TWiG #335: Embrace CEO Exits, Pokémon meets Genshin, and Nintendo’s Mysterious On Switch

[Music] Web stores, you've seen what good looks like, but have you experience great? App charge is the direct to consumer platform that powers over half a billion dollars in transactions each year for top studios. They're not just another vendor. They're backed by Supercell and built by monetization veterans from Moonactive, Plague Tikica, and other industry giants who understand the difference between merely functional and the truly exceptional. What sets them apart? Deeply personalized web stores with custom design offers, industry-leading monetization features, seamless in-game payment integration, and a robust SDK. While 70% of top grossing games already have web stores, the ones scaling the fastest are doing it with AppCharge. Ready to transform good into great? Learn more at appcharge.com.

Stay ahead of the competition with Sensor Tower, the trusted source for mobile marketing intelligence. Whether you're tracking trends, benchmarking performance, or scouting the next big hit, Sensor Tower delivers the data that drives strategy. Dominate the charts with Sensor Tower. Hey, are you building a game, launching an app, or considering an acquisition? Well, in that case, Deep Destructor Fund Consulting is here to help you out. We 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 at deconstructorof fun.com. [Music]

Hello everyone and welcome to Deconstructor of Fun. This week in games 3:35 game industry news by game industry insiders. Today we only have three of us. But first, I'm Jen Dano. I fill the marketing and publishing Yoda roll on the podcast. Eric Crest, strategy investing. I'm second spot so I know what the [ __ ] I'm doing cuz it Wait, did I get moved down a chair? What? Yeah. Oh yeah, you missed it. So, Adam revolted and was upset that he was always last and so I moved him first and then I just decided to demote you since every time I go to you first you fail. So, you were demoted to last. Chaos is a ladder. Okay, fine. Good Game of Thrones reference on monetizations are Phil Black. Dejected monetizations are all right. Inspiring first chair. Oh, little known fact, I used to play the cello and so I actually know that first chair is a reference to orchestra. What? What did you play? Did you play something? No. Okay. Oh, right. What?

All right. I played the trumpet. No, it was a Star Trek reference, but no, first chair is not a Star Trek reference. Wait, is it not the vice captain? Who's the second command? No, it's number one. Yeah, the number one. First chair. It's not okay. I as a Star Trek fan or me too as a Riker fan. Dude, you should have stuck with the fact that you had a reference from the orchestra. That makes you look smart. Now you look like a [ __ ] [ __ ] right? It's okay. I'll take it. I'll take it on the chin. All right, here's what we have on the episode today. We're going to recap our events. Chris and I had the off thereord event in LA and Phil hung out with rich people. We'll talk about that later. Phil makes a plea for more web stores. Shocking from the monetization guy. Crest dances on the CEO grave of Embracer. Summer Games Fest was this weekend in LA and around all of the protests, which was a little bit challenging. Here, Xbox has a handheld, well, actually two, and I'm going to

talk about that. Switch 2 is selling bunch of game updates. WWDC from Apple happened on Monday, and we're going to cover this and, you know, probably [ __ ] on this. They have a new dedicated games app with a new incredibly innovative, amazing, transparent UI and the name of it is liquid ass. So, all right. Sorry, I need a correction cuz the new UI isn't actually innovative or actually visible. If you're anyone or even an old person, I can't even see through this UI. But for those who missed the best meme of the internet on Monday, this is why all marketers must make assumptions about where the little YouTube icon is going to come up on your thumbnail. So for 6 hours, if you're watching on YouTube or Spotify video, we're showing the image. Otherwise, do yourself a favor and Google Apple liquid ass. You'll see it

because they fixed it. But the little YouTube icon was right up in front of the GL. And so Apple's image said liquid ass. And if you know what liquid ass is, it's actually a product. Google that too is pretty funny. So very funny. Not funny. You guys don't love this. No, Apple's just funny these days. They've really lost their way. We'll get to All right. So banter. Phil, what do you got? Yeah. So I was in Singapore last week at the Play Adventure Summit. This was an awesome time. I got to be in Singapore for some extra days personally as well. Crazy Rich Asians delivers. It is everything that was promised. This is an urbanist dream. This is like when Peter Teal has talked about, you know, there's the world of bits and the world of Adams and like we made more progress in the world of bits than an atoms. Like I look at Singapore as somewhere that feels like it's 10 years ahead of us. Like you'll see almost forests growing inside of

buildings. There was a cable car that was a standard part of public transportation, a Montreal. It's incredibly yimi. It's a low tax structure place. The only thing I really can't figure out is this public housing situation. But I would say besides that, this is everything that was promised. Really, really interesting place. Really interesting political history if people are interested in that. And Players put on a really, really good show. And I was fortunate enough to speak and I met some great people there. How did you get an invite to that? Like did they get the email wrong? like no they uh they listened to the number one game economist podcast I'm sure the game economist cast which I went to represent that's super cool Phil yeah so we looked at some things that were big themes in 2024 and like what the update was in 2025 and I think there's just some surprising stuff that people aren't keeping track of the growth of chat GDP is really interesting look at your sensor tower data like it looks like a consumer product I think those things have kind of been under reportported and were a lot of fun to explore nice yeah I actually looked through his deck I thought it was pretty So, oh, oh, and good lead with that now.

