TWiG 288: Fortnite in Trouble, Anime Girl Horse Racing Game, and Switch’s New Life

[Music] hello and welcome to this weekend games 288 where we read and distill all the weekly game industry news so you don't have to here's what we're going to talk about today Apple's in trouble they're getting a little hand slap from the European dma lots of executive departures at various companies so we're going to do some speculation and some gossip because that's what we do a lot of updates on live games Phil's going to go through a bunch of games just quickly so that we can get the state of where things are and Laura is going to do a deeper dive in Nintendo Direct and she actually watched the Japanese version which we didn't know was actually different and so that was really interesting so hi everyone I'm Jen donaho strategic marketing consultant at beta hat and Jaden Inferno and today we have on our panel Philip black game Economist at game Economist cons

hey hey Eric Crest birthday boy principal at gossamer Consulting Group yo and Laura Toranto senior director of product at Big Fish hey hey happy Birthday Chris happy birthday yeah yeah yeah you know birthdays have little or no meaning after a certain age and 53 is probably the most meaningless of them all but I'm feeling retirement age coming isn't it 55 people you know two more years that's all I got no you got got ways to go Crest it's like 67 oh yeah oh that's in Spain in France where you work 20 hours a week and then retire at 50 50 you can work on your leather body though you know you just go to the beach all day in a speedo yeah well I think I'm ready I'm ready to go off the pasture and uh leave this leave this work World Behind leave you poor Schmucks in the gaming industry that's a meander without me I'm kidding got a few more years than me

kids got to get out of high school at least and then then I can start thinking retirement this would have made it if you uh if you had your reading glasses on that would have helped the segment and you were sitting in there you go there yeah there we go you don't even need to make an announcement at this point oh 53 happy birthday and we will make sure that this is a killer podcast for you and give you plenty to Hulk out about Phil had a great analogy we were talking about our sound levels and and somebody had made a comment that the host sound goes in and out as they move in and out of the microphone and I was like that's not the host that's called Crest and Phil's like oh that's when he hulks out and starts getting really animated I thought that was awesome good job Phil when do you get the discounts at movie theaters is that 55 what do you have the flash this is this is a new world you're entering a ARP yeah yeah AARP is already contacted me I'm already

registered thank you very much I'm I'm jealous all right let's get into some Shilling so it's not exactly a deconstructor of fun Supper Club but a deconstructor of fun happy hour so there's a happy hour event in LA from planet play a new game industry event from stash the event is at the new 100 thieves headquarters in La which is its own reason to attend just to see this place I've heard it's fantastic it's Wednesday July 7 17th at 5:00 p.m. so the link to register to attend is actually in the deconstructor of fund slack it's in the Avent Channel if you want to go check it out they have almost a hundred people already signed up after this hopefully it'll be much bigger I'm coming obviously I'm based in La so come join Crest Laura you want to come down I just booked my flight I am coming because uh Archie is part of stash and he's a friend of the podcast and friend of mine so I will be down there to hang out in La for the day

all right well two of the crew two Live Crew That's a good one Laura any chance so you're too busy in Seattle right let's see maybe I'll do a last minute YOLO moment and the the day before on the 16th maybe I'll book a flight surprise appearance so Phil you GNA fly over from Sweden you want to come join just for you know I remember when they unveiled this HQ and they called it a compound and I've never heard of any good site location that's called a compound so I'm going to pass this is the best esport money can buy right is I think that's what they do I can never figure out what they actually do 100 thieves Lifestyle brand as well Lifestyle brand okay Lifestyle brand all right so other Schilling Lexie from sensor Tower was on the podcast it's actually a really good podcast so they went over a couple of reports from both data Ai and sensor Tower you might remember that they merged and so Lexi now works at sensor Tower so she used to work at dayi so app versus game Dynamics ad spending on Tik Tok and YouTube this

was really interesting to me YouTube is still by far number one Tik Tok has surpassed Instagram and Facebook when you split them out separately so that was huge news in terms of AD spend and gaming Regional differences IP collaboration the feature of subscription gaming so the article is out on the newsletter the podcast is live so check that out we in quote will be at Gamescom linked to the events coming during July or in our newsletter in Slack legendary whiskey tasting soon to be legendary Supper Club and game night I think this is a Mishka and Phil event because the US team is likely grounded because that's way far away unless anyone wants to sponsor us I will show up but super expensive when you're consultant to fly out to Gamescom and time but anyway that's Gamescom all right couple Corrections or a correction on Netflix I guess this isn't really a correction but a an update

I I hope I don't get in trouble for reading this credible sources reached out telling us that the company has invested close to 3 billion dollars thus far into games not the 1 billion which was stated in the last episode 3x bigger Phil not the things you want to hear uh certainly doesn't make the story better I would say the the piece of context that's important here is that they're set to spend 17 billion on content this year so this is 3 billion over like the life cycle of games when did they start the games division okay that's not that much money yeah so that's that's not a ton of money I think the point Michigan makes in his piece that he published on DF which I think was pretty apt is like they have real opportunity cost now like they really need to grow their subscriber base they know that's what they need to do they've been working on ads so capital's flowing in a lot of different ways to find Investments they're doing physical stuff I don't know if you just saw there was in a theater that they announced they're getting into merchandise like popcorn now I'm sure these all brand stuns but like they they know they need to grow they want to get that Tech multiple non entertainment multiple despite the fact they' said it's an entertainment company

like games games are a good idea for this company I I really do think that they just are using an improper business model so I I don't know three billion that doesn't sound like a bad role to die I just think it needs a three billion with a strategy like you want return on that investment and just there hasn't been any yeah likely a billion a year which is a lot but when you're setting up a new division also they just announced that they are they're doing like I don't want to call it a theme park but many experiential experiences so so they're renting out vacant malls and setting up like a stranger things walkthrough or bridg tin you know experience they've actually had a bunch of these in La I haven't gone to any yet but we were walking through the mall and we saw the Fallout one for I mean it was crazy absolutely CRA yeah it was nuts like some popup like Fallout experience for the series isn't the Fallout series kind of done does a ghoul eat you like what no no I think I think they you could actually get dressed up as a ghoul like

