TWIG #331 Supercell’s Second Shot, Triple Dot’s Power Move, Microsoft's Strategic Shift

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do everything from market research to go to market strategies to live ops optimization and due diligence. We're trusted by some of the most beloved game development companies, makers of tools and tech, as well as some of the most renowned investors. Now if you are building, launching or buying, don't do it alone. Do it with us. Connect by emailing to consulting deconstructorof [Music] fun.com. Hello everyone and welcome to Deconstructor Fun this week in games 331 where we do game industry news and there's only three of us to do the news today. It'll be fun and then Mishka's going to [ __ ] on Phil for something with squad busters. We'll get there. So, hi, I'm Jen Dano. I fill the marketing and publishing role on the podcast. And today we have Eric Crest, strategy investing. I know Phil usually goes first.

Mitch Kov. I'll be the the founder whisperer and the product guy today. I know. I can't wait. Gh. Really? Okay. So, here's what we're talking about today. Did you know that there's a video game hall of fame? There is. And four new games were entrance this week. Apploving Games portfolio sale finally went through and we will let you know the final amount. Squadbusters gets a major overhaul. Is it enough to revitalize it? This is, you know, I can't wait to hear Mishka's opinion. Oh boy, here we go. Nintendo sandbag the Switch 2 pre-orders. We're going to revisit all of the console price increases with all of the Epic news. We actually didn't really get to chat about that. So, we're going to revisit that one. First is I want to do a hobby update. you know, because we need banter. I think many of you know that my wife was rebuilding a 1974 BMW. I forgot to tell everyone that she sold it. And so, here's a quick video of her name is Lisel because she's well, she's German,

but but you know, she's Austrian. She's actually not. She's petrol. She's petrol. And so, she rebuilt the whole thing from scratch. It took a year. Oh, wow. and it's this tiniest little thing. And she was all excited for it and then realized in Los Angeles if you have a tiny little car up against big SUVs, you're going to get your ass kicked with no airbag or brakes. Proper brakes. Actually, she's got racing brakes on this thing. It's insane. So, yeah. By the way, the BMW 2002 was my first car. I know. I know. I love that car. It was fun. I wanted to do a whole YouTube thing of her maker and influencer and she was not having that. So, we're on to the next hobby, which is saltwater fish tanks. Our current saltwater fish tank, the seams are breaking because stupid red sea. So, here's a picture of what is in my garage. And the two giant components of

this, you have to get like the bottom and the top. This is the bottom. We're just looking at pictures. What's in my garage? So anyway, check back with us. I'll give you progress on the saltwater fish tank. That's the new hobby that I fund like Morris Morates funds failing VCs or great VCs, long-term investments. I mean, dude, have you guys ever heard of pickle ball? What's up with these like what is the money pit type things that you guys are doing? These hobbies that require insane amounts of investment, dude, you can grab a racket and a couple balls and go [ __ ] out on the court and you're done, right? Instead, you're spending thousands and thousands of dollars of refurbishing cars and [ __ ] sea water. Oh my lord. The weather is beautiful. You are like, you could you could do whatever. You live by the beach, too. I know. I know. We do. Uh, pickle ball would probably cost us thousands in medical expenses. As someone who has had six knee surgeries from all of my soccer throughout my whole life, it is

difficult. Yeah. Lots of knee surgeries. There's an ACL and everything. Yeah, I know. Okay. Well, yeah. Anyway, so that's me. Uh my uh weekly update of Dream Games ridiculous TV campaign. So, here it goes. For the last 28 days, downloads are up 400%. Yay. Yay. Revenue is up 33%. $3.2 million of incremental revenue. Right. Assuming a $50 million campaign, we are now at a 30-day rorowaz of 6%. Yay. [Laughter] And of course, this doesn't include any UA spend that they're blatantly doing to actually make real revenue, right? And to actually do real user acquisition during this time frame. So, we will keep you posted. It looks like this TDAG campaign is starting to come to an end after 30 days. So, we may not have to track it anymore, but this is by far the worst investment you could make as a game publisher in advertising, just so you know. And then the irony is that of

course the PR machine keeps going, right? They don't stop, not for a moment, right? Pocket Gamer, which is clearly in the pockets of all PR departments in the space. They are ridiculous chill for corporate PR. They wrote some stupid article about them surpassing hund00 million kind of like implying that the TV campaign sheld them to this. But in the actual report, it says that they are only up 6% month overmonth in May, which is kind of an indicator of how bad this campaign has been for them. So anyway, you can read that at your leisure at mobile gamer or pocket gamer.biz. I also had a chance to catch up with Mike Quigley after calling him a corruptor of youth. So yeah, Quigs probably did not want to hear that from you. No, he's a good sport. um his old move to price picks was orchestrated before the transaction. He was the head of marketing CMO at Niantic on Yeah. So

just and we worked with him at EA. Timing got kind of messed up, but the but it was all kind of part of the plan. So no big deal there. I just wanted to get understanding of that. I actually the honest truth is I'm like why in the [ __ ] are you still working? My first question to him like what the [ __ ] I mean how much more money do you need and like why are you like putting yourself into these positions? I I I never ceased to amaze me some of these people that just keep going and going, you know. Yeah. But anyway, he is like that type of person and got to respect that, I guess. He is clearly very excited about prize picks and where they are. And I've been doing some relatively deep research in this space for a little bit for some clients. And it's a huge opportunity, right, in mobile like and if we talk about the Bing Gordon thing where he's Yeah. leverage your skill sets and product management and all these different things into non-gaming apps. This is like one of those type of opportunities is this type of thing. So, if you are comfortable or at least more comfortable with gambling than I am, then it's definitely somewhere that you should really consider. Right now, it's

absolutely huge land grab for consumers in the space just to try to capture as many of them as possible. Most of the companies, which is not prize picks, is going after real sports gambling. But what I did find out was that price fix is not going after that market. They are more going after the predictive markets like Robin Hood, Poly Market, Kalshi. So it's a little less diabolical in my view, but it's also still training people on how and children how to gamble, right? So like still not great, but nonetheless, huge opportunities in this market. It's growing like crazy, like 10 to 15% a year. And when things get legalized, you know, all bets are off in terms of where this thing will go. Pun. It was it was a cool conversation. I'm glad I got to chat with them. What do they call these price pick gaps? Like we have I gaming which is real money casino. Yeah, it's predictive markets. Yeah, predictive markets. Interesting. So that's like DraftKings and others are the same, right? No, no, no. DraftKings and those type of things are gambling.