I criticize Phil a lot, but he's really, really good at talks, giving speeches, far better than I am. So, wow, that is big praise. Thank you for Yeah, pretty good. I'm putting on the box. Yeah. No, Phil, you do great. Yeah, I mean, we've done projects together and yeah, from a deck perspective and an information and a speaking perspective, you rock at that stuff. So, I know we give you [ __ ] but well done, dude. I'm proud of you. Oh, god. Oh gosh. Um, I have like these two small personal updates. I've actually been playing some games for a long I haven't been playing games a long time. I haven't really found anything I really like, but I tried Dune Awakening, which is an amazing game in and of itself. However, the survival [ __ ] is not for me, dude. I I can't do this. I can't I It is It's so frustrating and it's like the progress is too slow and it's just it's more like a job than it is a game for me. So, not my thing. And then I came across Games of Thrones Kings Road. And this game is

from Net Marble. And it is like a full [ __ ] MMO with like deep modernization design, you know, like total Asian style monetization design. Not a lot of pay to win, but a lot of paid for convenience and stuff like that. This thing came out and there's just no fanfare at all. Like they just put this out here to die. And they must have spent a gajillion dollars on this game. But, you know, it's having fun. So, it's a good game. So, Oh, is it Forex? No, it's a it's an MMO and it's on mobile and PC. It is the ultimate crossplatform game even though it's not doing [ __ ] right in terms of interest. I even heard of it, right? But the game is like really really flushed out and really well done. Do you know if it was built on like a template like a Korean MMO template? Actually, you might be right actually. I might have remember hearing about this one because I was at Warner. I remember this project vaguely. But anyway, I don't know. I need to get more info. So, anybody have information on this thing, whether this thing is just going to die because I don't want to spend like hours and hours playing

this game and then it dies in six months. So, well, perhaps you could have asked somebody at our event yesterday because we had some Warner Brothers. Okay, you did. All right. They were unhelpful. Oh, okay. Well, I think he's on a different project. But anyways, so yesterday we had our off thereord event. So, this was our event with Neil Long for mobile gamer.biz. It was in LA. Totally packed house. Crest, thank you for coming. Thanks to Laura for flying down for the day for Seattle. We had three great presentations, a lot of great networking, a lot of roundts. Thanks to our sponsor, Sensor Tower, AppSlier, and Media Bodies, which is an influencer and podcast marketing agency. Thanks to Google Play for hosting us at, you know, their Venice location. More of these events are coming soon. A lot are going to come in Europe. So Neil, I I think we got a lot of really great feedback from everyone that this was one of those events that you can actually just talk to other people and learn stuff. So more coming in Europe at Gamescom, I think Helsinki, there's a bunch in the UK, and

I think we're going to do more in the US. Some people came up to us and said they were offering their like headquarters and locations in San Francisco, Chicago, Austin, New York. So if you're in one of those cities and you want one of these events, let us know. Crest, any takeaways that you had that you can share without attributing it to a person, but we decided that we could actually share some of the information as long as it was not confidential. I want to give a shout out to Chiro Shurog from Sensor Tower. Yeah, that guy knows how to present, right? He got up there and presented like the positive view of the market, which obviously, you know, I'm not on board with, but at the end of the day, he's a really, really good presenter and his presentation was really good. So, I want to give him a shout out. You know, and Appsfire, dude. Brian Brian Murphy. Oh my god, dude. That guy, he's like an evangelist up there talking. I There were three really good presenters, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. And I know as not a great presenter, like I was impressed by what they accomplished. So, what are my

takeaways? I still think people are kind of like in recovery mode to try to figure out what's next. It seems everyone's kind of looking for answers and I think you know it's continuing to be a tough market for a lot of people but it was a really really good event. The round tables really at least worked on my table at least and I you know talking to people getting their opinion on what's happening innovation versus iteration was one of my big subjects and stuff like that. So anyway yeah it was good. Awesome. Well, thank you for coming and, you know, doing that. My table, we obviously gravitated towards, you know, go to market UA things. I was asking if people are actually turning Game Center on again, and it seems like they are. They're putting the Game Center games SDK in because you kind of feel like you have to because it's Apple. But not many people were excited about it to be honest. They were like, "This is a great app from 10 years ago." Where I wish this was out 10 years ago. But yeah, and then you know Sarah from

Media Bodies was the other presenter who I think really gave people a good idea of influencer marketing framework. How do you actually look at measuring this? Did you like that Crest? There was actual like measurement systems in there. She was good. Like she act I mean again a very very good eloquent speaker but she also explained exactly how influencer marketing works like in terms of what you're trying to accomplish. You know the 10day programs the type of influencers that you can target you know the budgets the quote unquote KPIs. Of course I have some question about whether or not that's even possible to track but anyway no. Yeah she was really really good. I was that was actually something I really need to understand. Yeah, I thought that was great to share that even with the, you know, not everyone was marketing. Actually, we had a bunch of sea level folks. We had all kinds of folks. Anyway, so thanks everyone for that event. We'll do more soon. All right, headlines. So, actually, let me set this up because one of the things that we did that was really, really fun at the end of the day

at the event, there's this service called Menty, I think, and you can put questions up. You scan with your QR code and then everyone in the audience can like take the poll or the question. And so Crest went in and was like, "Wait, wait, wait. I want to put a question in." And I think it was like, "Who is the worst CEO?" And actually, you didn't put the person who now we're going to talk about. I I I really missed the boat on that one. All right. So, embracer CEO, Mr. Lars, Wing of Fours, whatever the [ __ ] you pronounce his name. Oh, by the way, I am promising not to use the F-word anymore. So, I'm gonna try my best. What? What? Or to use it less, I'm gonna tell. So I'm I'm Who are you promising? Uh myself because I listened to the podcast afterwards. It was horrific. Okay. So anyway, so embrace the CEO. Lars is no longer CEO of Can you edit in like a physical swear? Sorry. Continue. Anyway, he is no longer charge of Embracer. Thank the Lord. Like it's about goddamn time,

right? It took way too long. But I guess at the end of the day, he had to clean up his freaking mess. Zeke. Gotcha. Gotcha. Um, and so I'm going to give him credit though. I'll give him one credit. Like convincing these debt and equity holders to invest in his Ponzi scheme was an absolute brilliant move. Like clearly he is a sales guy, right? But he had absolutely no business managing a video game company. Period. End of sentence. Right? So I'm glad he's gone. He's being replaced by I forgot his name. Phil Rogers, who is a legitimate CEO of a gaming company. So, I'm hoping that he can figure out what to do with that. The only problem is that they're keeping him on board as chairman and part of his roles of responsibility is mergers and acquisitions is, and this is how we got into this trouble to begin with, right? So, why would you do that? We need a clean break, and he needs to get the [ __ ] out of there. Oh, and then let this

