TWIG #321 AppLovin’s SHOCK Acquirer, Monster’s Gone WILD, and Guitar Hero’s $1B CORPSE

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sensor to.com that is sensor to.com game devs here at heroic clabs we know that great gameplay is what players love but integrating metagame features like challenges progression and rewards is crucial for retention and monetization but coding them is a tedious and timeconsuming process that's why top Studios have turned to hero from heroic clabs hero provides a complete Suite of battl tested metagame features that are quick to implement letting you spend more time on the core gameplay experience ready to ship fully featured engaging games check out hero today at heroic labs.com hey everyone and welcome to this weekend games 321 we're going to give you our game industry Insider takes on the top game news this week lot going on I'm Jen donaho I fill the marketing and Publishing role on this lovely podcast

today we have Phil black monetization SAR let's cook Eric Crest Ranter and chief I'm going to pull back a little bit this time because I think last time was a little bit Overkill a little heavy and welcome back we haven't had Laura in the house in a while so surprise appearance Laura taranto just hanging out doing some product doing hopefully some puzzle awesome all right so here's what we have for you today steam is cooking I'm channeling Phil we all guessed wrong on app loven's game division sale supercell changes in London they change on Squad Busters and apparently there are boats now Monster Hunter slays with 8 million units and they're on track to almost double that and then Guitar Hero makes a controversial comeback 10 years later and on mobile and with AI art leaving us to ponder their fall from

grace and the state of Music gam so can I just tell a very quick story so in my yoda tour hopefully I'm done I did UCLA the UCLA games group and in my presentation I tell the story about Littest Pet Shop which is a brand for eight-year-old little girls we sold like 15 million units of this at EA on the DS back in the day so I'm telling the story and I'm like does anyone like play this game and this woman in the back her name's Lily and she raises her hand and she's like this was my favorite game I played all of them I played and I just about like teared up and you know it it was that moment where you talk to somebody who loved the thing that you did and I think we just need to take a moment to realize that's why we all do this unless you're Crest and you just want to yell at people and and make money so make money and be funny that's it so it was really touching thanks to the UCLA crew for having me okay very quick shill two more weeks of this guys I promise we're almost done so here's

all the GDC stuff check the newsletter check slack in our events channel for all of the links apply to join I'm really sorry we can't get everybody in we'll try to do as much as we can but we want to make sure you have the opportunity to get in Sunday the beta hat pregame is at does anyone want to guess what our RSVP number is now at last year was like 200 so maybe like 250 good guess that might be the amount of people the restaurant can actually hold I think it can hold 300 we're at 700 thank you everybody for wanting to show up and come hang out with us well once I gave it the endorsement that it was the best event at GDC and I was looking forward to it I mean all bets were off well I Phil if you saw the curve I mean it for sure we can attribute you to that in the the doof MMP we're gonna have to have a special line to talk to Crest this going to be like a queue I know I can't wait to just stand you know 10 feet away from Crest watch

all of the PE I think I might have to get you security oh stop all right Monday is sensor Tower Tuesday is heroic labs and Convoy back on the list exola game night they confirmed they're doing it yet again I think this is the third or fourth year we've been partnering with them that's Tuesday March 18th 6 pm at GBC Wednesday is the dinner with the most amount of sponsors us newo Tik Tok apps sler and Griffin Thursday so this is the one let me just make this plea hang in there to the end come join us for a live recording of twig 7 pm at GDC nights at the muscone center we'd love to have you just be a part of this so come for that okay it's not really a correction but it's an update Crest you probably chime in on this if I get anything wrong here so the news broke when we were recording the podcast about app Lovin and the short seller story with the fuzzy panda bear whatever group so it

turns out there was another short seller that jumped into the mix called Culper research they also made a bunch of allegations you know the systematic exploitation of app permissions that enables advertisers themselves to forese speed silent backdoor app installations directly on their users phone I mean that sounds pretty harsh app love and Adam actually came out and did a blog post and they're like they denied everything they're like this is an overe exaggeration so just to let you know app was like nope investors are now pulling a Sherlock Holmes and looking into the accusations I read that like I think yesterday so the 12% stock decline looks to be around holding Chris any any updates from you on this you know I wish I'd looked into do this a little bit more and read through the report closer I would say as I said last week I think this business is just a dirty business generally speaking and so some of these things may be true but they're a little bit more exaggerated and the stock move has been reasonably dramatic but the