Like they are basically going after the land grab of finding as many whales as possible that will get into real money gambling. So are they building out these type of predictive markets? Yes. the same type of games as what Poly Market, Robin Hood, and Price Pix have. However, their ultimate goal and their main business is actually like real money gambling on sports and whatever else they can do, you know, so online. Yeah, predicted markets is like everything outside of sports. So, you know, in Robin Hood, you could have bet on the election, you know, back in the day. Anyone can put something up, right? Like, it's crazy. I mean you can game you basically can bet on anything. Bet on anything but Poly Market is not allowed in the US currently if I remember correctly. Technically yes technically yes you would have to set up like an account outside of the US to allow that. Interesting. I'll check it out but those are US apps so I don't know. So I have to always ask cuz I Poly Market isn't actually Poly Market is

yeah is outside. Yeah Poly Market. All right. A lot of people were betting on the election. We're using poly market and some workarounds. So, oh interesting. But anyway, total space is huge. It's definitely an opportunity for game people if if you know the venture capitalists are no longer interested. They are interested in this. I had so many jokes on on the elections. But let's move on forward. Uh so about the about the Greece because I was talking a now I have to mention this again because I had to talk about possibly we're moving to Greece. We're going again looking at schools and whatnot. And then I I forget that there's people listening to this show and actually people also in Finland. So I'm like randomly in a store like this like really good desire like hey uh like Greece so you guys are moving and like so so this is like turning into reality. And just to be clear to all the fins, this is not my idea. This is my wife. My wife is this boss lady that just decided that she hates the weather and she doesn't like

it anymore and she wants to move. And she decided we're going to Greece and I'm like, I guess we're going to Greece. So that's that's uh that's that's my life. Now I need to meet her. It's the other woman in your life that tells you what to do besides me. I'll give you another example. Yesterday I was recording like I had a podcast and it was for the evening and you know it was like 9:00 p.m. when the kids go to bed. I'm like I don't want to record a podcast. I was and I told my wife I was like listen got a podcast is nine I'm like I don't know should I just message and can't do it she's like that's your job and I was like all right like she's a VP at a tech company so like I I thought I'll get some you know like oh it's okay honey just come here let's watch Netflix I love that she gave you the suck it talk. I love that. And she only said, "That's your job." And I was like, "Yeah, I'll be in the garage recording. See you." Oh, that's awesome. Well, now

let's do your job a bit more and show for us. Go for it. All right. Let's go to the games and showing stuff. So, we had two podcasts actually this week. First one was more of like a career story. It was Justine McFarland, who is a GM at Cyp. And basically, the episode is called Howy went from a 3D artist to a GM of a billion-dollar game. So, if you're interested, that is a good title. So, last week we were giving you [ __ ] for chat GPT clickbait. This is an interesting title. I like it. I got messages from like art directors like, "Oh, this is can you introduce me to Justin?" Cuz finally, one of us is in on the business side of things. But yeah, it's it's a good conversation. But it starts with actually it's interesting podcast cuz he we started off with him essentially moving all the operation back from Austin. And so he had to basically caught the awesome operations and it was pretty interesting. But anyways, Iowa like in Iowa Iowa in the state of Iowa there's a small town no demo. Anyways, listen to the podcast

but that's it's a hard decision of like essentially getting everybody to the office and he wanted to be in Iowa and and uh Cedar Falls. Cedar Falls. Jesus Christ. Anyway, tough tough for people to say, you know what guys, either we have to part ways or you come to Cedar Falls and they were in Austin. So anyways, we did actually publish today why everyone wants to be the next Misplay. Do you like that title? That's good. That's good. That's pretty okay. So I mean we talk about rewarded at, you know, ads all the time. Misplay is one of the leaders. So Okay. Approve. Approved. Approved. It's because like I've been seeing for two years I've been seeing pitches how everybody is the next Misplay. And essentially, it was great to have Misplay on the podcast to ask them, why does everybody else want to be the next Misplay? Did you Did you guys talk about the scalability issue with this thing on the podcast? I haven't got a chance to listen to it. I'm not sure. We did talk about it. We do talk about a lot their strategy of how methodically they're moving and now I'm not sure cuz you know how it is. I don't know. We we

do talk about their strategy, but I'm not sure about the scalability. Essentially, I'll listen to it and maybe we'll talk about it next week. It's a short one, but in the essence like the amount of traffic we do talk about ask them like how much traffic can I get? Can I scale my game through this? They're like well no like we are a small channel but we focus on high LTV retain users. It's quality over quantity and they also are currently still on very limited markets. So they are on tier one markets like Japan, Korea, US, France, Germany. So I think they had eight countries and only on play but again I think they have a big announcement. So I don't know. All right. Well, connect me. So, so they're a sniper, not a shotgun in the UA world, which is it can serve a purpose, but you know, Chris, everything we've always It's difficult to scale on that channel. Yeah, mostly. Well, it's better ROI than than uh than getting 10 celebrities. I would assume with the 10 celebrities. Oh god. Take note, you kingdom. Well, I'm sure. No, they use it. They use it. The Dream is actually on on their on

misplaced front page. So, just to be clear, Dream is a fantastic company. They use all the channels. I know. I've actually been seeing the Royal Kingdom TV ads. I'm playing a lot of hole all in hole and I'm playing a lot of other games just to watch ads. I know it's crazy. So, but I've been seeing Jimmy Fallon and a lot of the TV campaign creative inside of UA just 6% real, you know, that's, you know, for the stars. This is actually a very timely conversation because at MAU next week I am doing a keynote interview with Scopely CMO Ben Webb on the untold story of how Monopoly go did the go to market plan right so very interesting so Wednesday at 8:30 if you're at MAU in Vegas come on I'm going to have to skip next week's pod because I'm very busy recording with Ben we'll release the video and the audio probably a week or two weeks after they're going to give us the recordings that's great you can hear everything One of the topics that we will be discussing is measurement and how do you measure