other guy run the show, right? And so if I was Embracer and I was on the board, I don't want Lars to do M&A. That's like the big problem, right? So they do have a pipeline of products coming out. Of course, you know, Kingdom Come 2, Tomb Raider, etc. We absolutely have no details on any of these games. I frankly don't even know if they have the capability of delivering any games or publishing any games at this point given all the turmoil in this company. But I'm going to give Phil a shot and we'll see how he does and we'll keep tracking their progress. Well, isn't Embracery just split up into three companies now? So, yeah, it hasn't been done yet. Like, it's they're working towards it and it seems like these guys are in charge of the entire all three companies still. Oh, I don't know if leadership's going to be implanted. I don't know. The structure is not complete yet. The restructuring is not complete. So, we'll see. Okay. The next quick announcement is that the Unity CTO Steve Collins steps down after six months. First of

all, when you hire something like a CTO, it could take months, months, if not years to find the right person. So, he probably lasted less time than it took to actually hire him, you know? So, that's not a good look for Mr. Steve Collins, right? And some of the people at the event last night, he didn't have a great reputation king either. So, maybe the emperor has no clothes. I don't know. But at the end of the day, I want to be really clear here because I think people are misunderstanding the situation with Unity. The engine itself is almost irrelevant at Unity. Unity engine is break even at best. All the future of Unity lies in adte, right? It's about the new platform that they're working on. That is what's going to make them see the light. So yes, Unity engine is important from a maybe a strategic perspective or from I don't know PR. Yeah. Razor razor blade, right? like you need the razor of the engine in order to have a foundation for the adtech. The problem is that they're not getting that from that. But but that's a whole other subject. But anyway, the point is that

yeah, the CTO of the engine business stepping down, not a good look, but really all that matters is ad tech. And so like that's what's going to make their stock do well and the business to survive. And we got a lot of mixed thoughts on that at the event as well because it looks like it's better but it's just not ready for prime time. It just can't compete against app level. That's the at the end of the day. So the stock move is a little bit premature. So we'll see. All right. I'm just going to keep rolling. Yeah. Yeah. It's all you I mean you loaded this up before our event. So I was a little bit busy. So thank you. These are the easiest things to cover, right? Because these are the big events of the summer, right? So we have the Xbox showcase. We have Summer GameFest from Jeff Keley. So, we're just going to run through these as quickly as possible and give my quick takes, but the Xbox showcase was profoundly disappointing to most for a variety of reasons. Although, it was actually a decent show. The some of the highs were Persona 4 remake was really cool. They did do a tease on

Black Ops 7, which we'll get to in a minute, Outer Worlds 2, which is coming out soon, and a bunch of other games came out, third party that look really good. And so it was primarily a third-party type event. New DLC for Indiana Jones and then the teasers for first party were disappointing, right? So Fable, Forza, Gears of War, right? And so yeah, I mean it's good for them to have something there, but clearly they're not ready for prime time to show at these showcases, which seems odd because they're coming out freaking next year. You know what I mean? It So that was a little bit of a miss. Do you think it's because like so old school remember we had to branch a build and do a whole build to get ready for E3 or these big moments? Do you think it's like the team's like you know f you and I don't want to do that anymore so they don't have the content to show? That is very likely. I mean this is the whole issue with E3 just in general was that it takes people's attention away from actually making the game. Yeah.

Yeah. And so they don't want to dedicate the resources to create the best trailer or some gameplay demo. But generally they do have these type of, you know, vertical slices where people are playing through like new games to get people hyped and excited and just one of those games would have actually probably helped a lot, right? Like Gears of War, I mean, oh, I love that IP. I wish Fable has been in development for a long time. That was supposedly out re going to be last year, right? So yeah, just having a playthrough on the Fable and what it looks like would have just sealed it. remember that got delayed like it got a lot of [ __ ] I think because some of the character I forgot what it was but it got [ __ ] on so I think they had to rework it. I hate to be called cynical but shocking my cynical self is like these guys are not executing at all on first party like they are so mismanaged right now that there's just no way they can execute against these releases because they have way too many considerations going on with what's going on at Microsoft and you know their position there. And I'm going to do a piece on LinkedIn about this that is not going to

go over well I'm sure. Like what did Phil Spencer miss on? Right. So they bought all their means of production. Like they brought Halo in house. They brought Gears of War in house. They grew these marquee franchises that were third party and then they bought the means of production and then when they owned that asset, they proceeded to destroy it. And I'm just I'm not quite sure like what Phil Spencer could have done better in the production process. like he set up a whole studio ecosystem around Halo. Like he tried to throw capital at it. He tried to do the same for years. I just don't where did he go wrong? I mean I think this whole subscription thing has been a distraction, right? I think their whole strategy has been distraction to what matters most is making great games for a platform that are exclusive that get people to buy your freaking platform, right? I mean that basically fundamentally, right? They should just spin out Xbox and let it compete independently. Get rid of subscription, all that stuff because I think that will

get them focused on what matters most is building out the studio or actually executing against these projects because they do have some good IP, right? But they just Was that a good P&L if it gets spliced out on its own? Well, they're going to have to be forced to get get back on track, shave some weight like Yeah. Yeah. It ain't it's not going to be easy, right? But it's better now than it is in 5 years when this thing is going to be a death of a thousand cuts and there's going to be nothing left, right, of you know all this whole org. So anyway, all right, moving on. All right. Yeah. So the biggest challenge Oh, and then also they announced the stupid hardware thing, the Rogue Ally, which did get a lot of press. I look, I'm not suggesting that it didn't get great press, but this is just a remake of of an Asus handheld, right? It's and it's going to be like 600 700 $800, right? It's it is a non-event in gaming. doesn't mean anything really. Um, yeah, I want to [ __ ] on the trailer. So, Phil and Crest, like we've done skew management, right? Yeah. Please help me understand why on earth you launched two

versions of a handheld that isn't even unique that Oh, it has Xbox buttons. It's a modified ROG Ally. And you know, this is like an incredibly small market already. I think there's only been like four or five million units of the Steam Deck sold. You know, this PC less, right? So, this PC to Xbox to cloud gaming system, you have two SKs that are going to be super expensive. Like what? What? Explain it to me. Anyone? Anyone? Because I can't explain this as somebody who shipped physical product to a store. Like, that is just insane. Yeah, it's super heavy. I mean, it's it's hardly portable almost. It's just so niche. It's so niche. And the fact that they didn't release price is indication of that the price is going to be insane, right? Yeah. It's going to be super high. So, the trailer, listen, they did the best they could with what they what it was. But what I didn't what