reality of it is the overall Market's kind of choppy as it is and again these are hedge fund hotels so people are trading in and out of this and and making money on the long short side because that's what you do with stocks like these it'll be a volatile stock it's not for the novice to be investing in these stocks I would just say generally speaking at your peril high risk high risk that's what Robin Hood tells me all right let's get into it so Phil you're gonna love this steam has now reached 40 million concurrently online users for the first time 12.6 million users are currently in game I think I pulled this yesterday 132 million Mau looks great I mean look at this has been the story for the last couple months or even last couple years right is they keep breaking their own records the only sobering moment is when you look at the number of users who are in game and online rather than just the number of users who are online the growth rate is not as extravagant for that which suggests to me that like you're getting a lot of the users that are coming coming in they might be

coming in for one or two titles but they're not repurchasing or engaging in live Services which is a little bit deflating don't get me wrong it's still growing it's still up but I would love to see those things be more tightly correlated in fact they're actually becoming more and more discor related the correlation is becoming weaker which is a little concerning but still it's still explosive growth just to be clear right it's being driven by big games like Wukong and now monster hunter is doing really well in Asia yeah we'll hit that later cool all right so let's go to the next couple of charts here according to Business Insider the actual purchaser of app 11's game division is triple dot I would have never in a millionaires picked them so I think Neil from mobile gamer do Biz pick this up they are selling them for 900 million but it is the the deal is for 500 million in cash and they're remaining 400 million in equity so there you go the buyer could also borrow 250 million to fund the deal

the big question I had when this news broke is where is the money coming from so I mean triple dot has been growing but it's mostly an ad-based platform so you know looking at IP isn't going to tell you anything so right now we're looking at downloads on the screen and you know they're fine you know they might be doing 100 150 million downloads per year but to spend a billion dollars it just it doesn't add up to me and I don't understand where this comes from and I guess Eric what is the ratio of income to debt that firms are comfortable taking on this feels like it'd be a highly leveraged acquisition I'm confused you know 600 million for the portfolio they do per year so like you're G to acquire this for 2x what these games make per year confused right yeah I'm at a loss here I don't triple Dot's really not that big at all like these numbers that we're looking here are for Apple 11's business not triple dots triple dots much smaller I pulled up these charts and I was like those games are not

triple dot so these are triple dots download games just for downloads yeah these are downloads the revenue is mice nuts like it's really really small because they're ad driven right yeah but who gives a [ __ ] about yeah ad driven garbage [ __ ] trash come on okay that's definitely wrong but okay I would say on the other side though the portfolio of app Loven is much stronger I mean it's doing 50 million a month you know that's a 600 million a year business awesome this is the point there's a huge difference between $50 million a a month versus what triple Dot's doing so it's like triple Dot's doing like a few million right according to Ceder Tower in iip yeah it could generate more Revenue but not significantly more certainly not more than 50 million right so in essence they're buying a bigger business right and I would assume very profitable business because the only way you can get debt on anything is if you have like solid cash flows so they must have some outside IDE deal outside money that's

getting involved in this but it seems a little bit risky because I don't know how stable this business will be or or even if they have the Personnel to run it right so ironically I just spoke to their ex Corp Dev guy Alex verbitsky who went off to be a partner at rain group in August of 2024 certainly some kind of quinky dink right there so I don't know I don't know what the plan is here of attack again it has not been officially announced this is again another rumor but seems legit at this stage and I had heard the same rumor a few days ago before this broke so anyway we'll see what this is all about it'll be interesting to see how they structure it what makes me surprised is like they released modern community and I thought that game actually had a super solid switcher great core engine it was definitely Leaps and Bounds above project MB and unfortunately it's all kind of grouped into this other so I don't think they saw the success they had hoped for something that was relatively a large

game that surprised me when I when I had to look at this chart I thought that would have had more effect on their portfolio overall which is unfortunate but is what it is okay yeah something to keep an eye on it looks like I mean at least if you're an have an ad specialty side to your business you're going to buy a group of games that leverage ads at least strategically that makes sense but I'd read somewhere too that they had only like $120 million to spend on m&a but purchases was 130,000 sorry it's not even Millions yeah no it's crazy right I mean like this is a very small business right and even if they have like a gajillion dollars of AD stuff it's not going to be even close to 50 million so I don't know yeah all right Chris do you want to do the next story about PlayStation this is a really quick one you know Sony's dropping its PlayStation VR2 price to $3.99 I think that's like $150 disc account or something no one

