another game who's interested in that game and say go play this other game and not only that remember they give out in-game Rewards rewards so if I played Clash of Clans and I pre-registered I could get ingame Clash of Clans rewards so I'm sure that generated a lot of Riff Raff or perhaps a lot of tourists that kind of sagged a lot of these metrics but that being said there should be a lot more sagging happening they still only comped against brawl star which didn't have any of this stuff and we don't know what they did on the marketing spend side you know Mishka had said this was you know one of the largest supercell launches they were ever going to have and if that's the case if they blew all this money um if they have all these pre-registrations and this is all they have to show for it it is concerned and I would agree with you the decline in daily active users is

the most disappointing right now and they could be in real [ __ ] if we if we check back next week and this is continuing to decline and this hasn't had any sort of stabilization or growth I would agree with you I'm starting to put on the blinkers on this one I actually think they need to get ahead of the narrative too if this thing starts to turn by the next week I think supercell could have a coms crisis if this thing doesn't again the stakes are real for this game right this is the first game launching after supercell's next chapter this is their new strategy this is all this new stuff if this doesn't go well it's a bad look it's a fall on your face I just had a quick peek just to see where the country breakdown was for downloads to get an idea how where the players are coming from so it looks like it's us Indonesia Brazil South Korea and India kind of the top countries no wonder yeah that is Riff Raff that is Riff Raff dude yeah they're gonna have to put in ads yeah you can't you can't throw ads out there at 25 cents for download are you kidding me you're just gonna [ __ ] blow money sorry I should have looked at that that's crazy yeah I'm wondering what their UA

strategy is because what I have typically seen in the past and it's a little bit old school is you go big week one right you want to make sure you're really going off of your featuring and you're going off of you know the brand marketing spend and the trailer trying to get that going and then you start to you know month one is usually a really big spend and I I didn't go into Data Ai and pull up any ads to see what we were looking at I haven't seen any ads myself but I've been pulling back a little bit on gaming this week so maybe that's my fault the fact that you're not seeing big download numbers from eigs from Western Europe leads me to believe that UA isn't on in a big way like I don't understand that like why would you not see tier one markets you know higher up in that list so I think I'm agreeing with CR them I'm really nervous for them all of the reports that I read of people who are playing this game who were loyal and super supercell fans are saying I I

don't really know why I'm going to stick around like the gameplay is really chaotic it doesn't feel like there's strategy involved um I saw remember we we read some people that were going in with like a team of five and just dominating like you can kind of game the system and be [ __ ] in the game and like keep everyone else from winning and then you rage quit right if if people are ganging up the way that the game is played I don't know what are you looking at now I just pulled up what we were referencing the top downloads by country and then I just switched it over to Dow just to give an so people could see if they're watching what we were talking about oh yes cuz we are also on YouTube or Spotify video you can see that we're going to pull up charts now that we when we talk about stuff oh my god really interesting o oh that's this is I see see the further we get into this the further I start to think this is a marketing issue more than anything else there's something weird going on with marketing and pre-registrations there's a lot of noise how the [ __ ] did pre- registrations drive so many downloads in Indonesia

Brazil India turkey Philippines Thailand I mean those are like the top what seven or six of of the top 10 downloads like dude that that those are like the worst possible places to get downloads no wonder that are Revenue PR so low it could be marketing but I also I was looking sorry I look at the game reviews there's a lot of complaints about pay to win about how it's structured in terms of how the matches go matchmaking I I do want to go to Phil what you said so on Google Play the way that reviews work is you get reviews by country so every country has its review structure and to your point if you're not at four stars or above you are not featured you are not showcased because the algorithm thinks that your game has a problem and so it doesn't show you now there are instances where Google can go in and kind of override that it's very difficult for them to to actually do that but if the game is showing up at

three stars and I think in data AI or censor Tower you can kind of go into Google Play reviews and look at it by country to see if that's the case I mean I don't know if it's review bombing or I don't know if people are just like this isn't what I expected I don't know if they're technical issues but that might be slowing some of the adoption in tier one countries if if reviews are that low in those countries and it's just not being showcased but the conversion on preed should have I don't know cuz Google is an automatic download iOS I'm trying to remember if it automatically downloaded when when I hit the prge button on iOS or if I had to actually hit the button I think it was Auto downloaded you could tell a story though that that can get you your teeth tier three nations they're more Android focused um it auto downloaded for them I think you could start to tell a story there but at the end of the day the end result is still the same you have a bad country mix yeah you have 40 million installs of low quality I I wish I had looked at that before yeah it's Bad News Bears man obviously this is all

