TWIG #387: LiftOff IPO, Xbox pulls out the bangers, and The Simpsons take over Monopoly GO!

Where the [ __ ] is Mario? Why is Mario not even been announced or even alluded to? Dude, the stock would be up like 20% if they just said that Mario was coming.
They haven't come out with a 3D Mario in gajillion years. You know, they don't have their main IP in the pipeline. [music] Hello and welcome Twig 387. I'm Ethan Levy with my new monikers given to me by Mishka, the grandmaster of Gotachcha, Duke of Design. This week, we've pulled deep deep into the bench, deep into the waiver wire, and recruited me [laughter] like a past his prime quarterback to host this week's episode. I'm back and today I have an allstar cast while Mishka and Phil live it up in AIA and Jen I hope is getting some vacation. But joining me today are
Eric Crest, strategy and investing.

So much energy, Eric. Come on. [laughter]
I'll bring it for both of us. Eric, don't worry. You've got me, Laura Trencher, Energy Puzzle Product Queen,
and Josh Chandley, resident growth operator.
All right. And on this week's episode, we've got a big summer GamesFest week. We're talking the Liftoff IPO. We're talking Monopoly Dough. Monopoly goes big summer crossover with The Simpsons. We're talking Apple culling apps on the App Store. Uh big showcases out of Xbox and Nintendo. And of course, the announcement of Paramount Games. But uh before we get started, Laura, it is the summer of Minecraft here in the Levy household. Each kid gets two 30 minute screen time cards per day, and it is Minecraft, Minecraft, Minecraft. I am watching Preston plays every morning while I make breakfast. The kids are playing Minecraft on Nintendo Switch 2, Minecraft Dungeons on the PS5. And my

son got into big trouble the other night because after bedtime, I caught him under the covers. He had stolen a Switch, too. He nearly lost screen time for the summer, but he was trying to sneak some Minecraft after bed. So, I guess thank you for the childcare assist, but also like, wow, does Minecraft have its hooks deep into my family right now.
Oh my gosh, a kid willing to lose Minecraft, like get in trouble for Minecraft just to play one session. That's like the highest engagement saved that I could ever ask for. And you get to enforce the cool down timer for that, which is even better. [laughter]
30 minutes, dude. Two 30 minute sessions, dude. That's cruel. They should.
That's cruel and unusual, dude. That is insane, dude. My kids would have died if that was all they got. That's nuts, dude.
Well, when they wear us down by the end of the day, sometimes they get some extra. Lately, we've been watching Beast Games, which is actually really fun,

mindless entertainment. I'm surprised at how much I actually like Beast Games. It's a good show
where they go through obstacle courses.
It's the big budget Amazon one that's like Squid Games with Mr. Beast.
Oh, right. Right. Got it.
It's well done. It's made me realize Mr. Beast just does reality shows. Like today we watched a Love Island from Mr. Beast. It's I don't know. I felt my brain rotting. Before we get started, there's one correction Jen shared from last week. Crest, I'm not sure what you said, but the it was about uh the story was that Bond, the CEO of IO, pushed back that the game cost 200 million to make. He said that figure included marketing, future performance bonuses, and all those things. And also that the game sold 2.7 million to maybe three million copies already. So off to a pretty strong start.
At still at 200 million, you still need like six to eight million units at full price to like break even. So it's still a tall climb. So at even at two and 2.7 in the first few weeks, it's still going

to be profitable, but it's not that profitable. I guess it's not as big of a success. So we'll see how it continues to do. Yeah, pretty good for a a Bond game with no movie to support it, I'd say.
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analytics, and so much more. If you're serious about running live services in a game, get serious about the tools you use. Connect with Roy Labs and make some serious cheese with your live ops. All right, let's start it off with our big market story, the Liftoff IPO. So, from routers, Blackstone backed Liftoff Mobile raised 437 million in the US initial public offering. The Redwood City, California based company sold 19 million shares and priced its offering at $23 per share, above the target range of 20 to 22. And when I was working on the script earlier this morning, pre-market, it was sitting at just under $27 uh share. So Laura, can you can you give us some context here?
For those of us who don't live and breathe marketing, which I I admit is me. I needed a refresher on what these who these companies were. So Liftoff is the Liftoff and Fungal merger, which I completely forgot. It was Blackstone backed in 2021, and they run both demand

and supply side. For us, not in UA, they help advertisers buy users and help publishers monetize inventory. Worth mentioning their AI engine, Cortex, which was rolled out in 2023. It's cited as the reason for the acceleration of growth. And then other things that came up when I was looking at this, there's a discrepancy, not discrepancy, but there wasn't an equal matching between their private valuation and the public IPO. And the private valuation was at 4.3 billion versus the IPO, which was at 3.83, which is it's not an insignificant difference. There was note that it was more than half their revenue comes from outside gaming. I found that interesting and I was like, I'm going to bring this to the pod and see what the experts have to say. All right, so let's throw it to our expert Josh, where does Lift Off sit within the ecosystem? And what impact, if any, will this have on the mobile game industry? And to Laura's question, like, do we know their split on games versus apps inventory? We do kind of know their split. It's kind of interesting. So it depends how you look at it. So first, just positioning like where does Liftoff sit in the industry?