you could actually yeah something like that I don't know these are on Trend these are new and and Scott Galloway from the Prof podcast and pivot talks a lot about how he thinks this is brilliant because Disney is entrenched in theme parks and it's 5 to 10K to actually go with your family it takes a week it's very difficult to go to a actual theme park why not have a place where you can take your friends and your kids for 50 100 bucks and have a few hour experience and build the brand right these are brand building experiences so I agree I think this is uh pretty awesome all right so quick hits let's talk about Apple getting its hand slapped Apple hit by first charges under the new European Tech Law which is called the dma this actually hit the Wall Street Journal and a bunch of other highle Publications EU commission said that it found Apple's Rules of Engagement did not comply with the dma because it prevents app developers from freely steering consumers to Alternative

channels for offers and content so this includes the apple core technology fee which is. 50 cents for every app install per year after the initial install distributed via the App Store via alternative marketplaces so that is not okay as we all thought when we heard this apple could be finded as much as 10% of its worldwide Revenue if the EU Regulators in three key points the commission found that Apple's business terms don't allow developers to freely steer customers I.E developers can't provide pricing information within the app or communicate other places to purchase secondly while Apple does now allow developers to include links this linkout process is subject to restrictions imposed by Apple that prevent app developers from communicating promoting offers and concluding contracts through the distribution channel of their choice thirdly Apple's fees go beyond what is strictly necessary Apple currently charges developers a fee for every purchase of digital goods or services a user makes within 7 days after a linkout

from the app Chris thoughts D this wasn't a hand slap this was a [ __ ] slap you know like back a hand like Kiss My Ass Apple from the dma seriously dude I mean they're just getting a Beatdown from the dma and they're again because as we said in the cast this was an attempt to comply with the letter of the law but Ser not even close to the spirit of the law when the dma put it in place so in essence like their response to the dma's pimp slap should be epic can create a more viable store and other third parties and also make it far more streamlined and more efficient for the consumer which is like the most important thing right so you know this 16-step process of of sideloading a store that should be much much much more streamlined for the consumer to try alternative stores so this is the path on the right direction and we'll see Apple's response is before they get

charged 10% of worldwide Revenue which is a big huge chunk of money that they cannot tolerate so yeah we'll see these used to be parking tickets before where you know if you're Facebook or your Apple and you know the the European regions are like hey uh here's a fine it was like a parking ticket and you just move on and you collect them 10% of your revenue on a worldwide basis is no longer a parking ticket so it'll be cool to see what happens let's see what they do where's the United States government involved in this 10% of worldwide Revenue you kidding me like why are these European companies milking us this is insanity that we're not stepping in it's because Tech is viewed so poorly right now just departments on an ideological tear I don't think there's any sympathy in the white house we're getting 10% of worldwide Revenue so us revenue is going to go to Europe the EU this is a Shakedown by European governments we have interests in the United States and we should be protecting that as a Swedish person my interests are different there is conflict but that being said like there

should be someone stepping in Europe by the way is only I think 20 to 30% of Apple's revenue and you saw they had the Apple intelligence features are going to be delayed in Europe because these regulatory requirements are not clear which is something that was true a lot of these are really vague there's a gatekeeper requirement that they've added as well to the dma and so you know this is the cost of Regulation is that takes a long time to figure out what exactly was said and how the courts are going to interpret it but 10% of worldwide revenue is wild to me that's that's all say I know everyone's cheering this on but I'm going to throw the political flag on this and have us move on um I was going to make a joke that the US government is too distracted by Tik Tok and Ticket Master oh here we go all right moving on moving on yeah okay yeah sorry everybody Phil's views are his own so I had to pull this out because I often talk about collaborations and how cool they are and things that I'm excited about this one made no sense to me so this is in game industry. Biz FIFA has formed a partnership with rocket league for its Esports World Cup FIFA

announced the 16 country participation during rocket League Championship Series on Sunday three players and one substitute will be represent each country the countries will be selected based on the number of players involved in the previous rocket League major events granted I haven't played rocket league in a long time but last time I checked it wasn't football I know there are cars that like Zoom around and try to knock a ball into a net but it's football it's not football it's [ __ ] cars it's cars look at the screenshot like what do you what do you think that is what you like is that soccer is that football like where where is H where's my where's my girls playing you know like where's my US national team FIFA is so desperate to get any type of interactive experience since they blew it with EA right they're gonna like they're G to try to find do find anything to get interactive as part of it to save face from being idiots about the negotiation around people I think this makes them look more like idiots I mean now they look desper

yeah they are desperate right they are because they gave up hundreds of millions of dollars in licensing Revenue pure profit for what you know for nothing because they can't figure this [ __ ] out so yeah let's sign up rocket league and spend even more money right oh that makes sense I think I read back in the day when we talked about this that that EA was their number one lensey that was the number one source of revenue for them that just disappeared because they couldn't get that deal done yeah 100% they got greedy as f EA fc24 I think it's at the top of the charts this month I saw in Europe and like so it's still killing it yeah we said ear they didn't skip a beat for EA they really surprisingly did a good job of of managing customers over to the new experience because FIFA doesn't matter and it's going to become less and less relevant you know as as time goes on because it's not part of the Zeitgeist around soccer going forward you know like they did the themselves a disservice by eliminating that license agree all right Laura let's go to you

all right tagging in for Mishka for investments in m&a we have a little bit of mobile news triple. Studios acquired check based mobile casual and Hyper casual games developer zephier mobile triple dot I'm sure people here have played it is well known for woku they also have a blackjack title a triple tile they have a bunch of games their monetization model is a mix of Ip and ads so this investment is to work with zepher mobile to see how they can take their learnings and help that Studio grow and then we have K raises a gravity defying $45 million series a from light speed Andre and Horowitz Convoy and others to build safe gaming and internet experiences for kids teens and their parents morit has got to lay off the sauce when he writes these goddamn PR things right so he says signing this term sheet and joining the company's board of directors as a new