predicated on whether or not the censor Tower data is actually accurate so let's give him another week the 30 million downloads seemed to match up a little bit you know obviously the data AI numbers were were pretty dramatically off like 20 30 million yeah I threw those numbers in the slack and everyone's like oo I think they've been adjusted downward yeah Neil posted that he had heard from supercell luckily like I guess he's friends with them so in a PR way so so he was able to get that accurate number and I'm glad and thank you supercell for you know I think we're seeing more transparency from companies because again yahoos like us get on a podcast and start talking about things there people are wanting us to have a little bit more of accurate numbers so Mishka call ilka tell them to like give us a direct fee to their PR team so we can get more data and talk about this more intelligently I imagine that's not going to happen if things are trending how they're trending I'm a little worried for them but we'll see all right

speaking of launches that may have not gone well Destiny 2 the final shape launched and it was sort of a disaster uh servers were down PSU went to zero on Steam players were getting queued they couldn't get into the game those issues have now been resolved and it has gotten Destiny almost to its peak PSU at least on Steam all time so congratulations congratulations for them this is the final H off for the game excited to see them move on to something else hopefully Marathon kills it but the thing I kept thinking about is did Bobby [ __ ] up by letting this property go because if Bobby held on to Bungie Bungie gets folded back into Microsoft and I don't know Microsoft situation feels a lot better if they have Bungie under their under their portfolio I mean I'm I'm sure Bungie would throw a fit so this is all this is all hypothetical but man wouldn't it be great to have Bungie back in the fold what a narrative and put them back on Halo o that would change things around for me in the Xbox narrative but who whoa who let's just not go crazy right there's a reason they

didn't stay with Bobby because Bobby did not treat them well and the relationship was blown long ago I know but uh I'm shocked though that they had these kind of problems at launch I mean they've done this a million times I wonder why they had so many issues with this well wasn't it because they were trying to be the live service technicians for the rest of Sony or is that just being a a [ __ ] and saying that their eye was off the ball type thing yeah maybe I I don't know I again like I know a couple folks there we we all know folks there and I they have not told me anything but anytime you do not have a laser focus on something and your best people are distracted this is the type of outcome that happens sadly but I want to be crystal clear here on Destiny I love Destiny I'm actually going to play this one for sure this is not a live service model at all right this is a basically expansion pack model right and so this is old school live services this is not new school live Services they're

microtransaction stuff is really low this is not example of a success at all in my opinion from a live Services model microtransactions recurring spend type thing it's all based upon paying for $40 or $50 for expansions but is an amazing what do you think the Rev split is between their MTX and the expansion so we if we you know 9010 you think it's 9010 8020 Max yeah their microt transactions are terrible just to be clear step into the future of game monetization with exola the premier partner for game developers seeking to expand their reach in Revenue exola provides a robust Suite of tools designed to enhance user acquisition maned subscriptions and streamline Payment Solutions worldwide unlock new markets and maximize profitability through their customize secure payment architecture and dedicated support team exola power ing game developers to achieve Global

[Music] success this podcast is brought to you by apps flyer in today's Digital World understanding your apps Journey from Discovery to download is more than just insightful it's essential enter apps fer the leader in Mobile attribution and marketing analytics that allows you to measure the full potential of your marketing efforts making every ad dollar works Smarter with apps flyer that's your new reality dive deep into Data driven insights that reveal exactly where your users come from and how they'll interact with your app apps sler where your app's potential meets performance moving on to topics of the day all right here we go so Apptoid launches its alternative iOS game store on Thursday that is tomorrow June 6th if anyone wants in they have reached out and said they will get you into their closed beta especially if you're in