these campaigns? What do you look at? How do you determine success? So folks, I will come back and report on how Scopely thinks about that. Please ask him about the TV campaign after the fact and just really if he starts spouting some [ __ ] metrics, please call him out on it, right? Because the revenue continued to deteriorate after the TV campaign, right? So it's like I would love to hear how he pitches that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you will hear it once we do the recording and we'll have it here. Okay. So, also I'll be on the Thursday of next week, we're going to have a little hangout in the kind of the central plaza area of MAU at 2:20. So, it's just a place for game folks to come and hang out and network and, you know, a place to meet other gaming folks. I'm all about networking and getting people together. So 2:20 to 3 in the MAU Plaza and then we're almost full already for the June 10th off thereord event that we're doing with Neil at mobilegamer.biz. You're going to be

there. Very excited. Thank you. Ticket has been booked. And I'm going to probably have to book a, you know, some sort of cage match with you and Morates because Morris will be there. He's the kindest. You know, we love him and maybe it's like rock paper scissor or something. Laura is actually gonna come down from Seattle. Adam is in town but has to work. I'm like half of the company that you work for is coming to this event. Perhaps you can stop by. Well, that's why he has to work [Laughter] cuz all right headlines. I thought this was a little bit interesting. you know, okay, boomers, it's time to remember games from our childhood or for many of the listeners, games that they've only seen really, you know, funny memes about. So, four more games have been inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame. It's called the Strong National Museum of Play. They announced on Thursday Williams Electronics Defender,

Rar's Golden Eye 007, ID Softwar's Quake, and Bandai's Tamagotchi. These are the four games that made it in. They were judged on four metrics. Icon status, longevity, geographical reach and influence. I guess they started this in 2015. 49 games have been inducted to the Hall of Fame. Last year it was Asteroids Mist, Resident Evil Ultima, and Sim City. I was in the toy industry actually when the Tamagotchi came out. And I mean it was such an incredible fad. And I think it was the game that actually created the appointment mechanics. If you remember, you like had to go and get this thing and feed your little Tamagotchi or it would literally die and this whole thing that you bought would just be a waste. And so years and years after I was rushing home to harvest my strawberries in Farmville. So I don't know. I think this might have been the first one. Do you guys have a favorite among the bunch of Tamagotchis?

No, like of the group. Of the group. I mean, Cres, I think you were at EA as I was, you know, around the Golden Eye time when people were like, "Oh, Golden Eye." It's like all anyone could talk about at EA. Is there a favorite among the bunch for you guys? See, for me, like Golden Eye was definitely a marquee moment for the industry, but the game itself was [ __ ] hard. It was like, it wasn't fun, right? It was like it was a shooter on console, but it was still like they didn't have the dual analog. For me personally, Quake has always been like the the de facto. That's what got me into shooters in the beginning. Yeah, obviously Doom, but then Quake was just like that [ __ ] visceral like just insane like Twitch 101 706. I think it was 101 at the time I came that was an amazing game. It was the Brown game. Like I remember was so brown and quite I think I love Sim City. I remember probably playing Sim City first on NES. I think that was Yeah. But Resident Evil was another one. I remember being like [ __ ] like seven or eight year old. We

were so afraid with my friend just playing like the two of us. We're like do a head shot, do this and then when the the dog comes through the window, that kind of stuff. So there are definitely some memories around that. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Doom and Wolfenstein were my college buddies would do a lot of that and then I had friends, you know, that did land parties when I was in high school. like it was really I don't know like all the way back and then you know like I had my little Apple 2 plus and I was like oo ooh look at wizardry hopefully wizardry will make it in there one day. All right so Mishka you want to take triple dot? Chris can take it. He's uh I think this deal is closed. Triple Dot has acquired apploven's the entire mobile game business for 800 million bucks. They basically get 10 studios including Project Makeover, Hexasort, Wordscapes, and then obviously the machine zone stuff under the umbrella appending regulatory rule, but that should not be an issue. So to reiterate my point here, again, I don't want to beat them up any more than I already

have, is that this is a lot of company for Triple Dot to absorb. I mean, Triple Dot is a ad company that has games, right? Uh, this is 10 relatively large studios all over the [ __ ] world that do live ops and inapp purchases and things that triple dot does not do and they have no experience really managing. So, strategically it makes sense if they want to scale up and justify their valuation as a company. They need to get bigger and do actual inapp purchase stuff, improve their margins and get, you know, financially viable. And financially, this thing is a steal, right? Like it's like I don't know what 6 but you were going to talk about this 66x revenue which is a [ __ ] terrible multiple for mobile in general but this is a special circumstance so I don't think it's indicative of valuations and the critical part of this deal as in any M&A deal is [ __ ] execution right and this is not going to be easy so let's

hope they pull it off I mean I'm sure we'll be covering it over time in terms of what it needs what what happens with this asset He's going to talk about the structure and stuff which is really weird [ __ ] structure too, right? So yeah, feels like this deal was done with, you know, somebody spitting their hand and did a handshake like this. This is like this is not out of Chris Petrovich's M&A playbook. So this is I mean the deal terms as you said 0.6 revenue multiple. The Ebida multiple was it like three and a half I think which is also observed because typical gaming studio eB multiples is between 4 and six at the moment which is very low because if you consider subscription based app it's between 6 to 10 transactional adbased apps you know blanking anyways they're between four and seven and marketplace apps like gig economy Ubers there are like 6 to 10 revenue not even so this is like the lowest possible valuation and then going back to these terms. It was

originally 900 and then they gave another $100 million away, you know, between friends. Who are we asking? And then two years ago that was at an event at a banker event. So, and somebody was asking me, you think somebody would buy app like he was looking for buyers for this and who do you think could buy Apploavin's gaming portfolio? And I said, how much? And I think I remember this correctly, but he said 2.6 billion. This was Jeez, this was 2 years ago. But that foot, right? Two to two and a half times revenue, right? That makes sense, you know. So, this is just trying to explain how dirt cheap this was. And then it's not that it's $800 million of cash. It's no, that would be too much. It's well, give me 400 million in cash. Give me 150 now. And then promisory notes of 250 million sometimes. And then 400 million out of that I'll