gives a [ __ ] [ __ ] right because they basically put this thing out to die this is a liquidation this is not an attempt to revitalize the market you know rip psvr2 Sony did you dirty you know amazing Hardware no software no support whatsoever VR is dead yet again I think this is like the third or fourth death of VR so is this literally what it looks like yeah it's actually a really good piece of Kit I've said this a million times like the quality is really really good they did an exceptional job on the building this thing but no one gives a [ __ ] you know VR is kind of done you know nobody wants to put a big ski goggle thing on their face it does not look like a VR kit I feel like yeah they either going snowboarding or they're they're going like scuba diving there's something else going on yeah yeah apple spents billions building their [ __ ] right that's now canell it's a silent fail too okay so let's go on to supercell again another kudos to Neil long from mobile gamer DPP is so here's

a little bit more on what's going on with supercell and space eight and some of this we've talked about before first space a update they had 30 staff that were laid off or did not accept new roles 70 staff have been offered new roles at supercell London is what they're calling it a dozen or so are moving to a new startup called off-road games this is where Chrome Valley customs in Fast Lane will live then the fins have taken over London right like so supercell London's new jam is the former ever Heyday and boom beach game lead the news follows on from former space AP lead Jonathan rolands appointment as Squad Busters GM suggesting supera London will play a big role in that game's future so you know I think we we thought about you know that London's going to basically be the place where a lot of the people who don't like the harsh finish winter want to live for me I was like what happened to beatstar this matters a little bit to our discussion later on on music games and and the country star game okay so I didn't realize that they were already

spun out but we we'll hit a little bit on music games later on that I don't know it's not quite like we can see why we spun them out to make sense so I have so many comments but nothing really positive I mean shocking yeah shocking I think at the end of the day like I think they built the wrong products I love those guys but like those products are just not big enough to make difference space or supercell space apape space apape okay they they don't make a big enough difference to their business I think they just went after the wrong things I mean I think the game was great but it just wasn't going to be big enough to matter to supercell and I don't think supercell did particularly good job of managing Studios so and this just as an aqua hire right this looks this looks as about as much as an aqua hire as you can possibly imagine right offload all the assets and none of them are sticking around it's literally just for the 70 head count 70 if you notice they spun out all the puzzle I mean even said that they are not supercell is not interested in any of the puzzle games that they had yeah like puzzle music any that's not part of either their current

portfolio of game super cell's current portfolio or anything that's going to be aligned to what they want to build like just feels like a cheaper way just to set up a London office right like oh somebody's already there so yep it feels like a real estate B no no hold on hold on they own space eight they already acquired space a now they're shutting it down and moving everyone to the London office this is a big like bye-bye space ape and the founders are gone that's what happened right yeah okay well when they bought them a while ago right yeah yeah and they built a couple games which didn't do well as much as people love beatstar it's not like lighting the world on fire they shut down yeah later I to see Chrome Valley Customs be on the downhill slide too that has not been doing well that was supposed to be a really exciting and explosive thesis it has not maintained run rate I think last time I looked it was sub 30 million run rate that looks like they stopped investment and like stopped UA though I mean that decline was strong and if I

remember correctly the initial acquisition was what 60 or S up to like 70% of supera owning space ape so I think this last bit was taking over the last 25 whatever percent they had remaining got it Okay who wants to do Forte I just put this into troll Eric Forte one of our closest you know podcast listeners uh it's firm a us-based web 3 tech company has acquired Seance a US based web 3 compliance tech company for an undisclosed sum and if you remember Forte raised 725 million dollar in a series B in November 21 we've heard nothing since I think November 21 about this company you know they're alive this is a heartbeat I don't know what it means it's good to see that 725 million is getting put to good use they can run this company on the [ __ ] 10year treasury interest on that money dude so you know they got time

they just put it in the bank that's their play no comment all right okay so mini clip has acquired the German hybrid casual Studio lesmore the maker of eat Venture and we are warriors for an undisclosed sum the deal was quietly done at the end of 2024 I love these guys I've been trying to write a check for them forever I think they're awesome what they did with the adventure and we are warriors was a ton of design Innovation wishing them the best and and hope they continue to grow and hopefully they're at least rich now that would be my My Hope for them cool yeah company to keep track of too I'm excited for what they'll come out with next all right before we oh we we were talking about Neil Long's article because he like kind of went deep into what was happening at supercell where everyone was going from space AE and all of a sudden this thing pops up and they were like supercell is teasing a new title called boat game it must be a working title and I was like what on Earth is this I only could find a trail it like it's super secretive small Alpha