Europe because well you can't Laura we're in the US so Phil Mishka are the only ones are going to be allowed in because it's a new third-party App Store dedicated exclusively to gaming this launch is the first iOS gaming App Store in the European the European Union since the implementation of the dma it's closed launch with only a few thousand a day being let in so to address Apple's 50 Cent CTE per annual installation of the store aptoid has devised an Innovative strategy instead of passing this cost directly to users via a subscription model Apptoid will offset it by charging a fee to Developers for inapp purchases this approach aims to prioritize IAP driven apps within the aptoid iOS ecosystem they expressed hope that if the CTE is ever eliminated aptoid would be able to support even more developers by improving the unit economics um other thirdparty iOS stores in the EU have tackled the CTF in

various ways setup app for example currently absorbs the fee but PL to incorporate it into its mobile subscription pricing and ALT store pal covers the fee through a €150 annual subscription fee for installing to the app Marketplace so the I actually reached out to them just to chat because I thought this was really interesting so the CEO said about the business model the business assumption is that with our fee of the and at purchases we will support the CTF the aptoid fee is uh 20% is the case of organic installations and 10% in the rest paid acquisition direct to Consumer so really interesting to see new business models out there the first time that we're seeing somebody actually go after and create their own app store I think many of their games were generic kind of like the soliar the back gammons the you know casual games so Phil and Eric let's let's talk business do these apps have prayer of making money there's some opportunities here possibilities of fixing app stores

and stuff but the challenges are just so overwhelming in a way that I don't know if they could be overcome right so I think from an opportunities perspective obviously reducing the revenue share is going to be great for Publishers and so that's like kind of the big let's do this type thing I think there's also the notion that a new app Store can actually be a platform for games right this is what [ __ ] Apple blew it right they had game center and never did [ __ ] with it right and so it could be a guild system chat system it could be Discord you could do all kinds of crazy [ __ ] to build community around games like steam has done of course Apple never did that because they don't give a [ __ ] about games right and so there's an opportunity there to build some kind of ecosystem building a gamer focused destination makes sense right so that you collate and create an experience for games like the store used to be versus this [ __ ] you know that they have now on the App Store obviously Discovery is another thing like actually building a good app store where Discovery Works

versus what Apple's created which is a Abomination marketing support is obviously been a big issue that Apple's kind of dropped the ball on in terms of creating strategies around live Ops and events and things like that so that you can help communicate to the customer better through the store curation as I said and I think the big thing that that is likely going to happen similar to what web stores have done is offer discounts right so in order to bring people over you create a Consumer Discount you need to create a value proposition for the customer and you can do that by providing discounts to your your most loyal customers the problem with that is that you're only going to appeal to the customers which are very small percentage of your overall audience right for downloads right so I think these are the kind of the big opportunities that I see but there are far more risks right and so the first risk is that changing customer behavior is [ __ ] impossible right like the notion that you're going to change people in a broad basis that they're going to go anywhere but [ __ ] App Store and Google play it doesn't even

seem reasonable to assume that right not to mention the current process of downloading an app store is so insane right now and it it should get better in theory but it is so bad that like the friction there is impossible like there's just no way customers in droves are going to be doing this until they really fix that process especially customers on an iPhone right like so if you don't have a kill killer game and a killer reason like oo I'm going to you know like like I said it looks like some of the games are like Solitaire and some kind of generic casual games which are played by folks that might not be as advanced in how to utilize their iPhone and iPhone is all about like how do I get the easiest possible thing to have happen a lot of these games exist for free in other places you know what is it that is going to be there for me to overcome the friction of another store that I need to go and download that going to be the super challenge so people should hopefully be looking at

that as the number one thing they need to do alongside a killer game that's been every platform Jen to your point that's been every platform how did how did valve launch steam what put Xbox on the map Halo right what put Ry video on the map Lord of the Rings you know I mean this is exactly what Jeff bezo says he's like go out and build me a Game of Thrones this is what you need at minimum to be able to launch a platform and I agree with you on the RIS the only thing I would disagree with is I think the ceiling is actually even lower than you might be suggesting because you immediately have apple at 30% so you're not going to charge more than Apple at 30% of course so that cuts off that Revenue stream so you got to be less than that and then of course there's a there's a floor here which is also going to be all the normal junk you got to deal with credit card processing fees refunds the fixed cost of running an app store but a lot of those are not fixed costs they're marginal costs that are going to rise with the number of transactions that happen the platform so like how do you how do you get a VC outcome out of something like that right so you you take the app store number and you say like okay how much market share can we get and then you add a ceiling to