dad made this investment even more meaningful I mean come on dude that's cute though I there's a double and there he's actually become a new dad and he's now a new dad of a kid thing and I'm like oh my God I I was like throwing up I was throwing up in my mouth right it it's like so cringey dude and I say some cringy [ __ ] I don't get me wrong I know I know what it's like but I mean this takes it to a whole another level Mr Moren but what I will say finally for Mor outs is that this investment makes sense right this is potentially a scalable business licensing business in the marketplace that makes sense for a venture capitalist versus these insane triaa Investments that he's doing that they're paying like million dollar salaries like and burning through every like nickel of the money that they've raised right which we can talk about at another time but I want to do an FYI on this one because this was the one deal I was talking about when I was talking about A6 z a few months ago right like

this was one that was rumored where they did the initial like round this is part of the speed rounds or whatever F they call it right so anyway and so the idea was is that this was the one that a16z was trying to take the entire round right like and Bully the company into like letting them take the entire round which they're well known for not even in gaming but but overall like that's kind of what they do because they're the big gorilla so it's really good that they did get dollars from a really solid group of investors including Convoy light speed as well as a strategic so okta and I think this is great news for the company and it's not necessarily good news for a16z or speedrun in general right because to reiterate they have a $600 million fund so getting a partial investment in this raise does not give them the kind of equity they need in order to generate Returns on such a big fund like this is critical part of this thing so yes if they had taken the entire round of 45 million that's a material number for $600 million fund now I have no idea what the

structure of this deal is right I do not know exactly who got what but in order to make a big enough investment to make a material impact on a SE $600 million fund much less than the S billion doll fund that a6c raised recently like yeah this is not it right this just doesn't do it and again I'm in absolute speculation mode I have no idea what the economics of this deal were I'm just just basically speculating on that but anyway this just a followup to what I was trying to say a few months ago about a16z in their fund I don't know I'm not smart enough to know all the things that you just talked about about the money side but I do know a little bit about kids compliance having worked on kids games for many years it is like it's so hard and I actually have literal kids experience as do you so I want to talk to you about this Crest so I applaud the idea of a compliance platform we know that what's going on in gaming what's going on in Social is really challenging for kids as a parent this was really

difficult to police make sure the kids are safe how do they not do naughty stuff but this [ __ ] is painful for developers in and parents so I looked at the website I didn't see a demo or get to dig in more I actually reached out to Mor I'm like can I see a demo of this cuz forgive me I I haven't seen what this is so I'm going to talk a little at of turn here and just talk from experience as a parent or as a step monster I'm not sure this can work because kids are sneaky little shits yes all kids I don't care if you have the best kid on the planet they are sneaky little shits let me tell you the story about how our kids circumvented all of these systems at seven years old Zach little [ __ ] at seven he's 18 now he just graduated high school but and this was back then this is back when he was seven and his sister was five so they figured out how to go to Google create new Gmail accounts they would use each other as verification for their Gmail accounts they would set up new Apple IDs and they would go on their phones to get to all

of the things that they were not allowed to do we only found out because Zach is the worst liar on the planet and he forgot his password and he was like Hey Mr meow that's my nickname it's long story but it's pretty funny meow can you reset the password to my account and so we did and he was like oh it didn't work do it again and he then he was like he could see his he got bright red and he was like oh [ __ ] like it's my fake email and so that's how we caught him when he was seven I was both proud and terrified as a that this is how they figured this out but anyway to summarize I'm not sure how any platform can work because I'm going to aate kids and criminals they will always figure out how to get around this stuff CH have you have you had a similar experience or am I just do I just have delinquent children who are smart and shits again this is the story of Roblox right their complete misinformation about you know their aging up is that a lot of people are just circumventing their almost lack of age verification system on a personal level I actually do think

that having these type of systems some kind of system that's somewhat foolproof is probably important and I think you know my experience with my kids is that I I wish I had like been a little bit more in control than I was so to the extent that they can actually find a way of beating these children then maybe yeah maybe beat the children I mean literally in figuratively frankly but um the whole Market's Roblox so there's no market for this it's Roblox and R star for this AG group okay so you got Minecraft but all of those are huge corporations that want to build their internal Solutions why would they want to buy world I didn't want to go there Phil I didn't want to go there because I don't really know enough about this company but I agree with you I don't know what the Tam is here honestly like I just don't it's huge but Tik tok's moving into games discord's moving into games YouTube's moving into games it's a non invented here thing it's like these system like epic yeah all these guys are going to build their own Tech they're not going to rely upon a third party I don't know either so difficult and so specialized to build

your I mean if you're a big company maybe you can dedicate the 150 people to be able to do that with legal but it is it's a [ __ ] nightmare and it changes all the time the rules change all the time there's actually legislation in the US right now to try to put forth child online protection and there's a lot of lobbyists going against it because we don't know what it's going to end up every country's going to have its own yeah which it does and they point out in their documentation I tried to look a little bit and they they have this document they bomb you with how just awful this is and let us be the experts at which I get again I think this is a brilliant idea my question and which I will come back and report on once I get a chance to experience it is is how do they actually execute this yeah and isn't Misha doing a podcast with these guys so maybe that'll shed some light into there it might be like we'll set something up because I do think the Tam is huge Lexi actually talked about how kids games are growing you know what's

going on and it's not even just games it's other platforms as well like how social is just brutally just killing our kids with you know making them depressed and yes there's you know the studies are on both sides on is that actually happening or not I think we can all agree that social is challenging for everybody we'll dig in more sorry K ID if we went too heavy on you without full knowledge but we're not journalists so that's what we do I think want distribution based on those screenshots I think they want distribution I think they want to get a lot of kids on their platform and then Mom and Dad gets to choose from the tool yeah right which games are installed on their kids devices anything that's on that thing kids would be like [ __ ] that I'm not playing anything that's on that service these games suck right like I mean kids are not idiots right yeah it was more about like do you turn chat on or off do you it it was like developers put something ins in like an SDK in their app and then and then parents have the control of like hey I'm you know I can turn off chat or some of these other

things which Xbox has and Playstation has I had to set that up on the Xbox for the kids because they were playing Minecraft and fortnite on my Xbox and I had to set up a different ID and all the things they couldn't couldn't do and then that's a nightmare because then they can't do any multiplayer you've heard of heroic Labs by now and we keep talking about them because in today's mature Market you need every Edge to be successful rather than spending those precious company dollars building game Tech focus on building your game and shipping it get into your players hands faster and grow your community heroic Labs is Battle tested partner and friend of the podcast their Tech enables you to be flexible creative and scale for Success heroic Labs has your Tech stack covered whether you're looking for a worldclass backend game server an amazing game development framework Fantastic live Ops tooling or reliable Mass scalability heroic Labs has solutions for all of these challenges and it's not just us a deconstructor of fun praising heroic