I thought was misleading is in the beginning of the trailer they give you this impression that this thing is like new that it's being sculpted from this translucent you know translucent I guess liquid ass liquid ass is the official term. Yes. Yes. So um Xbox is also adopting liquid ass and so it gives you this impression that this thing is like kind of uniquely sculpted and developed for the Xbox and it's not at all. It's a device that has new buttons and you know so a lot of the USBs and the messaging in this are such that I don't think it's going to help sell this thing. I think this is going to be a super challenge. If I were to have done this I would have done one skew try to make it you know affordable. You know right now we think this is going to be more expensive than the unit itself which what Xbox Series X sells at 600 bucks now. I forgot where we are cuz they jacked up the price for tariffs, right? And the Switch 2 is 500 bucks or 450. It's like, yeah, Switch 2 is is 450 by itself, 500 with Mario Kart

8. All right, so go back to your [ __ ] on the rest of this. Here's my take. Microsoft has really lost its way, right? like First Party is not delivering at all in 2025 and they have promises for 2026, but who knows if any of these games are coming out in 26 because we have no information or details about these games at all. Not to mention GTA is coming out in 2026. Why would you want to compete with GTA? You know, like all your efforts should be getting G people to play GTA on your platform at this point, right? There's a huge problem here. Again, the handheld looks really cool. It's but super niche. is going to be super expensive. Probably 600 800 somewhere around there. It's that's not material. It's an engagement driver for the core. It's not like something that's going to expand the audience. But the biggest thing that actually I'm really really scared about, right? And we don't know yet for sure. But the Call of Duty thing was really really scary for me, right? Because at the end of the day, they only gave a teaser to Call of Duty at this show,

right? And Call of Duty is coming out in a few months, okay? And so like generally we would have so much information and teasers and like dev diaries and all the [ __ ] about what's going on with Call of Duty, but they didn't do that, right? And they haven't done that. And so the reveal was very, very disappointing for the fans. And so speaking to Variety, this guy Tyler Ball explained what the company was trying to do with this announcement on Black Ops. He said, "Usually at this point in time, we have teased everything that's coming out. And I think in a lot of ways we're setting this up more like a Beyonce album dropping. Nobody's going to know about it and nobody's going to see it coming. It's like what the [ __ ] is happening? Okay, why are we doing a Beyonce drop for Call of Duty? Call of Duty is the biggest game in the world. Every year for the last 15 years, we don't do freaking Beyonce drops. Okay? And the fact that he's bringing up Beyonce is beyond me right now. Right now, he clarified. So he clarified. So when I first read this, I was so

incensed. But he clarified though that this is just for the announcement that they are using the Beyonce drop. Okay. But at the end of the day, they're going to do more typical marketing campaign for Call of Duty for the rest. But what worries me about this is that either the team is not ready to deliver the type of content that we need to do the marketing messages that they typically do, which is scary, right? because the execution is not there, which has been there for the last decade, right? Or two, they don't have the budget anymore, or they're pulling budget or trying to save money because they're losing their ass on this stupid subscription. They're pulling budget from the marketing machine that is Call of Duty and for the first time ever, they actually have competition this year, right? They have Battlefield coming out, right? And so it's I worry I I'm worried I'm worried that they're not going to execute against this. And the fact that they're iterating on Call of Duty Black Ops is actually kind of a good thing, but it's also a little bit scary that they don't have another game coming, right? They're

not doing the different thing. Anyway, I'm worried. I'm worried about where Microsoft is going and this is all very very scary and bad bad ju guu and bad signs. So anyway, that's my take on this. I mean, but I'm confused because the second part of his quote you have here is the whole goal was to really do something different for us to zag and show up in a unique way. And one point in doing that is almost not doing any pre-promotion and giving it to players in a really unex so is was it the trailer or is it the game he's talking about? Eric, so there's this thing I was reading Michael B. Jordan, you may know him as the lead actor in Sinners. He was referring to something that I think Denzel Washington said. He says, "You don't want to be overexposed." You know, you don't want to give yourself away for free when you charge for it on the weekends. Call of Duty has just been overexposed, Eric. You don't understand. You don't understand what's coming. It's going to be shock value. They're overexposed. [Music] Battlefield's edging in. Uh, buckle in.

Well, shadow drop. Taylor did it first. The Taylor Swift shadow drop, dude. [ __ ] that. Oops. F. Ah, yes. Got it. Got the money in the jar. Yeah. Yeah. Jen, to your point though, yeah, this was the really scary thing. We are doing no prima promotion. We're going to give it to the players. You don't need to give it to the players in an expected way. This is a juggernaut. This has been the top game forever. You don't need to do it differently, right? There's no feels like a cover up to something that they have no control over, which is likely budgets or development timelines, right? This is what it feels like to me because this guy T I don't know who Tyler Ball is but like he's a tail wagging the dog dude. Smaller brother PR guy who's just trying to like save himself because he got a lot of flack for this [ __ ] dude. Yeah I yeah I'm confused by this you know from a marketing standpoint. I'm confused what he's what he's actually talking about. Well he clarified that he was t again talking about the announcement not necessarily

the marketing campaign. So, we still have the ability, he still has the ability to redeem himself if he actually can get the marketing campaign back on track, right? And make it the big event that Call of Duty is, right? And has I mean, I'm all for thinking about and reimagining how you market the biggest game in the world. I don't know. I'm trying to watch the trailer cuz I missed it. It doesn't even look like a trailer. It looks like somebody a robot giving a tour of something. But, see, Beyonce dropped a product and Apex dropped a product. The comparison is GTA who surprise dropped their trailer which was a marketing asset. So the comparison doesn't make sense to me because you right. Oh anyway. All right. We can move on. I don't understand. Over overexposed. All right. Moving on. Yeah. Yeah. Anybody else? Oh, I'm not I'm not leaving until we talk about this game that was showcased on I think it was the Xbox showcase.