that it's really bizarre the thing you want to do is you want to control distribution ultimately like you want to get into marketing that's the most valuable thing you can do interestingly enough Eric CT has a piece about this where I think he he oversells the benefits you know you can do things on another app store like you don't have to deal with skew limit anymore remember you had a skew limit where you only had 100 SKS this has been changed to 500 we had the price limit but that got increased as well in the App Store so now you can do 10K SE talks a lot about customization of the landing pages which just launches AB testing on the App Store there's there's all these kind of like fringe benefits but but again like it's very hard for me to see any of those benefits being strong enough to be able to launch a whole new Distribution Center seems painful seems very very painful I don't know where people's heads SPAC is on this we I don't think we want alternative app stores I think we want Apple to fix their [ __ ] fix their [ __ ] that's what we want it's not even 30% that's a problem it's just give me value for the money just give me the basic [ __ ] you know like the skew limit it's been around for a DE why the [ __ ] can you get me to 500 SKS beforeand it's like this is easy [ __ ] this is low-level

engineering yeah that is kind of fundamentally what it comes down to but I don't think that's the thesis for epic or Microsoft for that matter they don't want Apple to fix their [ __ ] they just want control over their own destiny and a direct relationship with the customers right so yeah so anyway the other challenge I see is like you know recruiting developers is going to be hard like splitting the baby I don't how is it going to work right if you have some people that have it on the App Store some people have it on the alternative app store I I don't know if that even work or how that works you're going to have to redownload it remember you're have to reink it like if you want to get people oh my god oh just a nightmare a nightmare it's a UI ux backend customer management nightmare oh and then also the uncertainty around the regulatory environment means we don't even know what the rules are going to be and they're changing on a regular right so you have to be super Frosty in order to like figure out what the [ __ ] going on like and the rules are going to change not only for EU but the UK and then the US like so it's going to be a moving Target constantly for the next years as these things go through the courts so it

may be a little bit too early frankly to like put a Line in the Sand now and then the last thing I'll say is that like the one thing I didn't even think about at all is that you may want the flexibility of allowing people to use their own transaction systems or Payment Systems right so integrating alternative Payment Systems across different Publishers within your store with its own payment system holy [ __ ] dude this is like like layers of complexity that just are insane epic did do this to yeah so it's going to cost a [ __ ] ton of money dude like I don't know how these small companies are going to be able to do this [ __ ] Microsoft epic sure but I like The Moxy I like them trying right like you know you need people out there kind of pushing the envelope trying different things seeing what works and then maybe that's where Innovation comes from and maybe what they learn there they can actually apply to somewhere else I don't know so I applaud them for trying but it is like you said a bit of an uphill battle I'm rooting for them what I hope is they take a lesson from

unity's book I really hope they succeed it may not replace the platforms but it could be an additional platform and I think it might work better for Gen Z and younger there's potentially an opportunity there I hope they partner with some studios and figure out what they need most to add them as a alternative app store that's what I just hope they sit down listen to what the frustrations are I mean this talk to Neil long and then focus on that what Unity play are you talking about meaning how like Unity changed all their platform themes didn't consult the developers they worked with first and then went back and started talking to everyone so they made this wide sweeping change without actually figuring out what the core concerns were with those change so what what I'm hoping is they don't go in blind they're just like we're going to make this app store I'm hoping they actually sit down do their their product needs research and solve the problems like if they could serve me games like I see the same games on the App Store I would love to play new games but I have to actually know the game to find the game M but there's going to be tons of those like if they actually go out and figure out what both what

consumers want which is going to be tougher but what the developers want I'm going to drink the little bit of the delusion Kool-Aid and just hope hope they pick the right things to focus on first because I'd love to see I'd love to see some change in this area I like your point I I don't think this is a developer solution as much as it needs to be a consumer solution you're right that they're trying to figure out how do we give the economics benefit to a developer but if they don't fix and focus on why on Earth is somebody going to install this and use this as their storefront then it doesn't matter yeah and I would contend that our hate or my personal hate for apple and and all they've done to screw up this industry I I don't think the consumer gives a [ __ ] right I think the consumer is just fat and happy with their devices and they're going to use Apple App Store until the end of days and like they don't care they don't see this issues that we're talking about right and so like there is no impetus from the consumer and so if it's the consumer doesn't want it then it's not