Labs the company works with some of the world's biggest Publishers on many of the Beloved games focus on your game save a big chunk of cheese and avoid Tech risks with heroic [Music] labs 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 a 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 let the speculation begin dude I love how you know Misha just throw drops these bombs in there and then makes us read right like like we have any like context to any of this but anyway supposedly the CMO of supercell is out fernandoa Romano right and as far

according to my calculations that's like a six Monon stint right it took it took longer for her to get hired than it did to like her tenure there I mean it's pretty nuts you know how long it takes to hire a senior person like that so there must be some story out there but sources are saying that it had nothing to do with Squad Busters which I still find hard to believe like likely has to do with something with her approach that just did not sit well with the rest of the the org next week we have a pieace coming Squad Busters one month later oh okay so buckle buckle in it looks brutal there's a big story yeah you're going to eat crow is that what's happening oh it's going to be a feast yeah Phil I was looking at da across the super cell portfolio it looks like all da all da is down right like did we talk about that already but so not only did this tank but did yeah did it cannibalize a tank like is it it's just not good is it sucking the air out of the super balloon because no it's just not good okay you

you throw out a game that has absolutely like like mice nuts monetization when you're like killing it killing it with their other games and what do you think is going to happen it's absolutely not the story it has nothing to do with monetization and we we're going to look at that next week can I also say on supercell they just announced rise which is a reboot of Clash heroes so I watched the video on this because I'm like you why would you announce this right now that you're in a pre-alpha come sign up to be a part of the pre-alpha for this reboot of Clash heroes which actually looks kind of fun when I watched the little video they do such a nice job on so many things and then you know sadly not on other things but what do you think about this Clash heroes reboot happening right now from an announcement perspective next chapter baby keep turning keep turning the page moving on all right keep turning keep turning like that anyway okay so so do we want to

speculate on any other reason so they said it wasn't Squad Busters that caused the CMO to leave that she may have been building an empire and and like building up too many hires and that might have been the reason any other thoughts Eric CER has a piece about brand Executives that get hired into these type of roles and end up believing very quickly I'll refer everyone to that piece and that's all I have to say on the matter that is a good one actually you're right I totally forgot about that that he this exact story that's been going on forever yeah brand people have no business in Performance Marketing absolutely none sorry I sadly agree with that you have to be a unicorn you have to respect both brand and performance where they fit in where they fit in the life cycle of a product and how you can speak to your CFO and understand your numbers and manage a business and deliver short and long-term results yeah I have this huge ramp R viewing on on Star Wars Hunters that we're getting there too oh my God this this guy on

LinkedIn I swear he was the smartest dumb person I've ever met or talked to on LinkedIn like guy was clearly knew what he was talking about but he was so [ __ ] wrong it was like it was like unbelievable the idea that you can build something like Star Wars Hunters into like a sustainable long-term business you know with like a cosmetic economy is this a ridiculous ridiculous assumption that is what they clearly were designing the game based upon was the idea anyway whatever that's the whole other thing all right Mike D lot's leaving Mattel digital after two years he was there for two years at least right so Mike D lot's a good friend of mine and we work together at Kabam and I do really like them the guy is like a machine he is a BD machine like he knows everybody so I actually don't know what the story is and I'm sure I will I get the actual story when the time comes but Mattel was trying to build their own first party as well as third party type game division and it maybe it just didn't go as well

or go as fast as they had hoped I have no idea what's going on over yeah I I think I mentioned at the time you know I've worked at these companies as a toy person Mattel Hasbro and Disney and the toy industry and when when they announced this publishing group I was like as much as I applaud the effort it is almost impossible to set up that kind of a relationship especially at Mattel which is so far behind what Hasbro is doing and by the way Spin Master so spinmaster many people people don't know is a toy company they also own TOA world and Bakugan and a number of other big brands that they are doing some incredible digital stuff in the space the novic guys have a podcast with their digital their digital guy right now that I've been listening to and I I just applaud what they are doing and so I think Mike had great aspirations hey we need to catch up to what these other toy companies are doing in digital Mattel doesn't have the brands to pull this off yeah I know they have Barbie I know they have Hot Wheels there's nothing else after that and I am sorry to say that as

a former employee but it's just it's sadly the truth and Uno sorry from a games perspective all right Sony is reporting making deep cuts to its VR Department big big shocker there right they put that thing out to die because frankly I don't even understand they didn't have any many resources dedicated to thing to begin with I don't know like how they can make deep cuts to something so shallow right but psvr at 2 is dead 100% it is deed dead okay and the rest of the vrr market seems to be on life support yet again and so here we are like you know Facebook can't carry this thing on its shoulders alone Midnight Society Cuts ties with Dr disrespect following fresh twitch ban allocations from 2020 I don't know what's going on I mean like allegedly he was messaging Miners and the twitch employees could see it and they were sexual in nature and there was some leak about it and they were attempting to meet a twitch I don't know this is a little bit gross I don't know why we're covering something like this

like who gives a [ __ ] this was huge forever this was huge news when I was at Amazon I tried to find this out too I was years ago oh it's been but it's just been this big mystery this is like JFK stuff for gamers like release the files Epstein [ __ ] okay okay Xbox Studios boss booty says that management change was behind the Tango closure right this the Tango guys were the ones that did uh Hi-Fi Rush highi Rush right that was the Beloved Studio that they [ __ ] can for seemingly no good reason at all and basically they said the founder Shi Mami left the company in 2023 was one of the reasons that they did this but again this doesn't change the fact that you make leadership happy when you do these type of transactions right like like this is the whole point you of buying creatives is to keep creatives so it's like yeah like okay that's not a good reason right that you [ __ ] up because you could keep hold hold of him you know like or whatever or didn't have

the resources internally or in the company to actually fill backfill him so that's not a good reason it's a better reason than what they've been saying before I'll give them that right at least they're like acknowledging the fact that they [ __ ] up to some degree but they're not so whatever all right Phil let's do this lots of games going on right now so many games so we've been following dungeon fighter and they finally had a mobile skew which was rumored Forever This is based on the insanely popular HD franchise which has made billions upon billions in the East it has made $270 million during its first month in China $270 million which reports that the RPG that's that's twice as much as the second performing game honor of Kings which we've covered forever which is going its own Global expansion right now and it does not include Google Google Revenue so so wow we have estimates from Nico partners that the game could make between 2.1 and $2.5 billion in 2024 wow I I think those are actually low low yeah