Testing but Tred to get some information it was described as an Innovative player experience with strategic Naval battles exploration and multiplayer elements and some of the feature sets are character customization Loadout skill trees sailing mechanics Island exploration and multiplayer onf foot third person shooting elements that's as much as I got the trailer was super super vague was it did not give me any idea of the proper gameplay but maybe I was looking at the Long Trail I don't know Phil what did you see about it uh I've actually played it how did you play it are you like you're the VIP group Alpha I got I got into the alpha the key is not to use your deconstructor fun email um that's how I'm in the alpha for uh project rise well listeners actually don't know right now but Misha's offscreen yelling battle Bay repeatedly if you remember roio's ill- fated project this one I think is different than battle Bay for a number of reasons

it actually takes a lot from Moco which is the RPG that they've been testing for a while and if you actually remember a while back Ila in one of his letters talked about the need for supercell to get games into the hands of players faster even when they're a little bit rougher Paul Graham of course is famous for saying you know if you're not embarrassed to ship you ship too late and I think they've really taken that advice to heart and this is a much earlier game much earlier game than I think we've seen a lot of supercell games it definitely is again taking a lot of those Moco assets maybe the supercell engines flexing a little bit they have a Path of Exile styled skill Tre with a bunch of different nodes which is pretty interesting you're able to add gear to your boat and upgrade it you're able to add gear to your character and upgrade it the loop is kind of interesting what ends up happening is you spawn into a Social Hub you boat into these different shards or these worlds it's almost like a servered instance you explore The Shard you will find missions and you'll try to complete those missions while you're in The Shard when you complete a mission you'll get a chest you take the chest back back to your boat and then you go back to the

main Social Hub and you'll open the chest with the locksmith and you'll get some rewards very mm moish it's probably one of the more ambitious titles I've seen from supercell I think again the engine's really flexing here they've really been fascinated with more sync PVP onscreen virtual analog sticks in their last releases Squad Busters brawl Stars flood rush to some degree um they keep they keep moving in this direction which I find interesting they've kind of backed away from kind of the more tactical you know Clash Mini everdale to more real-time action which I found pretty interesting this is like a PC game this is like a Guild Wars game it's really bizarre it looks like it yeah it doesn't doesn't even seem to be belong in Mobile if you had told me this was super Sal I wouldn't have guessed to be honest I think what they're seeing especially with brawl stars because the brawl star audience is so young that the first device that I think a lot of younger people have is their mobile device right this is where they're doing their gaming at home right it's not just on the go I'm gaming at home and I'm

having longer sessions and so I think you're seeing more traditional experiences come into play I mean Roblox is the greatest example of this right and so this to me is them gearing around that generation it's like for Mobile's going to be your first device you're going to have more intensive real time cohesive experiences that you don't need to have three minutes it's not about filling the gaps anymore in your life I think that was the original free-to-play thesis right is that I'm on the elevator I'm playing Candy Crush I'm on the train I'm playing merge mansion whatever it may be it's filling the dead space in your life and I think this is much different this much different approach I don't know if this text or is your name it says bod mcbo faces speedier cousin it was born to be fast it'll do anything its cousin can do but faster the IP is kind of fun you know it's a little wacky I mean I think the I think the IP is gonna go over I think the IP was pretty last minute but that's it's kind of funny I mean that's very on brand for them the playful funny quirky style very cartoony it's not set in The

Clash universe that's the other thing I'd point out it's good to see them expand characters right correct I'm going to say this I don't know why I sit here and try not to bag on supercell but this game just is is a complete mismatch of markets right so multiplayer MMO style games where you're leveling up characters is not the right match for the Western markets like that's does well in Japan Korea that doesn't do well here this like just Roblox seems to do pretty well not this is not Roblox this has a similar ux you're causing the problem by suggesting that Roblox is similar to this it's not right Roblox is completely different experience for a different audience correct the similarity is that about 80% of roblox's audience is on mobile that's where the similarities end in in my opinion here I'm only referring to the uxx of Roblox where you're using 3D worlds and 3D space to move move between different locations rather than