going to happen right that's kind of my thinking you're not going to be able to bring them to water type thing you know now if you give the consumer what they want which is discounts and you incentivize them to move then a certain segment may move but you got to figure what those things are the touch points that bring those consumers on because I think for the most part you know some 45y old mom in in Poria that plays Candy Crush could give a [ __ ] about what the App Store is like they just give me my goddamn app as easy as possible right it's that simple right it's like who cares you know but anyway all right the one other piece I would say that they could innovate on is social so you in some cases you want to go where your friends are and if you've got an ecosystem that allows you to kind of communicate and it's why Discord is a thing or it's a place where your library exists you know Crest when you talk about Steam and your love there anyway that's the last piece I will that's true say all right um moving on Playstation so PlayStation had a 30 minute

presentation called PlayStation state of play it was last week they featured 14 games a few new announcements and some remakes and some PC news so I'm only going to hit a couple of things so some things that I thought were really smart number one is it beat summer gamefest out the door so it was able to get its messaging out there it got a lot of news and a lot of pickup outside of all of the things that are going to happen this coming weekend with summer game Fest coming out out uh no hosts just content so keep it simple stupid kiss and they focused on what you know this ADHD generation is looking for which is just give me like really cool trailers although some of the trailers were really long and when they were sequels like the one that The Walking Dead Guy is in Dead Rising is that is that the name of that game I I'm watching this trailer and I didn't play or know anything about one and so this is a sequel and I'm like I have no [ __ ] clue what is going on in this trailer and it's like a five minute trailer can

I just say if you're going to do it on that like might not be the best place to go deep into the lore of a sequel that your audience may not know about so some of the biggest stories for me for some reason everyone like we talked about earlier is going after OverWatch and and team- based herob based Shooters so Phil so again maybe everyone is giving up on extraction Shooters is opting for hero Shooters they talked about two one is called Concord which was a really fun 70s logo if you watch that come in but the Sci-Fi hero shooter touting a live service coming in August 20124 they talked about like character driven updates I'm like o That's what everyone cares about is like I want to learn more about my character and a hero shooter so they did Concord which was the hero shooter sci-fi Marvel Rivals which was a a PC open Alpha that uh happened a couple weeks ago and they announced it for PS5 and so obviously likely coming on Xbox and then you know there's deadlock what we talked about valves

third person shooter so I heard you go oh what did you want to say about the hero shooter lineup just like why like what's the thesis I actually think paladins is probably a closer com for any of these games which is from highres Studios which is in Alabama I believe they've kind of been like what I consider like a middle class developer for like a last 10 years and I don't mean that with with any negativity I mean they built Smite which has been a third person MOA and when we say MOA that actually a true mooba that has all the Staples of a MOA that has units that you're trying to kill it has gold it has all those things paladins is much similar to these games where you don't have the PVE elements where you're trying to kill characters that are controlled by computer and get gold I don't know why I guess I guess like what what's the thesis here I guess what's the thesis I mean conquered I mean it looks like it's going to die out of the gate I mean maybe it plays well maybe it does I I I don't know the IP looked completely unappealing to me I think it it actually missed on that title logo that were talking about like it didn't lean into the 80s feel you're completely correct

on that I was like oh God so sci-fi doesn't normally test incredibly well the characters were kind of bland I didn't get the branding elements I mean the gameplay looked okay but there's like 20 other games that do that gameplay so I was just kind of like I don't know and if they drove home the 80s VI it would it would be go Star Wars make things more tactical make random switches the dumb things that Star Wars always does there's there's all these physical elements uh in the ' 80s version of the future and like none of that appeared here it was just the logo it was just really weird actually the logo is very 7s oriented 7ss uh but it felt like especially with Hunters coming out this week I was like okay which one am I looking at they looked very although Hunters is on phones and this was PS5 and Deadlock's going to destroy everyone anyways because it's valve like think was making the First new game it got a lot of bad press everyone was kind of [ __ ] on it deadlock deadlock yeah if there's any game developer I will bet on it's it's got to be a valve okay I

mean it was a leak it was testing as someone who has to figure out how to do testing without leaks which is incredibly difficult to do I feel for them because it's like guys we're just trying to get testing on this we're not trying to go out with this publicly hold on hold on yes what the [ __ ] are we talking about here like all these games are the same game right I mean even even uh the Star Wars Hunters they're all like squad-based hero shooters right that's what we're saying yeah but agree the fundamental problem we're not talking about Mr Phillip is like what about the business model right like all this is like cosmetic [ __ ] right do they even have loot boxes on these games like of course not yeah you can't possibly be successful in these games without loot boxes like that's the re part of the reason Apex has done well right and I don't know about borin I think borin has loot boxes as well right they don't have loot boxes it's complicated though they're they're willing to go further and they're willing to do $80 bundles though they're willing to to kind of push the csgo angle but they're willing to crank up the mon I guess is one way to put it their mation is incred and they get that you need to raise price it