B so historically honor of Kings used to do one to two billion a month all in and you know obviously you know censor to a month yeah yeah like the these games are so much bigger than what we see in the data cuz it's China right like you don't see Google you don't you don't see the Android numbers and Android is the dominant platform in those countries so this this number is very small so EA EA is what at like five five seven billion a year in annual revenue so you're saying this this one game is comparable to the entire the yeah used to do that yeah now it's slit a bit we still haven't seen an official number from either 10 cent or Nexon so I've been very bullish on Nexon so and the Nexon stock has not even moved on this announcement which is crazy just built in share price already though that's

what it's not it's not so anyway I think we will see the results from the reporting next quarter and we'll we'll see what happens with next on new game Announcement by another former Riot spin-off team it's been in development for a long time I was a part of some early play tests it has been officially titled superv and this is from one of the leaders of the League of Legends team I don't know Jen if you have more information here from what I understand he took he took a ton of that leadership team to form this company it is a battle royale MOA this is another attempt I guess at the Moa Market this team is definitely I want to say this team is very different than honesty interactive if I'm remembering correctly which were the developers of Omega Strikers which was another Riot spinoff this is a very different team in terms of senority from my understanding oh definitely so this was Project Loki was what it was called Theory craft I believe is the name of the company so now they're calling it super viive huh interesting yeah so that's the name of the game oh the name

of the game yeah so Theory craft is the I think is the name of the company Joe Tong LED League of Legends for years he as she he he's one of the most experienced game guys I think he actually was EP on a bunch of Halo titles back in the day he's a beloved Game Dev leader and he's very Game Dev he took a lot if not all of the eventually of the senior leadership of the League of Legends team over with him a lot of the marketing people have gone with him it it's a very very experienced team if anyone can figure this out it will be this team I know Crush you [ __ ] on mobos but if anyone can figure out what the next MOA is it's going to be this team make it stop please make it stop this is a different thesis though this is a different thesis this is at least Battle Royale I mean I don't think the outcome's any different but what was the name of the game in soft launch project Loki that's what it was actually called that was their working title yeah there's some play tests out that look really nice like the art style is nice however your

point about you need scale in order to make a cosmetic driven business work is still true and if anyone can get scale on a new game it is going to be this team is is point it's gonna be it's gonna be blizzard it's gonna be anybody but a new company haven't they raised like over 120 million I don't know I I don't remember just makes the fail that much bigger you know well all right moving on so we have some extremely exciting news there is going to be a localization of the hit game Uma mus pretty Derby this is the girl horse racing game that just like does Gang Busters in the East and I have on the screen right now monthly active users against Revenue it has always produced a vast quantity of Revenue it's doing around 45 even 50 million at some point in terms of monthly Revenue it has been an absolute gang buster game it also has like K-pop elements like the girls also dance and they sing I definitely I'm going to be

playing this for sure I don't know Eric if you have you have different ideas of this game's PRX I mean we didn't we didn't see good localization by the way this is not going to be localized by crunchy roll it's going to be by side games the developer itself which I thought was interesting I'm pretty sad about that we'll see what they can do in terms of localization I would only speculate that this type of game is not going to resonate with the Western audience I would imagine they're going to get a few million people that are going to spend insane amounts of money but it's not going to scale that would be my guess next week let's pull goddess of victory I'd love to see how that's doing in the United States Monopoly go update so they had a recent live Ops event which was interesting it got a lot of press they did some original video for it so I wanted to check out where they were in terms of weekly active users and revenue and they've been on this little bit of a decline we've been talking about since January meanwhile weekly active users is pretty healthy it's been largely stable over this period so I still think they are stacking customers but downloads are also down so I think a lot of this game's velocity has started to shrink this isn't a great trend line in the slightest i' I'd love to see this reversed so right now it's looking like

a half a billion a year game based on this sort of run rate I'm sure scop Le would love this thing to be a much bigger Beast so that's 1.5 billion okay congrats to scopely but I mean look at look it still still a downward sloping trend line yeah but then they can't estimate number one titles well I think they're probably basing it upon some like retention curve or something I don't know how they do number ones because they're not getting the data from scope so until scopely announces numbers we really don't know what they are but I would imagine this might be close I me they can't possibly be getting incrementally better users right at this stage given how the scope of this game I think they're fine with that yeah I think they're doing the right thing though right like the wasn't it a racing event that they you know they're doing lives offs the b or doing updates you're going to see some fallof you can't stay at this level forever and you're going to see Peaks and Valley is and engagement so I'm not surprised but

it's still you know if it's 1.5 billion a year I mean Jesus like congrats coming in at the lower end is an update from where we are with Star Wars Hunter so we're just looking at mobile Revenue here and as we know switch Revenue I'm sure Towers Towers over this and the graph I chose for this is cumulative Revenue because it felt like that was the great way to make an assessment of where this game is we're about a month in and it has generated a whopping 1 million in cumulative Revenue so I don't think this is a game that will continue to see updates based on this trend like that it's like it's so bad it's so bad so bad I've heard a lot of people talk talk nicely about the game play I think the business model like to your guys's point it goes to show I can't believe I'm going to say this it goes to show how important the monetization plan is an addition to the gameplay plan yes yes come on Phil that was like a layup for you like yes I agree with these