Animo. It was the reveal trailer. This is from Fun Plus. Yeah, if you remember Fun Plus, we were talking about them struggling, it seemed like, recently, with some 4X launches. We were looking at DC Dark Legion, which by the way has fallen off a little bit. I want to check back in in a couple different weeks, but it looks like it's not on a positive trajectory, although I'm willing to take differing opinions, but it does not look like it's in the best place. This is a wow, a whole pivot from where they've been previously. Animo looks like a cross of Genshin and Pokemon. And the trailer that they came out with, there was another game called Donkev. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that correctly. They have the same music and many of the same themes from that trailer just like shamelessly copied it really which, you know, this was developed in China from what I understand. So, you know, I can understand how that might just be acceptable. But I think the game itself looks incredibly rich. And we've talked about this like Pokemon MMO that hasn't been filled. And I think what people kind of forget about Power World is that it really was an entry in the survival

crafting genre. And I think, you know, is there an opportunity to do something that's more actionoriented is really interesting to me. And I think something that has the gameplay of Genchin where you're utilizing different characters, this meta collection aspect is really compatible with the IP. And not only that, I think one of the things that's really exciting about this meta collection IP that Pokemon's exposed is exploration. That's one of the things that I think Pokémon Go also gets right is you have this idea of exploring things. And I think from what we've seen in this trailer, we see some of that here. Pokemon. This is like pow world for girls is she even looks Oh god. Who's the main character of Pokemon with the hat? Ash Ketchum. Ash. God. Thank you. I totally forgot his name. So, I mean, holy [ __ ] it looks like Pokemon like a lot. Look at how rich rich it looks. Oh, it's beautiful. I think it's completely beautiful. I do get a little bit more of a female. You know, the main character is a is a girl. So, it looks

like you transform into your Pokemon and that's how you solve puzzles. And I think that adds a really key component to like the fantasy of having these Pokémon. Like they're not just pets anymore. Like you can kind of sync with them. And not only that, you can use them for gameplay to solve puzzles. As you see here, one of the Pokémons revealed a path to a particular item. Another one might give you a jump that gets you to exclusive area. Like they can also be used for kind of the exploration puzzles I was just talking about. No, this looks awesome. Yeah, it does look awesome. So, he they Fun Plus basically created another brand that platform games publishing arm. Yeah. Yep. And this will be on mobile and it will be on PC. Yeah. Oh, really? Yeah. Well, this it does make sense. It is this a gotcha? Is it a squad RPG or It is going to be egregious. I'm sure it's going to be super gotcha. Yeah, it's going to be just like Genchin for sure. That's cool. I wanted to look at the econom model for this game. Animo. A n i m o. Okay. Yep. Put it right next to the enzoy trophy of

naming. Yeah. Come on, folks. Look, can we not name things again from a marketing perspective? Can I make a plea? It is detrimental to your brand when people cannot say your name. Because what happens is when you want word of mouth and you want to go to your friend and be like, "Hey, go get this game and you don't know how to say it or spell it." Why are you making that friction harder for somebody to go and Google it, look it up, and buy it. Please make it easier. Thank you. Soapbox over. [Music] This podcast is brought to you by Apps Flyier. In today's digital world, understanding your app's journey from discovery to download is more than just insightful. It's essential. Enter Appsier, 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 Flyier, that's your new reality. Dive deep into datadriven insights that

reveal exactly where your users come from and how they'll interact with your app. AppSlire, where your app's potential meets performance. Game devs, here at Heroic Labs, 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 timeconuming process. That's why top studios have turned to Hero from Heroic Claps. Hero provides a complete suite of battle 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 heroiclabs.com. [Music] All right, the next thing. Summer Games Fest happened. Mr. Jeff Gayy's joint. This was a little bit better. They had some really major announcements with the 007 game which was mixed but I think was kind of cool. was from the IO Interactive which did Hitman.

Oh yeah. Yeah, I heard an interview with those folks. Is it going to be different or not? Or is there going to be live ops in a single player game? I think was the big thing. It's unclear as to what's happening. Atomic Heart 2, which kind of a double A game sequel that did pretty well. What else? Oh, Mafia the Old Country from 2K. That was interesting. We'll see how that does. But the big release or the big announcement was Resident Evil, which I still has a huge following, which is coming out in the beginning of next year, which I think is pretty cool. And then there's a ton of indie games I think that got a lot of showcase that people really liked from the show, generally speaking. So overall, I think it was relatively solid. There were some, you know, big releases, but the challenge that they're having, it seems, at Gamef Fest is they're not really attracting some of the bigger publishers, right? Nintendo wasn't there. Microsoft wasn't there because they did their own show, but EA wasn't there either, right? And where the hell is Ubisoft? Like, it's like, do they have any games coming out and they were nowhere in any of these things so far? As far as I could tell, right? I wonder if they're keeping a low profile

right now with the lawsuit going on. I don't know. A lot of things. But anyway, I think like Keely's not got to get some of these bigger publishers in on board, you know? I guess CD Project would be another one if they had something more to show for The Witcher or something like that would be a big get for him and I'm sure they would come. But he needs to butter up EA, Sony, and Nintendo and get them on board. But yeah, I mean I guess overall between all these shows besides GTA like really there's not a lot people are really really excited about. So what about the Switch 2 which just celebrated 3.5 million unit sales? It's off to smashing records. Yes. Why does anyone care if most of the software is from Nintendo software? Why why should everyone why should anyone give a [ __ ] about this? Like the only people who seem to benefit from this are Nintendo shareholders. It's still a platform for first party.