menu based interaction it's the only analogy of making the Roblox nothing else that's that's not not the analogy I would make it's going to have some challenges getting any type of scale here particularly monetization wise interesting to see what their monetization strategy is going to be if it's just like cosmetic [ __ ] like it's no there there's real power score here like the whole game is based around power score the whole game is geared around it this is this is an RPG this has this is obious RPGs are aren't they like super super challenged right now yeah just look at MMOs forget RPGs collection based like upgrade Evo games are all the do extremely well but every other RPG like the MMO style RPGs are disaster like anybody can look at comps and see that this game is not well suited for the current market you have to believe like some like real leap of faith that tastes are going to change in this Western Market which Chase s changed for the last like 10 years you know it's really quite bizarre well let's keep going yeah I thought you know

it's it's early right now we'll have more data next week but the split faction reviews are coming in and they are coming in hot and if you're not familiar with this game this is the new title from hazelight which has done a lot of co-op games most almost exclusively co-op games if you remember it takes two was their last title and Joseph feris yeah it was it was an absolutely great game unravel also a great game they just have made Banger after Banger it's embarrassing how good they've been at this also Swedish Studio naturally and one of the things that was pretty interesting in one of the podcasts he revealed is that of the 23 million sales for it takes two 50% of them originated in China which I was pretty shocked to see and so let's see if split fiction on when it's on PC is able to Garner a large Chinese share Fable delayed to 2026 not a shocker not really quite sure if Microsoft can make games anymore but we'll see if they ever get this thing out right and when I say Microsoft I mean Studios that they have not acquired so anyway yeah we'll see I'm kind of excited Like Fable is an old school like

RPG that they just have not been good at like executing against but yeah we'll see how they can pull it off if I remember the trailer got really negative reviews maybe that plays into it I don't remember exactly what it was I think the look at some of the characters I mean look at the end of the day Microsoft makes lots of mistakes and one of their biggest mistakes is they don't really know how to manage Studios which is evident by what they did to Halo the only Studio actually done quite well is Forza right which seems to execute pretty well but not Bethesda Bethesda is an own Studio that they their own entity right okay I'm talking about their internal Studios that they've acquired before Bethesda basically pre Bethesda pre Activision all right Monster Hunter as a little background I was actually explaining this to my son Monster Hunter has always been a very very n franchise historically right lot very Japanese but the last game that they did Monster Hunter Wilds the last one that they did not

Wilds the one before that world was world yeah so that game like broke through every barrier because basically they created a much more approachable game for kind of the western audiences was kind of the generic thing and more approachable combat and and systems Etc so that game just kind of broke through this game is actually breaking through even further it seems because they're already kind of at this insane pace the quality of the game is really high the gameplay is far more approachable and it actually kind of the gameplay itself differs depending on what kind of weapons you're using so anyway it it feels it can feel evidently a lot like alen ring at times so anyway yeah this game looks like it's crushing it and then I looked at the data that Mr Philip provide and what's really interesting is that China is a big part of this mix which that also makes sense why it's blowing up the way it is so not only are they kind of getting the big fans in the west but they're also expanding beyond

the Western audience and going into China because China is representing 30% almost 30% of the business this is for Wilds yeah and remember we're just looking at Steam and this is from our partners at video game insights that's true the share of China is actually decreased in Wilds from World from 38% to around 28% the US mix is actually a lot stronger which I think tracks with the narrative you were mentioning Eric is like I think there's a Chinese story which I think raises the absolute numbers based on steam's growth that we're looking at here but the relative mix has shifted actually more Western again we don't have a Time series here so we don't know how this changes like this mix could change over time but it just all looks good yeah no it was amazing success for Capcom and a great franchise I mean look at the end of the day this is like a battle of the big type thing where these huge franchises are coming out and selling Beyond everyone's expectations but the amount of money that was put into something like this is like four years like 400