things but like I I mean come on it's it's 2024 like why are we why are we still having these same conversations like well wasn't this game started four years ago I mean isn't that the problem no it's not they they started four years ago everyone knew the answer to this question don't make mobas and don't make shooters that have cosmetic economies unless it's going to scale to a size that makes sense and even then like you look at look at uh war zone right like it's a disaster the Call of Duty game the shooter it's a beautiful game right the Battle Royale one right Call of Duty mobile is crushing it but that's is war zone is how is war zone a disaster they sell gameplay that's that's what blueprints are no call of dut war zone isn't doing anything on mobile right now oh oh you're talking about yeah the mobile SK how much money you think they spent on building that game it's like a disaster of Epic Proportion and this is the same idea 12 Studio but my my point is that at least war zone has a huge audience and huge

following they they can't even make that work right yeah and then you throw out a game like this you think it's gonna be successful no do loot boxes do pay to win pay to request figure out how to make a shooter with pay to win pay to progress right that's what people should be working on right or like a a loot box system that makes sense you know like not but just creating a cosmetic economy and like battle pass dude that's an exercise and failure every time that this this is the rant that I really wanted to talk about before and that's why mobas don't work and that's why these shooters are not working anyway it's just it's just dumb it's just dumb all right HD huge update Elden ring DLC it is killing it in terms of overall ranking the game itself Rose 17 places and when we look at what it's done to the max daily concurrent players on Steam this is courtesy of video game insights it has had a huge Spike that we've only seen back when the game launched all the

way in 2022 reaching a peak of around 950,000 CCU and with this DLC update it's about at 780,000 CCU so it's done a lot to revive the game I I didn't realize this game had come out two years ago but to still pull in numbers like that is extremely impressive everyone's talking about it today I feel like everyone I speak to is either going back to play Elden ring talking about Elden ring it's coming up in the news yeah yeah the other thing that I think has been really curious and I've seen the strategy played out a lot more is that there's been a lot less price discounting which is usually how you drive new users into a game particularly a single player game but they've may be able to maintain price for a really long period of time so we look at the screen right now we're looking at the history of the price on Steam and they've really only done about four to five discounts over two years which is extremely limited and the max discount they've done looks like to be around $30 so they maintained a $60 price so they moving a lot of units at a really high price so

that's that's a lot of money so thanks to nuu for giving us some tidbits every month they give us some access to their data and so we try to share some of their insights with you here we're trying to figure out how we can share more of their insights we can't get to all of them they send us a bunch so that might go out in a newsletter I'll figure out how to post it so thanks to them for this so one more update and this is from Diablo as we're we're going down the list of HD games it has had an update called the loot reborn update and it is absolutely killing it it has been a monster increase in PSU I've never seen this franchise pull numbers like this it hasn't had a lot of a steam history which is usually how you get a lot of this so they're still Distributing on Blizzard's own launcher but if you just look at where the PSU numbers have gone since this loot reborn update it's absolutely killing it right now from what I understand they've simplified a lot of the systems they've added a lot of important crafting systems they've l a lot of endgame crafting systems the only suspicion I have here is whether or not this is affected trade at all

because as we know there's a large relationship between having tradability and being able to push content like this you can see an increase in Bots usually so if you go on like lost arcs PSU charts for steam you can actually see band waves you can see drops in PSU this always happens when you have Bots but by and large you know you take it at face value they've had a massive increase in PSU it's the highest it's ever been since it's been on the steam platform way back in November of 2023 and they have DLC coming out very soon The Vessel I believe of hatred so like this could be a great onetwo punch for them the timing couldn't be better 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 manage subscriptions and streamline Payment Solutions worldwide unlock new markets and maximize profitability through their customized secure payment architecture and dedicated support team exola powering 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 flyer the leader in Mobile attribution and marketing analytics that allows you to measure the full potential of your Market marketing efforts making every ad dollar work smarter with apps flyer that's your new reality dive deep into datadriven insights that reveal exactly where your users come from and how they'll interact with your app app sler where your app's potential meets performance all right Laura can you report on Nintendo Direct go a little deeper for it can you do this in Japanese though please I only took about six months of Japanese I loved it but it was it interesting language sorry I'm getting on a tangent I would love to I

cannot but I know you covered this last week so I'm not going to dig too deep into what was already covered but just a few angles and as we mentioned at the beginning I did you know I thought it would be the same across the US Nintendo Direct as the Japanese one I think that was silly they actually were a bit different they had more game announcements than the Japanese one they had it was just different game so there were certain things that were added one thing that Phil was going to cover that I was like please Phil let me do it I was was really excited to see eggy party announced in the Japanese Nintendo Direct it was not mentioned in the US one yet but maybe it will be coming in the future but I think that's a great Port all right so overall there were 31 announcements they have 16 new games seven remakes eight updates SL expansions and thankfully zero ads that was really nice after watching Summer game Fest and just to for the comparison the Japanese Nintendo Direct had about 45 announcements I would divide it into five categories

so first category of all these announcements Nintendo's finest this is like Mario link and friends two would be how many variations of Animal Crossing can you make as many three as possible cuz my wife will buy all of them yes what's interesting though is despite all these announcements the actual team from Animal Crossing New Horizons that group that focuses on that franchise did not actually don't have anything that they wanted to show that was upcoming at least maybe we'll be surprised but there was nothing new from that team and I think Animal Crossing came out in 2020 so it's been almost four years then we have third category jrpgs no surprise to anyone and then four I actually sent this to Adam to have a look because he he grills me or gives me a hard time when I talk about Nintendo tells me I fan out too much but I joked with him I said yeah I think Nintendo's listening to Twig because they're leaning into online multiplayer as a theme for their games going forward and Adam was like

they definitely don't listen to you I was like Adam it was a joke but we've criticized them previously for not having well a couple things their games usually don't have online multiplayer and they have a super clunky Lobby matchmaking friending system I mean I think they're working on the first I don't think they I didn't see anything that suggests that they're going to be fixing kind of how you find friends um maybe they'll be looking at it for switch to don't know but just as a reminder it's coming out switch 2 2025 all these games will be backwards compatible then I have like five like the last category of all these announcements was just kind of like I didn't know how to group them it was just like a a larger other category one other call out nothing no announcements from Animal Crossing team and no announcements from Mario Kart so that was a little I was a little surprised to see because it's actually it's a pretty good franchise for them and they don't have anything in the works that they're at least that they announced in either Direct since Jen you covered this last week you talked about the new Zelda game and how