Although I did see this chart that they reported looking at the share of thirdparty software sales for the eShop that Nintendo reported and it looked like more than 50% of sales were third party. That's a [ __ ] See, I hate these stats, dude. That is a share of volume, not of dollars cuz it's units, right? So, it's all like indie crap. Like stuff that doesn't make any money. It's like dollar $2 type product. So, it's not relevant. This is the worst stat to look at. I know almost for a fact that it's like 25% of dollars spent in the US are third party on Nintendo Switch. It's even worse, Eric, because when we look at the MAU, which I thought was really important for Nintendo Switch online services, it's only 34 million, was the last update we had from 2024, and you compare that against something like Steam or Xbox or PlayStation, which is definitely over 100 million. So, it's not even a third of that. And I would argue their RPO is much much much lower than all those other platforms. And so if they're not able to grow the service, they're not able to grow LTV, which is

ultimately like what third party platform. This is the most important thing a platform can do that I think sometimes people forget is to provide eyeballs. So that's why Apple has power. This is how aggregation theory works is that you own demand and then you work your way up the supply chain. And like they can't they don't own any demand. And not only that, like it's repulsive to develop for as everyone has forwarded something third party over there. It's always a restriction because it's basically like [ __ ] mobile hardware. There goes another coin in the jar. But it's like developing for mobile hardware. And I'm sure this is another leap forward, but it's always going to be behind and need special attention. I just Why do we care? Yeah. Well, players players care. Uh I Yes. All right. So the thesis here is that if they get from 25 to 35% I think I'll be shocked right you know in terms of revenue per third party supposedly the technologies like series s type tech which is really low unfortunately and there's yeah it's going to be the same problem they can basically redo other

SKs create ports of old games for the last three or four years but in terms of ongoing support it's going to be harder and harder right given the spec yeah it's hard to get the live service games on Switch 2 because, you know, you're asking a game to build towards the minimum spec. You know, most of the forever games, the live service games aren't going to do that. So, you're not going to get like the bigger games on there. You're going to get a little bit of the, you know, tier B games. I kind of disagree with what you said. So, Fortnite, for instance, will play so much better now on Switch 2. And so, like the big games that are current live services will now be ported to Switch 2 and be viable, right? The concerns are the new games that are being developed for live services are not going to work on the Switch 2 very well, right? So, in some sense, the next two or three years, they should benefit from Arpoo increases because they'll be able to access the type of content that's been successful. It's just really the ongoing support in the new games like GTA, right? GTA is

not going to Oh, there's no way. It is very unlikely that it'll be a live service on Switch 2. It's just not possible because that's nextgen only, right? Speaking of nextgen, we have Jen, what's the next topic? There were so many puns I could go with. I went with that one. What do you think? Oh, all right. All right. So, WWDC. Yeah. Okay. Yes. Yes. Yes. So, Apple rolled out its new dedicated gaming app as part of WWDC on Monday. It's called Games. So, it's a separate app. will come pre-installed on the Mac, iPhone, and iPad, and it's coming out later this year. So, it's coming out with Mac Tahoe 26. They rebranded all of the versions of the iOS system to 26. So, yay, we have consistency across the naming. So, all of this is coming this fall, which is interesting because Apple's no longer doing the, you know, we're going to have an announcement and it's going to be ready for you. And as we predicted a

couple of weeks ago, it's basically an updated game center app. So Phil Eric Seaffort reported that you are going to be able to download games from this sub app. I don't know what it is. I mean, look, at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is that we get distribution and we have some sort of distribution advantage. And so what we should care about is the number of like impressions Apple is giving us cuz that ultimately is like what we're bidding for in a sense. And so, can we get more people to look at potential games that they could download and ultimately have higher platform LTV? Like, this is what I want Apple to solve. And if all these stupid platform features, which are like 20 years too late, actually do that, then it's an actual win. And I'm not convinced of that because I'm not convinced of what this UX will be. Like, we know like the power of defaults. We know the power of small UX changes. They really need to make sure they don't screw with the ecosystem again when they launch this. That is something that makes me really nervous is that they don't know what they could break. At the event yesterday, I was asking people if they're reinstalling the SDK for Game Center and everyone was like, well,

yeah, you know, we kind of have to because, you know, Apple's asking us and it's part of this game center. They also said that when you do UA, are you driving to an install in the app store? Are you driving to an install in this game center? Yep. And so it's actually, you know, kind of neither because what happens is you when you it pulls up just the install of the page and then you download it. So this games app is really only for your current games that you own. What's the second button there in the toolbar? Arcade, right? Is that what you're talking about? No. Yeah. No. So, one of the things that I thought was interesting, I wanted to look into Mishko was like, is this a workaround for, you know, Apple to get around the new legal rules. And so, I was trying to as quickly as I could and, you know, kind of look that up and see if this was a workound. What I kind of came to the consensus was without being a lawyer is that no, the ruling says that Apple has to do this for any of the apps in the

iOS ecosystem, not the app store itself. So, I was like, "Oo, that was a really Mishka actually or somebody whoever in the Slack said it." I was like, "That's a good point." However, I kind of forgot about this. If you make under $1 million, your rev share on iOS and the Mac store is 15%. Not 30%. Cuz I totally forgot that that was a thing. So, if you're a little baby and you make under a million dollars, which is mice nuts to crest, it's only 15%. But I think the summation of all of this is that I think they're intending this to be a social feature for your existing games to try to get people to put the game center SDK back in the game to try to set up basically the old school friend system. So I'm an Xbox player and I used to see oh my friend is playing, you know, your friend thing pops up with your friend is playing Hitman or what, you know, whatever it was. I think they're just trying to do that and surface a little bit more of the 10 year ago social tech to combine things together in a way that

is I don't think anyone's going to use it still. But at least they got people to reinstall it. They have lost their way. They need to get back on track and start to create compelling products because right now, well, every single announcement is already in the market with a competitor. They were like, "Oo, you can do real time translations." Okay, Google announced that. Ooh, you can do set the background in your message app and do polls. All right. Well, WhatsApp already does that. Every single thing that they talked about as an innovation, it exists. So, riddle me this then. Like, why aren't people like slashing off prices then? Like, why aren't people taking advantage of the web store ruling? They've seen no one do this. like why are we not seeing more people cut in on the rev share? There's a little bit of a wait and see approach right now I've been told is that they want to know what's going to happen next and it's only the US so like you can't really start steering everybody outside the US as well. So that's Eric you