just seems like these are just like they need to innovate on the bus model like the gameplay is the gameplay right I think Marvel Rivals has the most memorable characters in gameplay but like without the right monetization models it's going to die on the vine right you can't send out the same game and expect different results with a different skin you know if you don't do change the fundamental problem which is the business model for these games right I think that to me is problem number three right it's always acquire engage monetize and like they need they need to do that in that order to be able to win right and so I I mean like let's get through step one you know can you actually get any scale and that to me is the biggest barrier for these games except for Marvel Rivals Marvel Rivals is going to have stage two problem which is uh retain yeah engage you know can you actually build a sizable user base right and that's kind of where I'm leaning is like yeah I don't conqueror and de loock are kind of DOA in my opinion right or well Marvel well hold on valve I'm sure will bring loot boxes they're not a game developer I don't know even know why you even characterize them as such they haven't made a game in decades right so like I agree with you they're mostly a research institution

but DOTA is still like a smashing success um all right fine TF2 still have some users that not a game developer right NOP but I agree with you by and large but they both have not solved that problem they're like catering to like the vocal minority that don't want root boxes it's like that's it's not going to work right none of this is going to work and no one has really reflected on the fact that Apex launched with loot boxes after Battlefront 2 and has not only maintained loot boxes in its run it's actually increased them and they have live Ops boxes which are like four four bucks a pop but it's free to play that's two different stories right like you paid 70 bucks for that Star Wars game we can have this monetization conversation the only thing I would say is that even at a free-to-play level Loop boxes in this day and age usually get ruled off immediately I still see it it's been gone for the last 5 years they think battle pass is the solution it isn't we go over this a million different times and I think people have really underestimated loot boxes and I know it's been very quiet it's been very quiet for a long time and people have underestimated how important loot boxes have been in all these live service games which have been going on for

decades CSO is the same way dota's the same way you know they they kind of got in before people started getting nervous about the pr push back splitgate if you remember split gate they kind of snuck a loot box in there too anyway I they're making beautiful games and they're clearly making games that are qu high quality but they're just never going to be successful because they've completely eliminated the most important part which is [ __ ] making money you know sorry maybe that's not the most important what they do is joke that they're putting nfts in and then take them out and then loot boxes are going to be everyone's going to be like oh thank God it's just loot boxes and not nfts all right a couple other quick things to hit on just astrobot coming out cute old school platformer coming in September and then outside of the hell divers 2 controversy got a war is coming to PC and will require a PSN account so uh that was bold on a PR front to to make that announcement I haven't seen blowback yet but coming while watching trailers I went through a 39 page slide deck from son's business meeting which they also had I'm just going to do the the Highlight so you don't have to go through those slides PlayStation 5 is

Sony's most profitable console to date it has already generated 106 billion in Revenue the record is still held by PS4 at 107 but operating income is already at a record 10 billion compared to 9 billion for the PS4 there's more than 2,000 Publishers and 9,000 games on the platform as of the end of q1 2024 and they did a little bit of coverage on monthly active consoles so PS4 versus PS5 it's roughly 50/50 but PS5 has higher engagement measured in gameplay hours so there was a little bit of Doom and Gloom around no one's updating there's actually it's not as gloomy as I think other news sources were reporting and then total hours played in April was um 3.8 billion with uh 63% coming from PlayStation 5 so a little bit of an update on Playstation business side I want a quick comment here first of all I thought thought there was nothing really interesting in that state of play and honestly as much

as people love astrobot it's still very Niche and not interesting it's not going to drive sales of the platform the fact that they do not have a big release this year is almost criminal in the you know what fourth or fifth year of the cycle that's it's crazy it's crazy that this big Studio or doesn't have a goddamn game coming out this year it's like anyway and this is what my second point is is that these stats that they're throwing out like it's like operating income is none of this is really that true this is like cutting the data in a way that doesn't make any sense because the reality of it is their development costs are so expensive that they're making far less margin on this business than they used to right so their their Studio or got so bloated right and they spent so much money that now they're spending all this time and energy unwinding it so I can't imagine that this cycle is more profitable than last cycle sure customers are spending more but so are they right it's crazy we're bearing the headline here and I'm interested to to see what you think about this so the monthly active consoles between PS4 and PS5 is split about 50/50 and that's that's pretty