they're doing yeah the copy paste feature that is because women aren't allowed to have swords you have to let them copy and paste it it is a very cool feature but following kind of on the tales of princess Pete Showtime I felt like I just didn't understand why we couldn't keep the action in the game in the that's you know known for in the Zelda games when Zelda is actually the main character let's see I had a note it sounds interesting on paper I'm worried it might n Their audience too much cuz it it takes it away as an action game and puts it more into a Puzzler and I think you also covered Lego Horizons it looks awesome it looks very cool it's whether or not the performance on switch can handle a game like that but let's see because PS5 looks pretty smooth yeah the audience feels a little bit of a mismatch but maybe that's why they're doing it to Sony's trying to grow the audience I think the thing to point out too is the trend that we're seeing from the Sony's and the microsofts with their first- party titles extending into other

platforms I actually like this a lot I like franchises being available on multiple platforms I think players appreciate that for me as a marketer was the interesting point on Lego Horizons that would be my takeaway too and I think that's a trend coming from Nintendo because one thing they're also launching on doing more crossplatform is I think this is one of the strongest highlights I took away from this is they are putting Hello Kitty Island Adventure on switch and frankly I think it should have been on switch from the beginning I mean most people listening probably don't play this but this is one of the animal crossing inspired games with puzzles and more of a quest system so it's it's taking kind of that open worlds that you have you're exploring crafting whatever and then giving it a little bit more structure I think it'll do really well yeah it crushed it on Apple arcade like literally I mean not no [ __ ] on that like no shade and so I'm not surprised to see the developer take that to a different platform and then the last one there was

one I wanted to bring up because I thought of Phil when I saw this it's called fagia I apologize for pronunciation but it's a game that looks like Pokemon meets Squad Busters in a turn-based RPG and all I could think of when I saw the demo was it just needs the super self chicken and then we've got then it would be perfect but the interesting mechanic in it that I think supercell should have a look at is you're collecting these monsters you have this like Squad and they're they're attacking with you you can actually morph them into like one big monster and I was like why doesn't Squad Busters have that interesting bil you look kind of horrified I'm curious morbidly curious of what that would look like it is a design solution to something I I don't know I I that's interesting and then there a couple things that were announced that I just don't get you know I first thing I thought when I saw this one announcement was Crest is right they

have a tales of the Shire it's basically like Lord of the Rings meets Animal Crossing Sim game and I all I could think of was who would want this what's the third party Market tool everyone uses like you spent a lot of time that tool looking at audience crossover I could see how you come up with something like this oh oh it's Solon yeah s our friends at solsten who are friends at the Pod does an Embrace her own of the Rings I went on the rant the other week where people should you know cuz I was like is has there been a successful lord of the ring rings game recently and then everyone was like what about that game from 20 30 years ago I think they're trying to sh their Lord of the Rings franchise to people there's nothing going on in the franchise so that's the other weird thing and then what's the overlap of Lord of the Rings and people who like cozy games there are five people who are the potential audience for this game maybe Laura is one no my wife is not right because so what people don't realize is that people

who engage in the Cozy game experience or these lighter experiences tend to not be hardcore like midcore fans those kind kinds of those IP and it's why it's Animal Crossing so I hope they did research on this you can do tremendous player and consumer insights when you have these ideas to understand and evaluate your concept evaluation do audience segment ation do audience identification it's kind of what I do with beta hat we do this all day long with companies all around the world on new IP and help them figure out if they have a market fit or not I would have loved to have had my hands on this to be honest with you so interesting context this is from w a workshop so it's not from a traditional development Studio or one that doesn't have a lot of lineage it pro probably was creative driven and it also will be coming to Netflix games so Buck Buckle in and get that subscription wonder if there's a show the only comment I have about this whole thing

honestly is that this is a really surprising showcase honestly for Nintendo because we are on the tail end of the switch the switch 2 is definitely coming out next year I've heard from numerous sources so this is like the last gas last harah for the switch and I thought they did a great job of delivering some amazing content in the tail end of a of a platform and then the big franch like Mario Kart and 3D Mario and they obviously said that yeah Metroid sorry will be part of uh the launch titles for the switch 2 that's when like the real stuff happens so they're actually doing a good job of servicing the customers that they have for the switch in the last year of its cycle so yeah yeah the only thing I do want to mention going back to the online is there's one announcement they had that was relatively small but I thought was super interesting is that they're having your old Nintendo games that are going to have an online leaderboard which I've never seen before maybe one of you have seen them this but it honestly felt like they were looking at what content works for retro games like

Mario on Tik Tok figuring out how can they create more viral social content and two how can they start thinking of how to recreate an arcade feel in modern day today maybe I'll be wrong but I was if I was think if I was thinking about why they would start pushing this and I feel like they have to have some sort of long-term strategy around how they can take what works for them in the past to see how can they redefine the future of social retro arcade feeling when everyone is kind of home alone or just by themselves cool all right let's jump to our final topic with Phil on fortnite Epic has announced that the epic game store is coming to Japan's iOS store in 2025 so it's not just fortnite that's coming it's also going to be wrapped in a epic store that will sit on mobile and I think this is an interesting time to revisit what mobile meant to Epic and how they kind of screwed the pooch when it came to IOS and Android because the game was fairly adaptable to both of those platforms early on and I saw a lot of comments

that like oh you know Tim might just be a shrewd businessman he really knows what he's doing here by picking this fight but when you look at a lot of the leaked documents from the Epic V Apple trial you start to realize that mobile wasn't just a rounding error when it came to the impact on fortnite it actually was a significant share so this is the first graph we're looking at it's daily active users in North America it looks like this was pulled by some poor analyst in Tableau and the third most popular platform in North America in terms of Da is IOS and then it is switch and then it is PC and then on a distant distant last place Android now to be fair iOS is also a distant third both PlayStation and Xbox dominate this game but it certainly was not a rounding hour being the third most popular platform so they lost it looks like and and again this is from 2018 to 2019 so we're not looking at a lot of recent data here but they lost probably around 2 million da from not having this game available just to North America we look at Europe the the picture is a little bit different iOS isn't quite as popular PC starts to