always say this is the most important country. This is the only one that matters when it comes to looking at the market. I mean fine there's a wait and see. They worried about Apple, right? They're just worried about what Apple's going to do. Fortnite died for this. They they died to bring this message time. Anyway, I want to finish up on this Apple event. The biggest mis thing if you actually read the coverage is that there was absolutely no mention of AI. It's what is going on at Apple three years now. They they announced this [ __ ] three years ago and it was an absolute disaster and cluster [ __ ] from the get-go on this Apple AI stuff. Well, I can't even remember the name of what they're calling it now. Apple intelligence. Apple intelligence. Right. And there was no mention of at all at this. They have missed the boat like completely and I that is almost criminal at this stage not to have some type of integrated AI within the phone that is unique that does things that nothing else can do. They have the platform they need to execute and this is like what they're missing and instead they're

doing liquid ass. I mean stop it. Stop like figure stuff out you know like it blows me away. It blows me away that this company is well that and so just the tone of it like they put this guy I don't know Craig or something forward just a plea to them to speak as real human beings when like talking to camera like it was so cringey it felt like something from 10 years ago in terms of the tone and the execution and the style of it you know I'm pretty much living in the Apple ecosystem I was like kind of embarrassed for the first time to be like wait I thought this was like the cool thing to have that I enjoy that makes my life easier. And then I feel like I'm getting left behind because my friends with Androids are like have all these features for two years now. It was the first time I'm like I I don't think I'm cool anymore. Well, that happens to me every day, especially because that's what my wife tells me is I am not cool anymore. All right, what's next? Tim Sweeney gave an interview with Game

Business Show and I thought this was really important to cover because he said some explosive stuff and it was interesting. This is the former journalist Christopher Ding was from Game Industry Biz and so he was like Tim Swing was calling him from like a blurry hotel camera. It was really bizarre. The audio came in fine and Chris had a really great interview strategy. He just kind of like laid up these questions that everyone is curious about and kind of let Tim see where he was going to steer it. And I think a lot of what we learned was things that I had suspected and had talked to people at Epic and this was their experience. There's some other like explosive strategy revelations, at least in my opinion, that I had never heard before. So, one of the things is that Fortnite is not going to have purchases for individual islands anytime soon. That was certainly something that Tim Sweeney echoed. He said that he really loved that Fortnite costumes were interoperable between islands and it's something that like Roblox is not. I guess you can overrun the Roblox costumes particular island can do that or particular experience inside of Roblox and that's what makes

it a poor deal. He thinks he can do this based on cosmetics which is a joke. He fluffed up some numbers when it came to MAU between Roblox and Fortnite. Like he looked at like the most recent highs. He talked about trying to create an epic overlay across all of these Epic Game Store experiences, which I was surprised by. We're going back to this platform interconnected stuff between different, you know, platforms now that we have crossplay. Do we need another overlay? I'm really surprised that that was mentioned. I haven't heard them make a strong play towards that. He repeats mobile as like this doom loop. you know, he goes back to what we were mentioning a couple podcasts ago with Mitch Laskkey and these leaderboards creating a lot of toxic UA behavior, but then he goes on later to talk about UGS having the same type of leaderboards and them building it. He talks about AI quite a bit. Like this is something that I've heard Epic is really skeptical of. And we heard him repeated here for the reasons that have been repeated to me, which he's worried about copyright infringement, which I find a little bizarre. But they did launch an Epic developer assist and AI

prompt tool for UFN, which I think is really positive. I'm not quite sure how they got, you know, an organic version that was licensed, but there was just so much rich information from this interview. And like we've talked about beforehand, like this is like one of the next companies up in terms of IPO for the games industry. And that's like a chance for everyone to re-evaluate how we're doing as an industry. And this company is a huge bellweather for us. You know, I love Tim. I love Tim. I love what he's done for us. But Fortnite has stagnated. And mobile hopefully is a spark for them. But I'm not sure I'm in love with what I hear, at least in this interview. He said it out loud. He's look, there's no business models for third parties on this platform, right? It is an engagement cosmetic model that basically it makes Epic a launcher for Fortnite and Epic content, right? That's what's going to do well on this platform. So, it's over. The game is over. Like, this is a launcher for Epic. This is not a platform for third party.

So, they're not going to have third party participation in this platform. Period. End of sentence. You can't do it that way. That's not way publishers make money. So game is over for them on that. Having said that and I've said I don't want to I keep repeating the same point it's not necessarily bad for Epic, right? So if Epic is building a platform to deliver this business model that is beneficiary for Epic when they have their Disney stuff and when they have their more Lego stuff and when they do more with Fortnite whatever they will benefit from it, you know, and it becomes an Epic launcher. That's what it is. So, it might actually work for them, but it limits so much more upside in terms of royalties and from third parties. Just third party. There's just going to be no interest from third parties on this thing, period. All right, what else we got? There's two new Marvel games coming. So, the first one that was announced was a fighting game called Marvel Token. I am really

surprised to see this why you would have a 2D fighter. I'm hearing things about 2KXO, which is Riots Fighter, and that this has really made them afraid. There's questions about why this versus Marvel vs. Capcom, which has kind of perfected this. The character art looks great. So, for whatever reason, that was announced recently. And there's another one coming to mobile. It's a semi-action RPG that NEI is developing called Mystic Mayhem, where you have three characters, but you're also using abilities with real-time elements. You could use Clash Royale potentially as a shorthand reference, although it's a radically different mechanic. There's that level of real-time element. And not only that, there was a confirmation, at least from IGN, that after the cancellation of Black Panther, EA is still making three three Marvel games. Wow. So, it is still a bonanza. And I'm confused because the IP has never been weaker. Like Thunderbolts returns in the box office were not good. That was not a great check-in with the MCU. So, I'm very surprised to see all these activities

going on in franchise Marvel land. Well, it's what we talk about all the time that, you know, in today's world, IP still works and still draws people in, reduces some of your, you know, CPI costs because you've got that. I mean, I think, God, I think there's something like 30 games with Marvel licenses out in the world. I don't think we're going to see a slowing of this. You know, same thing with Star Wars. I think we're going to still see IP leading with a bunch of games. Yeah. I don't know. These actually these two games, the Marvel games look actually pretty good. None of this is shovelware. This is really high quality product. All of them. Maybe gaming takes over as a good representation of the IP since Disney seems to be screwing it up every single year from an entertainment standpoint. Yeah. I mean, yeah. So, I don't know. We'll carry the torch for a while until Disney gets their act together. I don't know. So, one last check-in before we leave. And I was really surprised to see this not just announced, but it looks like it's launched. Although, we'll see