You know, we talk about App Leven and Unity a lot. Relative to them, Liftoff is more on the edge of our ecosystem. And this is what Laura was talking about. They're becoming a specialist of putting non-gaming ads inside games. So more than half of their ad dollars, like the demand, like the actual ads you see flowing in, are from non-gaming, but they're still being shown in 2/3 gaming. And that's actually part of the industry that's growing the fastest. But like their SDK footprint is is mostly still in games back from the Vunggle days. That draws the comparison to AppL whose [clears throat] non-gaming business is also, you know, exploding upwards. But Liftoff isn't Apploven's mini me. If anything, it's potentially Apploven's prey. Liftoff is still like an ad network [clears throat] operating inside Apploven's max ecosystem. So, it's bidding for impressions in AppLin's

platform. And so, there's just not much defensibility there when you're doing business in your direct competitor's platform. And not only that, but they're growing by showing non-gaming ads inside mostly games. And that's where Appven is growing the fastest. That leaves Liftoff feeling maybe a little exposed, which may be why we saw them be early adopters of Cloud X. So my read, you know, impressive execution, really good leadership, but Liftoff has to collide with Applvin at some point. I guess the background here is they they tried to go public in January at $30 a share. So the IPO was actually priced at 23% haircut, but also they tried to sell themselves before the IPO, the first IPO. So as Laura said, the valuation was lower than the private market. But the big warning sign here and the super like financial engineering from Blackstone is that in

September of last year they declared a 2.75 a share dividend which basically gave money to the Blackstone shareholders and laden them with debt. So this is like a typical PE like dividend recap type thing and it allows Blackstone to monetize on their investment before the IPO and it basically puts the company in a worse situation as they go public. Right? So in essence, they get paid out their investment and then the shareholders become like the ones that are taking most of the risk at the IPO and this $357 million that they raised on the IPO is going to go to pay down the debt that they raised in order to pay themselves, right? So it's like it's not illegal, just to be clear, but maybe it should be, you know, like type thing. I don't know. So for me personally, this is a little bit scary of a transaction. And not to mention exactly what Josh had said is that, you

know, they're competing against the 5,000B gorilla like directly, you know, with Apploven. They have a lockup that ends in 6 months, so shareholders can sell at that point. And they have a [ __ ] ton of debt. I think they're at$1.8 $8 billion in debt partially to purchase Bungle but also because Blackstone you know sold out right early. So personally I would not invest in this company. I would just buy the BTI. So my warning to you um they are growing so that's good. You know they seem to be have a good product but yeah it's pretty scary setup in my view.
Got it. Well, speaking of billionaires and financial engineering, let's talk about a collision between cartoonishly rich characters Mr. Monopoly and Mr. Burns. All right, so The Simpsons are taking over Monopoly Go. Monopoly D is the big summer event. So, from our friends at mobile gamer.biz, The Simpsons crossover takes place June 3rd

to July 29th and features all the familiar characters and locations you'd expect, plus lots of hidden details, deep cut references, and Easter eggs, says Scopely. Licenser Hasbro is earning over 40 million per quarter from the game. Scopi said in January that Monopoly Go generates roughly 200 million per month. And prior to that, co-CEO Javier Ferreria said in March 2025 that Scope spent over 1 billion on marketing this title. So, I wanted to talk about this event for a few reasons. I've been playing the event. I'm working on a Tower of Want article about it. I'm going to post on LinkedIn pretty soon. This game is just a smooth, focused dopamine machine. I avoided it for a long time, but if you pick it up for this Monopoly Simpsons event, one, the execution is fantastic, and two, it's obvious from even just 20 minutes of play why this game is a monster. It nails a simple mechanic with deep progression for a casual game. So, Laura, what are your thoughts on this

sort of massive two-month event? In your experience, can a live casual leaning game sustain interest like this over the long term? And is there something here nonIP games can learn from or is it really only possible to do this sort of mega event when you have a temp pole IP like the Simpsons?
Because you went back and looked at your assessment early on. I had to go back and look at what I said about Monopoly go and thankfully I think I was hesitant. I didn't make a call on whether it would overpass Coin Master but I did assert it would be Scopy's business biggest casual game in their portfolio. So to have like an opinion on this I had to understand better what it was. So, I didn't know initially whether it was going to be a separate ad or actually when I first looked at I was like, "Oh, they must be showing the episodes in game." And I was wrong in both counts. Based on my research, I needed to like get a picture of what this thing was. So, it's a 4 to 5 minute piece from what they're going to show for Simpsons that lives on YouTube. And again, my initial thought was it was in game, but it's more of a promotional piece that lives outside the game. It is