500 million like minimum you know slave labor and whatever else they're at right it's pretty crazy like the type of games that are what's required for investment these type of games is they're huge games and it's kind of taking over the world right now but this is kind of where we're at the power of Ip the power of franchise the power of what players know it's easier to get them and cheaper to get them to purchase the next in the series with the market being the way it is everyone's retreating to the known franchises yeah the last thing I want to say is like sometimes these games actually don't do as well and I've talked about this on the podcast before things like Division and division 2 Star Wars and Star Wars 2 the action games Destiny Destiny 2 right they try these games they don't like them but if if you actually improve upon the core gameplay and make it even more approachable and easier to get into and and do a great job of marketing the game and why it's different and and how it's Appeals then there are possibilities like it

seemingly like this is they're going to grow this franchise version after version so yeah before we finish Monster Hunter didn't give the Top Line 500 million gross revenue 8 million units sold likely 15 million units in 12 months in a 90 Metacritic game I thought that was good stats to kind of put in [Music] there Step into the future of game monetization with exola the premier partner for game developers seeking to expand their in Revenue exela 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 customize secure payment architecture and dedicated support team exola empowering game developers to achieve Global 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 appsflyer the leader in Mobile attribution and marketing analytics that allows you to measure the full potential of your marketing efforts making every ad dollar work 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 flyer where your app's potential meets performance Disney step is out in Japan baby and it is a location-based smart game that lets players go around their real life surroundings on a treasure hunt with familiar Disney characters obvious it's free to play with IEP you can customize your character outfits costumes from different Disney characters and movies the game had half a million pre-registrations started to pull up the numbers for Japan location based games looking at two things one was Pikmin Bloom and the other was Monster Hunter now as we know like Monster Hunter now

does pretty well it's one of like the only successes That Neon has had Pikmin Bloom actually isn't awful Pikman has maintained a top 50 spot on the games chart which I was pretty surprised by while Monster Hunter now's performance has been a lot more anemic and when you look at the revenue side of course like Monster Hunter now is crushing it I you know I wonder if Nintendo put any monetization restrictions but they have all the traditional Squad RPG mechanics so I don't know maybe maybe there's a life for Disney step maybe there's there's something that can happen here Eric's Eric's very skeptical don't worry I'm skeptical too this is a fun idea I don't know Jen always talks about the idea that Disney IP appeals too young so it looks like this one's DOA every time we talk about this Disney is one of the few IPS that can stretch to every consumer age bracket and demographic especially in Japan Disney is revered by everybody if there's any place this is going to work it's going to be Japan and that's basically it yeah I mean between these all these games Japan is like 65% of the revenue so yeah I would say

that yeah it's a uniquely Japanese thing maybe no if I I looked at the games by country for their revenue the last time I checked full disclosure it's been a little bit the majority of these games they're getting their revenue from Japan to be clear Disney step is not out anywhere but Japan yet so I'm not yes I'm thinking like Pikman Bloom I don't know but paradot I haven't looked at that game in a while but the monster hunter hunting whatever like I think it's difficult when you compare like niantic's new IP versus Disney which is just like you know off the chain but is there any news on the scopely Niantic yeah we haven't heard anything I mean my heads space goes to these things take time but also strategic leak I don't know is there anything to that theory Eric oh GDC like a big announcement on GC like the back I don't know any Anything could happen you know sometimes people like to leak information based on like the purchase price you're trying to send a signal to other buyers you're

trying to I mean there's a lot of way you can use PR right to get certain outcomes and I was just surprised this wasn't closed faster since the news broke or hasn't been even now oh sorry actually I do have an update I actually looked into this a little bit I think the general notion is that this is not a real Financial buy see see now scop is going to hate me for this there's no reason to buy this for $3.5 billion like that's Insanity right given the revenue run rate and their features so a few people that I've spoken to basically think that it's more of a vanity play right like where they buy an IP like this and this gives them credibility right and this is a very very like Old School Middle East type thing and I know people don't like that but like like when I was in Saudi they built like a 60 story hotel in the middle of [ __ ] desert right that was never ever going to be built like it was like $600 million or some insane amount of money to build this thing that's what this kind of feels like where it's just more like look I have a huge Nintendo

franchises and we own this thing so the counter to this is a lot of people that are involved with this stuff that's going on with Savvy and the Saudis in general are really really hardcore Gamers and and really into the Weeds on this stuff which I think is totally true the thing is that like when you think about owning an asset like this that's like your the biggest feather in your cap you know peacocking your ownership type thing so I think there's some of that going on to be honest and if I were to guess like the financial people at scopely were probably not all that interested in this thing but like they get trumped by the money money men you know so inter that's kind of my guess but I don't know [ __ ] this is all pure speculation from people in the industry and since we don't know [ __ ] all because no one's announcing anything then we are free to speculate got it Jen do you remember when the Saudi Prince sent their executive assistant because they had a problem with WWE champions to the scopely office in Los Angeles and demand the bug be fixed I do not I was perhaps