next week if I got this one wrong, but it appears that Whittle Defender, which we had checked in a couple weeks ago from Habby, has launched. I was really surprised to see this. This is the one where you have characters in the center of a map, very similar to a game called The Tower, which has been scaling for a number of years now, and you're choosing abilities as waves of enemy come enemies come towards you. So imagine taking survivor.io and really moving the agency to move around but still keeping a lot of those rogike abilities. I was super high on the game. But I was surprised to see them get this out the door this quickly. It would actually been in pre-registration for a little bit. So one quick excuse is just to check it back in with happy like why they chose to hit the go button on this which I was surprised by because both Cappy Bear Go and Archer 2 are in a really good place. They have hit, I would argue, equilibrium when it comes to at least daily active users. And we see revenue starting to flatline as well. And they're looking like a group pair of games that are going to do around 600 million at least just in net IP revenue with ads thrown on top. And so this

company, as we were talking about, is getting very close to getting on the top 20 publisher lists globally and looks like it might be heading towards a billion dollar in in run rate. So surprised to hit the go button on this so quickly. The fatoule is a disaster. I just don't understand how they shift this. I think it's because their timing. So, so the key issue is like the length of the levels. And because you don't have real-time elements, I think the length is maybe the same as like in our Cherro room, but remember you're going through 40 different rooms in Archer. And this might have a similar length, but because you're not moving, it feels like it's going much slower. And so the first Fatoule levels, normally you'd want quick feedback for the player. You want to establish the loop. And you really had to sit there for I would argue what maybe three or four minutes while waves of enemies were coming at you and you can't 2x or 3x until the third or fourth battle. I I was surprised to see them like make a choice like that. Usually they're pretty good at getting these metas out the door. The monetization doesn't feel as strong right now. I expected to be hit with a lot more passes. This is one of the marquee things heavy does that people

should really look at is that they had a lot of recurring monthly passes that are annuities. So, I get a bundle of gems delivered to me every single day by paying an upfront price. Like, annuities are something that they've really put back on the table, but I still see very few people like pursuing the happy meta or incorporating elements from that. The emphasis on leaderboards as big in Archer 2, like literally just straight up ranking power score. They've just been refining this meta over and over again, and people start learning from them. And I think they'll do it again with Widow Defender, but this is such a bizarre launch that I have, you know, heart palpitations from Squad Busters. Yeah, this is like shift something out the door. And look at they've done other games like SSS Snaker, which I, you know, probably wasn't in a place that they were ready to jump 300 million in, but they're like, "Hey, let's just shove it out. We can take more shots on goal when we have this meta established." Watching some gameplay again. I'm just struck by art style and what's the other one? Kingshot that we talk about. Yeah, we haven't gotten into a full conversation about that. That is another very interesting game. That's part of

the 4X meta. Oh my god, I've been playing that game. Non-stop Kingshot. Oh, I'm Yeah, I'm even spending money on that. It's like I have to admit though, it is kind of a poor man's Forex game. It's not like as egregious as other Forex games. Hab's done an exceptional job. Those guys are crushing it right now. Yeah, I think there is something to God, the change in the art style and what is appropriate for what we would call a midcore game. you know, they're using this like super cute, casual, bright art style. Don't forget that they invented the term hyper casual. Like Archer was the original hyper casual. Like that was one of the first DOF articles. You go back and listen to it. Still very insightful. So I think like they get marketing, they get meta, and that's the secret to a lot of this, like combining those two things on mobile. I do. I mean, I remember playing Survivor R. And I'm like, "Oh, this is like super easy." And then the next thing I know, I was in the deepest monetization pit

optimizing all of my gear, you know, in 10 different slots. And I was like, "Oh, wow." Like, I've just entered, you know, a deep midcore game. And And this looks cute. This looks like a I shouldn't use the word cute. I mean, it is visually cute, but looks like you've got some, you know, rogike with three characters on the screen, enemy waves coming at you. You know, I imagine you optimize the hell out of all your slots. Very easy to make a meta around this. Very easy to do roambo elemental damage rock paper scissors shoot. Like they have the right elements here. And remember it's passive gameplay which opens up a lot of opportunities. Like for instance to have the auto play to have the 5x 4x 10x speed booster. This is my kind of game dude. You don't have to do nothing. Just does. It plays itself you know I don't have to like move around the screen or worry about being all stressed out about arcade [ __ ] Yeah. What I didn't like about Survivor IO is you're moving around the screen and you could be playing for 20 minutes and then the session lengths were insane there too. I guess that's another great point, Jen, is they didn't even break it up like

Archer at least has like almost exit points naturally between rooms where you're selecting abilities. But surro.io is brutal. Yeah. No, I would like just throw the my phone because I would die 20 minutes in and I'm like, "Oh, you assholes." like you that's the thing that I don't know gets me as a player is that I have now wasted my time and died and I guess that's where you know have monetization because you just let me pay and I don't die but no this is cute this is but I just think that we should do a little more around I should talk to Stan at Beta what is going on with this art style you know just dominating for midcore games you imagine 10 years ago going to dude like hardcore gamers and being like, "Hey, yeah, is this art style for you?" Everyone would be like, "No, that's for like an 8-year-old." But it just seems to really I don't know. I wonder what's going on. I don't I don't think it's that bad. I mean, they kind of look like Tech Dudes or Tech Tech dudes like little thumbs. I

don't remember what you're talking What are you talking about? Tech dudes. Oh, Tech Tech. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that was a great toy line back in the day. Tech was the skateboards, not the Yeah, but those they look both look like Thumbs. The Whittle. Yeah, because you because you played with the idea was that you played with this kid. Look at you with that toy reference. I'm digging this, Phil. I had a childhood at one point. I experienced this. No, that's a good one. No. Yeah. I don't know. Like I think there's a some sort of shift going on in the appeal of different themes and IP. That is making me super curious. Anyway, thank you everyone and we will see you next week. You did it. You made it to the end of the episode. As a fan of the show, you help us out. Subscribe of your choice. Those stars and likes.