take in your shares because your valuation is now 2 billion. This was free, Chris. Oh my god. They're just giving this thing away. This exactly this is We should have bought this. This is a testimony to what this actual asset was worth. They were trying to sell this for the last few years. So, no one wanted it for good reason. It's so [ __ ] complicated. There's so many thing companies. There's so many studios. They're all over the world. It is not an easy thing to manage. Everybody looked at this is the thing, but no one wanted it, right? And so, good luck, Triple Dot. Like, this is a [ __ ] hand grenade, you know? But, and on the best possible terms, right? Like, it's still a hand grenade that they have to manage. So, I mean, it's going to be not it's not going to be easy. I remember back in the day when one game studio would come into EA and it was like oh my god it was like the it was like you know everyone's hair was on fire and like culture and it was so difficult to have that like merging and acquisition and now you've got I don't even know how many studios or like you

said around the world and languages and cultures and 10 studios and I think it was um and 23 cities. Oh wow. Uh and and so this is like glue would have acquired EA. This is the same exact. You know what? Wolves are doing HD games. Who cares? It's like how hard can it be? Because this is the same type of situation. So if we look at it from AppLoving side, of course it makes sense. They cleaned up their margin. And Jen, if you want to show the image that shows Apple lo financials for their apps and their advertising financial, it it really shows the story. So on the top you see the revenue from their app business which is like over 2 billion then it goes to 1.8 then it goes to 1.4 and it stays between 1.4 4 and 1.5 after 2023 and you know healthy ebidal of about 250 $260 million$100 million a year and then when you look at their advertising financials they're just

booming so every year massive growth and we're talking about a ebelf of almost three billion so they're essentially cleaning this away this asset that is kind of bringing the averages down and focusing on where they're getting their money from and then if we're being like very positive and looking at from the triple perspective. There's two things that you're getting from here. So, one is scale. So, now they are have 25 million DAU. That's a [ __ ] a lot. And um they got $2 billion in revenue. They got 2500 people. I don't remember how many they had. I think they had a couple hundred in London, but yeah, there are 200 right now and 23 cities that they're operating from. So, everything from Cypress to Shanghai to London to South. I'm getting an anxiety attack just thinking about this. I'm just like, "Oh my god." Can you imagine that? Like, you know, you know, C CEOs typically go and they show up at, you know, Phil Spencer went down the Blizzard and took his pictures. Can you imagine the world tour that has to happen of a leadership team

to go welcome the new teams in? They just lost lost their two key execs, too, right? Oh, really? Look, I think Yeah. Yeah. I think this is it seems folly to me, but good luck, you know. So, let's add another one. So there's the human challenge and then there's the uh well human potential they get to what so big and they get so geographically so big and then there's also the potential of diversification of their business because this was before simply inapp ad business but now they're bringing both inapp purchase business model as well as so many new genres. So yes, there's hyper casual through Lion Studios, but there's plenty of puzzle. There's midcore cuz it's machine zone. There's you name it. They have now all these genres. Again, the challenge is if they have been in up at company as they have been in up at company like what is their tech stack internally to do these live ops for so many I mean maybe these studios are so independent but there's a lot of challenge. There's challenge on the tech side everything. Well, the biggest push back to my nonsense about

this is that the companies are running so independently as they are that they don't need as much oversight. So, similar to like the Zinga model where they're acquiring companies that know what the [ __ ] they're doing in their particular area. So, they don't really need oversight or management from the people at Triple Dot. It's still Yeah, it's but in Zingga's case, yes, you're right. But their approach, if I'm understanding correctly, was that if you know what you're doing and we're buying you because you know what you're doing, we will just offer you these central services. You don't have to take them. But yeah, if you forget how to do what you were supposed to do, we will tell you what to do. Like that's how it kind of works. It's the Scoply model as well, right? Is we they hire games and studios that know what they're doing that are good and then they offer them the, you know, like the Scoply SDK or the Zinga SDK, so to speak, right? all of these central services that can come in and really help accelerate what they already do incredibly well. So, Scopi leads the

external team. So, that when they bring in like a third studio like the what's it called? Gen Joy from um Sevilla that was partly making Monopoly Go, I think one of the leading studios there. When they brought them on, when they were making that puzzle game with decoration, everything it was managed from Barcelona. So they kind of stack the internal team first and then that internal team manages the external team and if they end up launching that game then they acquire that and it becomes an internal studio. Scooby and Zinga are different in the way that they do it. Yes, there's kind of like a more central team that helps with the I mean at least when I was there it was like a central kind of leadership team and then yes your external studio. I think Zingga is a bit different where they do kind of run it in the city state. I mean it's Frank right? He loved the city state model which is, you know, they kind of run independently and they tag in to the central services and as long as their numbers are good. You know, Central's cool. At least that's my impression just kind of looking at it from the outside. But what else you got? It's going to be

fun to watch how this goes through. Um, I I had a quick note about the publicly traded names. So, there's a lot of doom and gloom out there generally speaking about gaming and VC and all that stuff. We talk about this all the time and I just want to make sure that everyone understands that the majority of the publicly traded names are trading at all-time highs right now, right? So, the dollars are moving and they're chasing the things that are actually based on success. Like quarterly results are really really strong across the entire ecosystem. Like it's actually really good to be big right now in the gaming space. So despite all these challenges we have at the VC level, early stage, mid-stage, whatever, these late stage companies are doing quite well. So Nintendo at an all-time high basically. Se games at an all-time high for other reasons as well as the game itself. Roblox a three-year high after the metaverse kurfuffle. Take 2 all-time high. EA is close to an all-time high. Konami, Capcom, both at all-time highs. Apploving is not at an all-time high.

They are still significantly below where they got to like $500 a share, but they're way on their way back right after this big correction. CD Project even, oh, after this insane Cyberpunk thing, not at an all-time high, but definitely at a three-year high, they keep scaling up. They haven't released a game in forever, so they're just basically banking on Cyberpunk. Yeah. Oh, and the next Witcher, like I think people are excited about that. Yeah, the next Witcher is coming, but it could be 2028 for all we [ __ ] know. Oh, [ __ ] Really? Um, now there are a few underperforming companies that we're all aware of. Unity is like on its deathbed and Ubisoft obviously which actually needs no discussion. Still, Embracer, Playa, like these companies are not doing well. You know what's ironic about that group of companies if you think about it? Majority of them are from Europe. So maybe there's something going on with that. I don't know. Correlation, causation, you know, who knows, right? Who knows? The idea is like what the [ __ ] is happening, right? There's this thing that we've been reporting on for a