not the head of marketing on that game when that happened holy I do know that we had whales in that region that we would Monitor and take care of in a VIP fashion but I don't remember that I've heard other stories around just you know League of Legends and they play other you know hardcore games you know Mishka tells us a lot of those stories too which like listen I am happy to hear that the folks that want to invest in our industry believe in the products I mean that's a nice thing to hear you know they're not just fair weather like I'm going to throw money into something I don't really care about and kind of drop out of like they're Gamers and they love these games and these products and that's why they are doing a lot of investing yeah that's the whole point like I'm getting constant calls these days about people looking for work right I I it's it's really kind of really sad right and I say the one thing you can be sure about is that scopely is going to be a great place to work for a long [ __ ] time right because these guys are in to win it right I might talk [ __ ] about why they do things that they they

doing but they're not going anywhere right and if I were anywhere in the industry I would want to be at places like scopely so I'll take it back I'll take back my criticism but yeah because I think you're right they love this industry this is part of what they want the kingdom to be doing and so like they're just going to continue to invest and build [ __ ] you know so good for them I would also say that they're going Triple A I mean we've seen all of their job postings about AAA games you know it's fair L not public but public so I mean they're only going bigger with what they're doing you you you want me to speculate on Ubisoft again I love when you well you already said it you thought scop Le was gonna try to buy Ubisoft or something they should right they sale it's like on fire sale dude this is like bargain dude yeah no I mean scop is what I think 2500 3,000 people you know ballooning to was Ubisoft 16 19 something like that yeah could be fun that's a big deal all right so speaking

of other big companies did you guys play rock band or Guitar Hero did you have the 15 guitars in your living room like I dids playing now oh my God he's pulling it out everybody performance no they're you can buy them on [ __ ] Best Buy dude they're actually really well made now and you can boot up the old rock band my kids just spent hundreds of dollars getting this thing going but they're actually playing it so that's it was totally oh my God that's amazing I that that looked so much better than the little dinky one I had oh no this thing in 200 it it doesn't look like a Fisher Price Toy no amazing first first sitation definitely did Eric on Dragon Force when I was at EA we did this you know You' always go to Barcelona or whatever for the European marketing Summit and they bought out this bar and they put Rock Band on stage and each of your teams would dress up and go and perform a song in front of everyone and it was like the first time on my life I was like oh my God this is what a rock star feels like we're playing Bon Joy

like wanted Dead or Alive everyone's like I was like this okay anyway let's get to the story so Activision has announced Guitar Hero mobile the last iteration of the franchise was 10 years ago it just makes me feel old when we say that I was struck more by the challenge of doing music games on mobile especially given space Apes bear that we just talked about since that didn't make the cut into the supercell takeover you know I have some data coming up about you know probably why that is so the world was a little bit more pissed off about the fact that the art in the social post was apparently AI so I took a look at it oof yeah it's it's it's like really really bad AI the notes are the wrong colors there are multiple colors on each of the lanes it shows five Lanes which you know it was kind of in the advanced mode of Guitar Hero but on mobile like very few games actually use that many lanes you know the colors were all wrong harmonics just must be so

so so sad so dear marketers I love AI I use it all the time but I don't use it in public assets and if you do you know geez make sure that you have 20 people review this thing before it goes out because I thought this was April Fool's Day I mean GH and then look it's like the same pose of the you know people on this it just makes me cry seeing this okay so the bigger issue music games don't make any kind of money and I can't imagine this is what Activision is looking for so I'm super confused this genre is very admon I mean that's why beatstar actually had to shift its entire strategy to go more admon you know that's why the amanotes the magic tiles games do really well because it's all admon I didn't think this is something Activision really wanted to get their hands dirty with I don't think about Activision as an admon driven company like we were just talking about with triple dot or the voodoo or the other folks so I pull T1 last 12 months ranked by Revenue Hatsune Miku is the