become more popular but still when you combine iOS and you can find what they ended up doing for Android distribution it still is a decent portion of the game's da so like Tim actually made some real sacrifices by not Distributing this game and the other thing that's interesting is that there was some more leak documents suggesting that iOS was really good at bringing people into the franchise and they saw a lot of people going to other platforms but using iOS to download and kind of get into fortnite now I'm a little skeptical about some of those claims but but clearly I think it gets some level of attribution for bringing people into the platform so they needed to get this game back on track and it's not in a good place I think that's the thing I want to make clear here is it's actually a [ __ ] show right now in terms of PSU we started to get public data when they did fortnite creative and so we can measure Peak CCU like we do on Steam and you look at the most recent returns for the game it had its lowest PSU since October 2023 this game is not growing and it needs to grow for fortnite to win it needs to grow and the reason it is not growing growing is because they do not have monetization in the platform you cannot align incentives when people are

being paid time share because time share is correlated with the sales of Cosmetics but the correlation isn't as weak versus something that's more direct like for example ads we were talking about Turn Style monetization with B real you go on Instagram you're going to get a certain amount of Revenue you will generate for Instagram every hour because you're going to view a certain amount of ads when you play Candy Crash you're going to lose a certain amount of levels they don't have the same Turn Style that's set up here and when you think about Roblox they're able to provide hard currency sales with inside each of the individual playgrounds and you cannot do that in fortnite right now there are a lot of reasons you can't do that right now but until they set up that feature this game is not going to be able to grow because you're not going to be able to align creative incentives with epic's own incentives it's not all good in carry North Carolina right now what was interesting on that European chart and listen I know from you know being in the game industry forever that Xbox is not a big deal in Europe but to see peace above Xbox on da for fortnite during

that time frame was a little bit astounding I didn't realize it was that bad which again if you're Xbox which had an amazing amazing showcase right kudos for them for getting so much good press coming out of their Showcase from a couple weeks ago they have a lot of work to do in Europe oh my God I don't know if they can ever catch up oh no they're doomed in Europe Eric do you care to join us with your crocheting I know sorry I got all these gifts from my sister so I'm like looking through all this like chachy stuff sorry that well we'll let you get to your birthday we we we finished but do do you want to chime in on xbo Xbox's demise and inability to come back is that what you wanted to they're screwed but we'll see yeah I I just it was interesting to see a a chart but I'm going disagree I'm going to disagree on the fortnite thing for quickly I think they are still doing reasonably well actually I agree with what you're saying though in terms of like in order to grow the franchise they need to expand Beyond fortnite and the

way it's set up is not going to do that a particular a revenue basis if they're just doing cosmetic economies and just doing the sh you know you share of Engagement so they have a lot of work to do they haven't reoriented themselves as a platform despite all you know Tim being asked on Twitter so often like hey is fortnite a game or is it a platform and he keeps saying like ask that question a year and this is supposed to be their big shift is that they're start thinking themselves as platforms and yet I keep hearing all these brand deals I keep hearing about Lego we keep hearing about racing keep hearing about like these concert things we keep hearing about all the it just looks like stunts to me this feels like you know a franchise that's supported by stunts you need to build a platform you need to build tools and they have an aggressive road map that they published publicly but a lot of those features have started to slip and again I don't see Creator based monetization on there you need to get that they're not doing creat as far as I understand they're not doing Creator based monetization which I think is a big mistake but I will say that like the numbers did come out it was like I think it was was like maybe 15 or 20% of the revenues being driven by mobile at the time when it was on mobile

before they did this deal you know they sued apple and we did some research I actually did research with stanwan as a matter of fact back then and it was the gateway drug it was like the entry point for a lot of kids into the E ecosystem of fortnite and the switch so it just creates an on-ramp that's super valuable and so that they need to be on mobile right I mean that's that in order to grow the business and grow the market where my kids you know when Zach was seven that's what he was playing on his iPad he had the claw you know when you you know you play the shooters with the claw format he would play crossplatform with his friends on console and he would kick their ass with the claw like technique I don't know how he did it and so he actually he plays on PC now but he tried on my Xbox and he because he grew up on mobile he didn't like the console so now just went from iPad iPhone to PC so now he's a PC Gamer so he skipped

Xbox I wonder I should tell Xbox that by the way one more thing on fortnite is I watched the metallic so I'm a huge Metallica fan I've been I I'm a huge huge nerd so I watched the fortnite Metallica experience which was 10 minutes and I don't know I I think these musical collaborations have really lost it I mean I'm not a player but as someone watching it I'm like that's it really like this whole thing and you get in and you do this kind of silly thing and they butcher all the music like they're all the music's all cut up and it's like they're not really even performing I don't know am I a boomer chis is that what you're thinking in your head Jenza Boomer a little bit but I don't know I don't know anything about the Metallica event I knew that it was going on but I don't know any what was the reception of it at all well the fact that I haven't heard anything probably has indication that maybe it wasn't as successful compared to the one that they've done in the past but juice they're just they're drunk on hype juice

it's just there's always just these these highs these brand highs I think they're trying to find their feet on how to define what a platform is like they're doing all this experiment I think what was it the marshmallow concert I can't remember there was one rapper concert that was did Super well but I didn't hear anything about the Metallica One yeah only Boomers like me like Metallica all right actually they had a Resurgence with Master of Puppets in stranger things and that's how the Next Generation has discovered them and so they're long segment obviously was Master of Puppets in the thing okay thanks for hanging in there with us we will see all next week play us out with some Metallica yes you can go open your birthday presents now you did it you made it to the end of the episode as 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 fun slack group if you you have 5 years or more of games industry experience go to deconstructor of fund.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 our newsletter to get all the latest insights from the deconstructor of fund content creators thanks for listening [Music]