while is that player concentration is a thing you know and so not only time spent but dollars are flowing into these big companies and all the data kind of suggests this for both console mobile and PC. Of course, lots of constant reporting about the robust indie scene on PC, which is true, but the reality of it is the majority of the players are even on PC, the majority of the revenue is being driven by the big franchises, but certainly on console and mobile, it is definitely benefiting the big. The intentions of investors themselves are focused more on the publicly traded names as the VCs are basically pulling out of gaming almost completely except at the early stage, right? And longer term, you know, after all this talent moved on to other things because of this Matthew Ball fever dream, wet dream about [ __ ] metaverse and blockchain and whatever the [ __ ] he was spewing a few years ago. All these [ __ ] people are coming back to traditional publishers, right? So they have a pick of the litter, right, in terms of people, right? Which is really good. So

it's much easier to find talent in wellunded like big companies right now after the total grift from Matthew Ball. So, it's all really good for the big um you know, oh, Sony is at an all-time high. I didn't put that on there as well. God, Sony is killing it right now. So, anyway, yeah, I just want to make sure that people understand it's not all bad news out there. There's a lot of good things going on, particularly on the publicly stuff. Get bigger is I think what's been our mantra for a long time now, right? Like, black hole games, like the games that have been out for a long time, sucking all the play time. Yeah. you know, hearing things like, you know, Fortnite's about to come back to mobile, Overwatch is rebounding from rivals, like it's basically the big and then the small. Basically, it's a hollowed out middle is what's occurring in the mature markets that we're in. I just showed one European publicly traded company that is doing better. So, 10% yearto date, MTG Group, do the fiveyear. Do the five year though. No, no, no. Let's not let's not zoom out too much. No, no, you have to zoom out. That's the whole point. All right. All right. All

right. I'm gonna show you the fully zoomed out. Don't go. It's okay. Okay. Hello. That's not bad. See, there you go. Yeah. 300%. Shout out to MTG Group, new owners of Plarium. Bought it at 1x revenue. Was it web stores? You've seen what good looks like, but have you seen great? Appch charge is the direct to consumer platform backed by the likes of Supercell and built by monization pros from Moonactive, Platika, Huge Games and others, people who know the difference. App charge powers over half a billion dollars in transaction a year for top studios optimizing every detail. Deeply personalized web store offers custommade design, industryleading monetization features, in-game payments SDK and more. 70% of top grossing games already have a web store, but the ones scaling fastest, they're doing it with app charge. Learn

more at appcharge.com. In today's hyperco competitive digital landscape, understanding your app's journey from discovery to download isn't just insightful, it's the difference between scaling and stagnating. Enter Appslier, the undisputed leader in mobile attribution and marketing analytics. They've mastered the science of making every ad dollar work harder by revealing exactly where your players come from and how they interact with your app. Their platform transform mountains of complex data into clear, actionable intelligence that separates winning campaigns from budget draining experiments. And I know that many of the top game companies leverage Appslier and are a key partner in their success. Appslier, where your app's potential meets performance. [Music] All right. Well, let's shift to a non-public company that one day soon will likely be public. Oh, yes. Yes.

Yes. Yes. So, because it was a slow news week, I was allowed to to talk about Squadbusters. So, Squadbusters and Supercell made some news. In short, Supercell has implemented a significant reboot of its mobile game Squad Busters, aiming to enhance gameplay clarity, appeal to midcore players, and re-engage laps users. This overhaul, referred as Squabbusters 2.0, introduces several key changes. So, the key updates are pre-round squad selection. So, now you can choose your hero and then squatties before each match. There actually only four heroes. We're going to talk about that a bit later. And that allows strategic planning and team composition. Yeah. And basically, they're adding like agency back to the game. You know, a lot of my friends anecdotally were like, "Oh, my 5-year-old loves Squadbusters." Because you just run around with this big group of and it's like just [ __ ] happening on a screen. And I think one of their insights was like, "Oh god, we

need to give a little bit of agency and purpose to what you're actually doing." And I think this hero idea of you know once your hero dies I think your team dies or something like this and that that was the impetus. There's heroes there's squatties which are like the two assistants for the hero from the beginning. The cooldown based power. So now new abilities with cooldown timers have been added enhancing player agency and tactical decision-making during matches. So meaning more buttons to press and play and then refined target audiences. So now the game design and marketing has shifted focus from everybody to midcore gamings aiming to better align with their preferences and expectations as you well know you know if they that everybody likes then that's the game that nobody loves. So what challenges according to myself because this was on the econctor fun blog what they had before this in my opinion they had four big challenges. Number one was limited gameplay variety. They only had a single gameplay mode and they kind of still have it. And the new character

additions, every time they dropped these small babies into the game, they didn't really change the gameplay. They didn't really affect the meta. It's okay. Now I have a new in this big squad of guys and doesn't really change how I play whether it's a minor or a barbarian. At least to me, like when you have so many of them. The game also suffered from, in my opinion, shallow progression and economy. So you upgraded the characters and the squad busters that required collecting of super large quantities like 100 of these turns into one of that and so forth. It's like this bug gota style of a thing where you getting constantly these prizes but they don't really matter because you need so many duplicates and that made the progression in the beginning feel pretty good but just after playing it a little bit just felt that you're not making progress and everything felt unattainable. And then they had features like the the home screen building which made absolutely no sense because there was no function and because there's no visiting in game, who am I building this town for me and there's like why am I putting these decorations anyway? But that was as one

of the sort of a progression vector that they put that just has no meaning. And then the third issue was like lack of depth and mastery. So they really, as you said, 5-year-old played it and liked it because they prioritized accessibility over everything. And that resulted in a gameplay that lacked depth and any opportunities for skill development. It's a 5-year-old just moving around this little bunch of funny characters with great VFXs, funny sounds, great music, but but there's no mastery. And it also felt incredibly chaotic. So difficult to understand what the hell is happening, how am I improving? And if you are a competitive player, that just leads to frustration and disengagement because you don't know what the hell is going on. And then finally, the issue that is always going to be remained because they were in soft launch for such a short time, essentially a month of a proper soft launch compared to Brawl Stars that was 18 months in soft launch, multiple pivots and still struggled after the initial launch phase. So they kind of suffered from that. So let's talk about