Japanese game so these games crush it in Japan I think everybody knows that they were number one with a whopping 10 million IAP a year beatstar was six million a year country star was 1.3 million this is IAP okay CR to your earlier point about ads being more but not that much more we can see why these games just kind of struggle on that front so I love this brand we just talked about it Crest I'm I'm waiting do do I hear it let's let's hear it totally mice nuts I don't know why they're bothering but yeah I mean it doesn't really seem to fit with a freet to- play business model but you know maybe they have something creative in mind to to to build it out but yeah I mean Guitar Hero Rock Band were really one of the last Innovative things that's happened in this whole business so so long ago with my my startup most recently we looked at a lot of music

licensing music games is incredibly expensive yeah the complexity around it though is that there's no like unifying body like the NFL and the NFL players Association so you're doing deals for individual [ __ ] songs you know sometimes or all the different record labels right and that gets prohibitively expensive because that's when the minimum guarantees Can Eat You Alive right because you're doing MGS for everybody and not to mention licensing fees for every everyone the negotiations were pay in the ass and so part of the reason besides like General fatigue from the consumer was that they ran out of [ __ ] music right there's only so many songs that really can get you up and moving and plucking a [ __ ] plastic guitar right it's like they ran out of music right and they actually oversaturated the market which is a lot of people were saying is they just tried to release it too fast because they're competing against rock band so anyway yeah I mean if you look at it like they've done every major song within the first like two or three years so they

were just kind of like scrambling to find other stuff and that kind of ultimately led to demise you know but plus consumers got bored of having yeah plastic [ __ ] all over their house plastic [ __ ] everywhere so on music licensing you have the label and the publisher so you have to do two different deals and now in today's world many of the music folks will make you do a blanket deal so it's kind of like old school cable where you have to pay a lot of money and only use like 10% of the channels that you watch it's it's the same thing with music and then what happened was a number of the artists would not agree to appear in a game that had other artists in it and so that's why they started to do solo artists I actually remember specifically and I could be wrong and anybody who's was at harmonics or whatever at the time when they did the Metallica thing that was what the end of it right they they lost so much [ __ ] money on that particular skew not because Metallica is a bad band we love Metallica but because of all the fees and and guarantees and many manufacturing like that supposedly was the straw that broke camel's back yeah I

think that was one of them and I am a huge Metallica fan and so I actually had a call with the head of the Guitar Hero franchise because I was trying to learn about music for the game I was working on and the nail in the coffin was this topic just music licensing would made it so incredibly incredibly difficult Phil what else did you have on this well I'm first of all I'm just confused that you would give this to Activision rather than King I don't know how like crash Bandicoot comes out first to like send over to King and not send over this feels like a more obvious fit we also had taptap Revenge 20 years ago so I don't understand why we're Reinventing this there's also have been like other Guitar Hero games so I just I want to see the corporate strategy slide that argues for this if one exists on how you like position this I think there's a separate very interesting story about why Guitar Hero and rock band died because not only did they die they died basically overnight between 2008 and 2009 there was huge drop in revenue and this Fall From Grace is [ __ ] insane right because in 2008 the music genre

had become the second most popular genre in the United States behind action and half of the players were female incredible right and it's height in 2008 music games were about 18% of the video game market so music games were absolutely killing it I think we all remember rock band and Guitar Hero I mean even if you go back and like watch the office you remember there's a party at Jim's house they're playing Rock Band it was a part of Pop Culture right it was a part of mainstream and the question is like why did it die and I think part of the explanation that Eric gave like hey you got all this plastic [ __ ] around your house what a waste of of space this isn't going to last long I I would agree that's part of it but I think people forget that 2008 is also when you have the app store and you have freeto play come out and especially with such a strong female share I would argue that free to play killed music games I don't actually think it was any of the plastic [ __ ] I would free to play I knowre come on get out of here are you kidding I totally disagree with that people have plastic [ __ ] all over their house they collect figurines they collect old consoles they everything it's fatigue not to mention

2008 was the Great Recession too like who's going to go out and buy this [ __ ] plastic guitars when the whole [ __ ] world is collapsing actually it's they're gonna play freeo playay games right so this also coincided with retail because of the recession retail was getting rid of the Shelf space in the video game aisle because that stuff took up so much space so retailers are basically the ones that killed this and said we don't have room for all of your [ __ ] anymore oh well they have room for DJ Hero much smaller I don't know you only can play the same song so many times and then at the cost of having to buy all the DLC packs or all the individual songs starts to feel old really quick I'm thinking to beat saber played a lot of beat saber really liked it I know it's VR and not this different slightly different that's also premium that's it's also premium but if every time I wanted to play something new I had to buy a full new pack pack all right guys we have to wrap it here thanks everyone and see you next week all right bye guys you did it you made it to the end of the episode as a fan of

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