produced by the Simpsons team. And while separate, it appears there are animated sequences. There are sequences in game that players experience moving between the episodes every two weeks. So there is a tieback that's going to be important. It seems like they pre-created like a pod containing the IP zone production studio kind of like a live ops vendor that we use in mobile which I thought was quite clever. Most games like when you think about when I when we build IP games or at least when I built when I've been tangent to IP games we usually they borrow game assets directly. They'll be like oh I want this IP here we want to take your take the assets from the media the brand library. Here's what you're allowed to use. here's what you're not allowed to use and instead scope is hiring seems to be hiring the creative team connected to the content which I think is brilliant. I feel like if we're going to talk about like step change iterations in terms of how we work with IPs this seems like a great idea with the YouTube angle they're meeting the audience on the platform people already are watching on. So instead of trying to like capture it they're like oh we're you're already there we're going to be there and then we're going to create a tiein to the

game. It's original storytelling, original content, and matched in-game events. I feel like a new play should be interconnectedness, and that's like times 10 in this.
There's a complete UI takeover. Like all the properties are Simpsons properties. All the little interactions have become Simpsons interaction. So, you're not always playing in a Simpsons location. The nature of the app changed completely to be very Simpsonsy for this whole event.
I think that's perfect. I feel like that is if you're going to do it, do it big, do it well. And why is this a good move? So, Monopoly Go, it is a great game. It doesn't really have a story, and I mean, lots of games don't have stories, but I feel like this is a perfect way to use narrative as like a reactivation lever and a retention lever without having to change the whole game. They found another way to do it via kind of like a special event to me, which is perfect. Now, it's not a first. There was a crossover with Fortnite in 2025. This is what they're trying. So, it worked in Fortnite. So now they're trying it in a different type of genre, which I also think is a good test. And lastly, since

EA killed tapped out, The Simpsons hasn't really had a dedicated home in mobile gaming. So those fans that are like, "Wish I could play a game that had the IP I love, they're going to have a home with Monopoly Go for 8 weeks." And I feel like, so all in all, I feel like this is a thumbs up. I wish I'd thought of it myself.
And Josh, from a UA perspective, what are your thoughts on this sort of mega two-monthlong event? Can it serve as a foundation for sustained activations and reactivations of players? Or are we going to find would you predict diminishing returns over the course of the two months as they're running Simpsons Creative alongside this Simpsons in-game activation?
First, one question for Laura. Was that in June 2 last year?
I don't remember the month. I know it was in 2025.
Okay. I'm just wondering if it's like a seasonal thing, but yeah. Like what is this? This is like for UA. This is re-engagement candy. This is like super interesting novel content. You can't really see exactly how they're

running the UA, but when you look at the top creatives, a lot of the CTAs are literally like come back now, which means this is this is at least in large part like them trying to go back and find players that aren't playing but were spending and pull them back into the game with something super novel. The creative execution is amazing. I love the Monopoly man by the Pennybags, whatever his name is, with the Simpsons skin like fighting Mr. Burns and just saying ridiculous stuff. I'm kind of jealous of the people working on that. That must be a lot of fun right now, [laughter]
right?
I want to make my childhood characters fight. That looks really fun. Although, I bet the collaboration with two IP holders is probably pretty stressful. But, you know, overall, the indicators look really good early on. It's too early to see revenue impacts, but downloads are already up by a third. So, this is doing something and this could definitely sustain. When you think about

trying to drive habituation from a UA point of view, we usually think about retaining for 30 to 45 days and that starts to create habituation, which means a two-monlong kind of campaign where you can run these kind of creatives. It works. And speaking of having fun, you know, Crest, in addition to their IP, there's a celebrity campaign featuring voices of Harry Shear, Will Frell, Jason Mimoa, Chris Pratt, and Kiki Palmer. What's your take on that? Is an effective use of marketing budget or just marketing people having fun?
You know, every time I see these type of things, I just know I've been in those rooms where these marketing people are havinging fever dreams about doing these type of activities. Like this is like this is their catnip, dude. This is their cocaine, you know, their heroin, right? They could justing have cart blanc do whatever the they want, get whatever person they want, build this insane things. Having said that, this seems like a really good execution, [laughter] right? This like this feels like a good