after the changes. What's the game actually feels? What is Squad Busters 2.0? Yes, it's awesome. It looks great. It sounds great. All these elements are there. But when we talk about the core, the main changes are it's faster time to kill. There are more controls, more agency. There's more depth, but they still have many of the same issues. So, you know, as I said, there's no archery controls anymore where you can't where you have to stop to shoot, but they actually shoot as you walk. They shoot a little bit faster when you stop. The building was out because they changed the camera angle, but actually it's not out. It's still in. It's just even more stupid. So, I don't know what to say about that. You start the game with a relatively strong comb because before we started with one baby, but now you're starting actually with one hero unit, which is pretty strong, and two of these squatties, which is, you know, the first levels. So, that's already three in the beginning. And that removes that early buildup that persists in this game and

in battle royale games where you're kind of like getting stuff and you're not really engaging. But that's the resource gathering phase and you can't really kill anybody because you're so weak and that again reduces time to kill. So now you get into action pretty fast. And also they remove the match three. You have three of the same turns into one more powerful and they turn it into match two. So again you get more powerful characters faster and that reduces time to kill. So time to kill reduction has been clearly the target of everything. They added the heroes. They are upgradeable. you get the hero points from doing the quest and that sort of creates that collection variety mechanic as in Brawl Star, but it kind of doesn't cuz you have only four heroes in the whole game and you start with one and they allow you to choose between two and so even if you unlock everything in this game that has been out for quite a while, you get four different heroes. That's not crazy amount. Each hero has three three sort of attributes. You got the big powers. So like with the archer queens, the cyershot. Then you have this sort of a two different traits that you

can do. It's they're almost like spells and then you have one sort of a passive ability for each hero. So when you choose the archer, then surprisingly there's different classes. And now you take classes of these squatties, then they shoot faster. Pretty basic stuff. Um and all this above creates more progression vectors which they suffered from. And that was the one issue that needed solving. But the other issues still remain. The game play is still repetitive. They only have a single game mode and now even less choice of characters due to this hero. Uh and that's a very stark contrast to Brawl Stars where the gameplay changes with every game mode and evolves with every new brawler coming in and kind of updating the meta of that game. And the game play as they said they tried to make it less chaotic. It's still incredibly chaotic and that makes at least to me it feels unmasterable. So when I think about this game, I think that it's almost a

combination of two games, Team Fight Tactics and Brawl Stars. And it's not like they left anything out. They just put those two together. And Jen, you know, you know, anybody cuz Yeah, cuz you worked on it. And it's the game that of my nightmares because it's so difficult. Like I played I think 3 weeks before I got my first win. Well, yeah. I don't know about your analogy cuz TFT is it's an auto battal like you said it and then you know you watch the action play out. You don't have that autonomy during the actual battle but the chaotic nature is the result of the strategy that you're it's a strategy game that has a really fun visualization. Yes. I mean I don't know. It looks like you're doing that the entire time here. So So you put it perfectly. I mean because team fight tactics is all meta. No core gameplay. like you can move around where they stand, but that has a minimum effect. It's all about what kind of a team composure, how well you understand the meta, what cards you pick, when you push on resources, when you push on. It's a complicated game, but it's all meta and it's all thinking. It's like poker meets

chess, like a timed chess meets poker, but there's no skill elements in how you move your fingers. In this case, they are implementing all these elements from team five tactics, like the classes and the origins, and it feels like these elements are coming in. So you really have to think about how you put the team and the randomness is there is what kind of character do you buy from the next chest now they went from three to actually buying two so they kind of simplified it anyways that element persists but then think about you have team fight tactics and you add on top of that brawl star so now you actually have to move the whole crew all the time and shoot with your fingers different kind of like shots uh on different like it would be too much I have to think and do all these things like I'm not a woman like I'm just I can't do Oh my god, poor kid. Like I kind of think you're too old for this. I mean, listen, the hard thing for us to do is what works for us and what works for the player. And I think you said it best, which is when they originally went out, they were trying to be a casual version and they were trying

to attract everybody. And you know, in my humble opinion, you should really focus in on the core and you should build the game for the core and market to the core and then expand once you see where you can go. And they had a lot of early signals. I think in their PR article they talked about well the early signals show that we perhaps had the ability to go broader than we thought. And sadly that happens sometimes. And so in this case they're trying to go a little bit more core. They're trying to dial which is great, right? I think they talked about prototyping this in the UK actually at the old uh Space Ape, typed it in the UK, brought it in and matched it up with the Helsinki team and here we go. Squadbusters 2.0. They had success with Brawl Stars when they reimagined it. So, you know, let's see where this goes. It is not my kind of game and that's okay. They're not making it for me. They're making it for a 18-year-old boy is what it looks like. had a fun conversation with a person who shall be unnamed because you know he don't wants to be quoted but he says um that

Supercell uses yolo approach to launching games and I'm quoting this person who said it's like they just got sick of measuring every detail and being super careful and are now just saying [ __ ] it let's launch some games and figure it out later and I feel like this is what's been happening and I understand the reason because think about it Supercell hadn't launched anything since Brawl Stars and that's what 2016 and they had this insane internal gauntlet of feedback that just killed all the games like I I was there I remember it was the type of feedback that the game teams were getting was incredibly blunt and hurtful if if you were working on that game team like I remember when Boom Beach launched one person said I'm embarrassed to work at this company for launching such a shitty game that game made a billion dollars that was insane So that that has kind of been changed to this where they had the success with Brawl Stars where and it is phenomenal success that that

they launch this game so many pivots and they kind of figure out so many problems and then after what four or five years the game's not doing too well and they just come out out of woodwork and again pivoted again add such a big elements and get it to massive growth cross the billion dollar line and so I think that instills the type of a belief inside the company that we can [ __ ] get out of any tail spin. because look what we did with craars. So my advice is stop thinking about mobile as a launch and start thinking about it as slow and steady wins the race. And sure if you want to, you know, start trying it, put it in some markets, see if you can scale it and then slowly start kind of building that on. And there is in mobile the benefit is it's not a AAA PC launch where you got to, you know, make a moment because you're selling all those units at that one moment in time. There's no rush anymore, everybody. like stop thinking about a launch and start thinking about it as slow and steady wins the race. I I want to talk about the future, but I just