astonishing yeah that the people have not upgraded yet after all this time what's what's the explanation what's going on I have no idea I thought that stat was pretty crazy right because PS5 is now are we in the fourth year or third year of the cycle is the economy now kind of preventing a number of people from upgrading to PS5 when you know they kind of should be and then remember that they just replaced the CEOs of the gaming divisions so one of the reasons you know I I I kind of looked at this too Crest and was like H this doesn't feel like it feels like they're not really saying much and maybe they couldn't because they were in transition for the last few months at their with their leadership for this division they're spinning what's really crazy is I actually did an analysis on PlayStation 5 four years ago for one of my clients and I basically suggested that it was not going to the adoption curve would be a lot slower which is actually what's happened and I'm trying to remember the reasons I thought that then and to see if they

actually proved out now and I think one of the big reasons was that the Fidelity of PlayStation 5 is not really all that significantly better than PS4 what you do get is better much better download speeds and and performance from that perspective but the visual Fidelity is not like you're playing FIFA loaded up on one and versus the other like yes there is a difference but it's the same yeah but for most people it's not I agree with your theory by the way this is what ice spitball too and I think if you even buy more into this theory if there's less reason to upgrade and a lot of the player base is still on PS4 people still make games for the prior generation because the install base is so large you get this self-fulfilling prophecy and that was that was the case for Spider-Man right that's a case for a lot of their major titles that would get you to upgrade as they made them for both yep that was the strategy for Warner was I think you know you should continue to support Second old gen as long as possible I'll look into that actually I'm see if what's happening there gets insights but anyway I think they're spinning and you know they always have to spin right that's just

their job so well it's a time in the cycle right where they're like oh I think the economic macro factors are really putting some pressure I think there is you know what you say all the time that I always think about is how do you grow the core console gaming audience and you know Sony's Playbook seems to be well we're going to keep doing the same thing over and over and expect different results and you know there's not really anything that looks to be on their plate that's going to change the outcome of where they're headed well unless some of their software of service games actually take off and do well that's like one of their goals anyway Marathon let's go but they cut back on that right didn't they no I mean yes but they still could get outsize returns from Marathon or whatever Jade Raymond's cooking up in Montreal right um it'll be interesting transition from them oh and then the positive side dude I can't believe I'm like the half empty or half full person whatever the [ __ ] expression is is

that means that they have 50 million more units of PlayStation five to sell right like they got to convert these [ __ ] right and then the active install base gets higher if we can convert these people and I'll tell you one way not to do that is create a higher price skew with a pro like you should create a lower price skew Mr Sony but um you know anyway so that that means that there's a lot more people to chase after to upgrade so that's good oh but Crest they did announce announc that VR PC accessory thing where you can plug in your PlayStation VR thing and you can play VR games on your PC I mean isn't that going to be the the game changer there Crest my God the LinkedIn stuff people posting [ __ ] on LinkedIn should think before they speak dude the only reason they're doing that is to clear the inventory of [ __ ] that ain't selling dude they didn't support it at all I think they had one or two games that were on the showcase for VR there was a DOA dude from the beginning dude what they should have done is made a handheld device that actually rep is the similar to the switch they shouldn't [ __ ] with

this VR crap dude this is dead dude stop it well don't they have that what's that Ethan's thing the link that's not even a half measure all right we have gone super long and we didn't get to talk about Discord so maybe we'll hit that next week that they want to make some games for Discord so check it out there's an article from uh Venture beat that talks about that all right everyone sorry for the super siiz episode see you next week you did it you made it to the end of the episode is a fan of the show it would help us out if you subscribe and leave us a review on the podcast service of your choice more importantly are you a member of the deconstructor of fun slack group if you have 5 years or more of games industry experience go to deconstructor of fun.com slack and apply to join join the games industry's best professional Community filled with peers always willing to lend a hand or subscribe to to our newsletter to get all the latest insights from the deconstructor of fund content creators

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