can't stop focusing on the past. I just don't understand how a mistake of this magnitude could be made at a company like Supercell that is so experienced to put out a game that clearly was not ready with no beta and now we're reeling back and changing things and like completely revamping the whole game. It's like why now? Why wouldn't you just leave it in beta and do that then? You know, they didn't need it. This is the whole thing. It was such an unforced error. Brawl Star was killing it at the time. Yeah. They didn't need any of this [ __ ] you know? And now the game is still not aligned with what the market wants or this willing to spend money on. And I don't think you in your whole [ __ ] thing. You didn't talk about monetization at all. Like, have they improved the way the game monetizes? The thing's doing like less than $1 per download, right? That's a pathetic at this point, right? For a modern game. they have such leverage with their network introducing these games that they should be making games that monetize less but not that don't monetize at all you know so anyway that this is just an unforced completely unforced error right in my view it's

interesting because like when you read the interview so I was reading it on mobile gamer biz it had Rob and forgot the gentleman's name he was from space ape he's the new head of of squabbbusters and you know they were talking about questions were like do you regret of having such a short soft launch and they're like, you know, like hindsight, I don't know, like we better public article like number one, kudos for even doing an interview. Yes. Because everyone, you know, people like us are talking [ __ ] And so what, you know, of course they're going to be like, well, you know, we could have been better. We could have done it different. Kudos to them for kind of even saying that level of like, yeah, like, you know, in hindsight, what's the dude going to say, man? He can't come out and [ __ ] on like past work. The takeaway maybe from the interview is how Supercell has evolved. Like they were saying that this game has been made now out of three locations. So it's made out of Shanghai and London and Helsinki. So there's three studios working on this game at the moment. And also there was

an interesting question when they asked them like hey like do you and Brawl Stars like talk about it cuz Brawl Star is this you know this undertaker of a character just [ __ ] comes out of the dead all can't die. Yeah. Can't die. And the quote is like, "No, the squad team did not swap notes with Brawl Stars team for this reboot despite the latter game's big comeback." So they suffer from exactly the same challenges that any corporation suffers, which is, you know, multiple locations, how to move internal knowledge from one another. So it it is a normal highly successful mobile publisher rather than the sort of a, you know, the story of the first decade of Supercell. So, it's interesting to see the evolution of this company to um publishing powerhouse. All right. Well, let's keep going. We have a couple more stories. Crest, do you want to do Nintendo and and their sandbagging? I think that's fun. Nintendo basically said confirmed that um the pricing of the hardware and software really had nothing to do with tariffs at all. And that they gave a forecast of 15 million units in their

fiscal year for the Switch, which analysts felt was very low. But they claimed that it had nothing to do with tariffs at all. It was they were worried about the price. The price of the unit is going to limit the amount of people that are going to be interested in buying it outside of the super core, right? So, they're worried about momentum post launch for a $500 device. And that production capacity is not a a concern. And they also said that if tariffs are an issue that Nintendo would take the brunt of it from a profitability perspective, which is very much the opposite of what people are reporting on this. Um, so anyway, my point is is that uh they are very conservative on their forecast. If they don't do 20 million plus, I'll be really shocked, right? Because I think that the demand for a Nintendo device prices kind of doesn't matter at the end of the day, right? And then also the software tie ratio was relatively low. I think it was in the threes. It should be closer to fours in terms of how many units of software is sold per unit sales of Switch to hardware. So likely they're

going to just absolutely [ __ ] crush it this year, right? And the stock is starting to move in that direction. I think people are a little bit spooked, but I think we'll see it kind of creep up over time most likely. Yeah. I mean, unless demand just is not there at launch, which I just don't think it's going to happen. from a marketing perspective and a positioning perspective. I thought what was really interesting is that this is now positioned against the other HD consoles, right? This is playing with the big boys or girls and you know really looking to kind of cement like, hey, we're not just that kids toy anymore. We're playing in the big leagues. You know, before this time, it had really been seen as, you know, like I think I've told you stories of going up and down the aisles at Target and seeing the moms stare at all of these things and be like, "Oh my god, what do I do?" And their eight and nineyear-olds are running around looking for games. That was what the Switch was. And now this is they're starting to realize that there's an adult, you know, market and an adult player for this as well. I never thought also Nintendo would be the first company to go 80 bucks on

software. Mario Kart certainly demands it. It increases the bundles, you know, value. And all of this actually leads into the next story about software now being 80 bucks. Yeah. And so, like, there's so much misreporting on some of this stuff that drives me insane. But the other thing I want to make a point of in lie of the next story is that third party sales on Nintendo Switch were [ __ ] abysmal, abysmal, atrocious, atrocious for a device that ubiquitous. The fact is it could not run the majority of the software that was out there effectively. And so it was likely in the 20 to 25% range. It was not 50%. Like by the way the Wii was like 60% third party, right? Okay. So it was so bad, right? Because it just didn't run. This device however seems more capable and is likely going to increase the share. And this is part of the thesis that I had on Nintendo. I mean, I've written down two years ago when the Switch 2 was like going to launch is that they should get more

share, but it's going to be like 35%. Right? Maybe 40 at best, right? So, it's good. That's actually good. It's a fair. It's a viable platform in the market for third party versus the Switch. And given the fact that Microsoft is completely [ __ ] the [ __ ] up right now, like that is maybe the secondary console that people are gonna be playing on because Microsoft comes out with this crazy increases in pricing of hardware which has absolutely never happened in the history of gaming ever in terms of three or four years into a cycle that we're increasing price on hardware. Right? The Series X is up a h 100red bucks to $600. The price of software, which I think is fine, is up to 80 bucks. I'll give him that. But even the price of that piece of [ __ ] [ __ ] Series S, is up to 429. Who the [ __ ] is buying that piece of crap? Like that is like the one device that has held back Microsoft in this

whole cycle because of [ __ ] How much is it? 420. 429 there. It was like what? 3509 350. How much is a Nintendo Switch 2 now in the US? Switch 2 is going to go for €450, right? 450. Sorry. Sorry. 450. You keep saying you know how much it's in in EU. So in Finland it's 570. Not one person gives a [ __ ] about Finland for consoles. Okay. Like it's the UK. Period. Germany. Navy. Right. I'm just saying these are EU prices. I'm saying EU prices. I know. But EU prices. So you said Switch is $500 or Well, so that their Switch today and their Switch 2 coming. Switch two. Yeah, Switch 2. Yeah, Switch 2 I think is coming out at $450 US, I think. So we're paying over $100 more in EU for Switch 2. Oh god, there's like exch Don't make me do math. Um, no, but it sucks. Yeah, you know, it it sucks. And I think one of the things everyone's talking about is ooh ooh, tariffs, tariffs. What everyone needs to

realize is terroriser is the sneeze guard for every company to be like, "Yeah, we can increase our It's like inflation during co or or what do you call supply chain challenges?" It's just the price squirrel. Squirrel, look over here. Tariffs, tariffs. Now we're going to jack up our prices. And by the way, maybe Xbox doesn't care at all. I mean, Crush, you know this like Xbox isn't anywhere but the US and UK. Everywhere else is a is like a PlayStation country, right? Yeah. At the end of the day, this is like the almost the nail in the coffin for Microsoft as a hardware manufacturer cuz Sony doesn't seem like they're going to respond to this price hike for the hardware. They probably will respond in some ways to the price spike as a software, at least from a third party perspective. I don't know about a first party yet, but they could always do. I don't know. But it looks like literally Sony and Nintendo are in charge of the long-term console business and Microsoft is just kind of a stepchild publisher now of these big franchises because they're not in control of their own destiny anymore.

And I don't want to do the big rant on Microsoft over again, but the coverage of this is so frustrating because they can't [ __ ] connect the dots, right? This is a shift in strategy for Microsoft as a whole, right? They are moving towards AI. They just did a 3% layoff in an exceptional quarter for them, right? 7,000 souls are lost, you know, in a great quarter for them. What is happening is they're focusing all their attention on AI. And gaming and cloud have [ __ ] nothing to do with AI. Have absolutely nothing to do with AI. It's no longer a priority for the company. And I know it was just a few years ago they acquired Activision. Everyone's, well, they must have a strategy in gaming. They do not. They do not. They don't give a [ __ ] about gaming, right? This is the problem, right? Not to repeat myself, while the subscription business is great for the gamer, no doubt, it is a [ __ ] profitability hole, okay, that they cannot get themselves out of. That is why they are increasing pricing because they need to be profitable in order to

stay [ __ ] alive, okay? And then the problem is if they don't have hardware, they don't have a platform, right? This is like the fundamental thing that people just seem to be mis disconnecting. You know, these subscription businesses don't work in gaming and over and over and over again. And so what they need to do is spin this [ __ ] out, create Activision 2.0, be a third party publisher, and that may save the gaming business. But what my worry is, and my worry has always been, is that the next 5 years, this [ __ ] [ __ ] is going to be hollowed out where it's beyond recognition. They're going to keep trying to pull money out of this thing. It's going to be like a Warner, right? or any of these Disney, right, where they're just trying to pull profits away from there and pay for other [ __ ] right? Because any profits they make, they're not going to be able to keep, right? They're just going to bring it right back. And so this is why they're increasing price because they have to be profitable on hardware and they have to be more profitable on software on the third party because their subscription business is [ __ ] destroying them from within, right? I'm

very very very very concerned about this as a highle problem in the business and I don't want all the control on corp consoles to be on [ __ ] Sony right and to a lesser degree Nintendo that's [ __ ] frightening you know you think they will do the uh what apploing did to their gaming portfolio at one point be like you know what you're just dragging us down yeah some friend will get a handshake deal somebody will spit in their hand and say here you go the whole [ __ ] business there you know who's going to be there is [ __ ] golden sacks, dude. They're going to [ __ ] double dip on this [ __ ] dude. They sold [ __ ] Activision this [ __ ] They're going to [ __ ] spit this thing out and make double the money, dude. [ __ ] give money. Sell that. You sell that? Yeah, no problem. No problem. Those guys are [ __ ] [ __ ] dude. Absolute [ __ ] They [ __ ] did the shittiest deal in the planet with this gaming business. They're just going to go right back for [ __ ] 30 seconds. Let's do this. I really enjoyed going to the Abby Goldman Zach CEO Summit for two

years in a row. That was great. Guess where we are uninvited from. That was fun times. No more. The Crest splash damage continues. Oh my god. And I are [ __ ] But no, it's I remember we're doing the deal. was that I always thought that lawyers are the ones who make all the money and then I makers no no fees fees fees whoever does the deal. No, you got to give Goldman credit though. They're [ __ ] transparent, dude. It's clear. They don't give a [ __ ] right? They don't give a [ __ ] All they do is want the money. Give me the It's so transactional, right? Like they'll say the pretty words about, oh, strategic and synergy and all this other [ __ ] They just care about getting deals done, right? And so they're basically locked them into the situation that was inevitable that they were going to have to spin this thing out and they'll be back for sure. World was such a different place when the Activision deal started, right? AI wasn't a thing,

you know, cuz remember it took two years for that deal to close with all the scrutiny. And so Microsoft, oh, I wish we could buy. It's like when Elon was trying to buy Twitter and it was like that made him buy it. and I made him buy it. But you take it, [ __ ] I want to be clear though, this is part of the griff though, right? Like like it was Goldman that was probably convincing them to keep doing this deal. I am sure management CEO was not hot on this deal. I mean there was like significant amount of money they would have to pay if the deal was not closed. So that was probably Oh yeah, I remember the um it was like a over a billion, wasn't it? Like the penalty if they didn't close the deal. I remember it being like a number that was like oo yeah that's that's rough. Good job KODC. Anyway, Mr. Bobby, like, you know, like putting that in there. This deal, this deal, I mean, I'll say it again. This deal should never have been done. It made no strategic sense. The subscription business was [ __ ] [ __ ] And now we're I think they're looking down the barrel of the [ __ ] gun. You know what's going to happen?

What? I'm going to tell you what's going to happen. Cody comes back and buys Xbox with Activision. Oh jeez. He's on an island drinking a Mai. No. Yeah, but but he's going to come back and he's going to take the whole shebang on a discount. He's going to get one of those triple dot deals. Pay us when you see us. Just take it off of our [ __ ] balance sheet. All right, so we should probably wrap it. All right, everybody. Ber, that closes it for the week. I'll miss you guys. Next week, I'll come back and report on MAU. All right, see you guys. But 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'd subscribe and leave us a review on the podcast service of your choice. Those stars and likes, while the small action on your part, mean a lot to us and help to grow the show. More importantly, are you a member of the Deconstructor of Fund Slack group? If you have 5 years or more of games industry experience, go to

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