thing. It looks like the numbers are actually starting to go up both on downloads and revenue to some degree to bring people back. And the theme resonates, I think, with, you know, older people that are likely playing Monopoly Go with the Simpsons. Now, the use of some of these Will Ferrell and all this other stuff. Is it just voice or is it images as well? I didn't see
like Harry Shear and Will Frell is definitely voice and then the others I think are appearing in creative.
I don't want to be a Scopely fanboy, but look, they're doing what they need to do in order to get people back in the game and spend money and do it profitably. A billion dollars in marketing costs over life of this game is insane. But let the marketing people have their fever dreams, dude. [laughter] Let them let them have their cocaine and their heroin and
let them eat cultur. It's going to be fun cuz they only just in the last week they only just found out which creatives are scaling
and now they have another month and a half to figure that out, build more, launch, learn and they get to do this

their own little live op event for the next like month or so. So yeah, I bet they're having fun.
I think we're all a positive on Monopoly dough. Hats off to the team at Scopely. Let's move on to another story. Apple may remove some apps from the app store. So, this is from TechCrunch just posted today. Apple is warning developers that some of their apps may not be able to call the app store home forever. In the newly refreshed guidelines released this week, the tech giant said it may be removing apps in certain well-established categories if they're not updated, improved, or attracting customers. So, Josh, it seems like this could be a response to just an increase in the glut of apps on the app store thanks to AI coding tools and no signs that that will slow down. If anything, it will just increase in exponentially the number of apps on the app store. So do you think this will have an impact on the larger ecosystem?
Maybe. But I think the larger ecosystem it we already behave pretty responsibly. You know, even when you think about the hybrid casual developers like like Voodoo and Homa who are launching a lot

of apps and testing and handling that, they're also generally pulling those off of the app store and kind of handling that pretty well. This is really about the AI coding thing. This is a hard counterpoint to the narrative that AI coding is like a near-term threat to businesses like Voodoo who thrive on volume. You know, new app submissions are up 75% year-over-year with these tools. Are we seeing those apps hit top grossing or top, you know, downloaded charts? No. Instead, what we're seeing is Apple announcing new policies to deal with lowquality apps. You know, it sounds like quality is becoming more and more of an issue as volume increases.
I read a little bit further in this and this is being called the fart app rule [laughter] where
they're actually not focusing on games at all. They're actually removing lowquality apps that are copying existing apps like drinking games, Kama Sutra, fart and burp apps. Like these lowquality things are just basically

replicating what's already out there. This actually is kind of probably going after more of the vibe coding like you know like AI slop [ __ ]
Okay, vibe coding is great.
It's easier than ever just to scrape an APK, run it through AI and make your own version very quickly. I don't think that's necessarily a creative or incremental to the industry. The challenge even doing that is you have to actually live operate whatever you're doing and AB test and learn and then run the UA properly. And so if you watch some of the bottom of the charts, you are seeing a lot of small games pop a little bit, not be able to do that and disappear. And that cycle at the bottom is happening a little bit faster, but it's very hard to measure.
When I read this this morning, my first thought was, well, that's one way to improve discoverability, albeit a very, very slow way. [laughter]
Let's move on to something with a little more substance. We had a lot of summer showcases in the past week. Last week we covered Sony. So today, let's set our

sights on Xbox and Nintendo. So starting with Xbox from game industry.biz. Asha Sharma commits to resetting Xbox, prioritizing exclusivity, and addressing AI in new strategy. So last Sunday, Xbox pulled out the bangers for their summer game showcase. Clockwork Revolution and Gears of War Eday are console exclusives. They showed Spyro's return. a Persona 4 revival and Persona 6, which I think Laura and I are both pretty excited about as JRPG gamers. Wolong 2 Resonance A Plague Tale Legacy is Day One. Game Pass exclusives, Minecraft Dungeons 2 coming this September, much to the delight of the Levy Clan, and Agent Carter herself, Haley Atwell, is Fable's Big Bad, as well as announcing the impending release for Halo Campaign Evolved. So, this was an event chalk full of red meat for gamers. In an interview reported on by Gamesustry.biz, is CEO Asha Chararma is quoted as saying, "My mandate is not a 30% accountability margin. It's not enterprise software margins. It's to be

the number one gaming and entertainment company, and that's what we're going to do." And pointing to rising memory costs and storage costs making this hardware cycle intrinsically different than all those that came before it. Okay, Chris, I'm going to throw you. What was your reaction to this slate of announcements? And what does it say about the course Asharm is charting for the Xbox brand? Well, first of all, I have to say that everything that they are announcing over the last few months has been remarkably positive, right? Um, [laughter]
now obviously with the exception of the fact they hired a bunch of tech bros and they hired Mr. Metverse Whisperer, like besides those facts, right?
Great head of hair on that Matthew Ball. I'm jealous every time I see his head shot pop up.
He's like He's like 5'2, right?
I might make that trade. I don't know.
It's only 58 for the hair. [laughter] Anyway, I I I think they're making a lot of like really kind of no-brainer decisions and decisions I would have made and I suggested like many times on the podcast is that in essence they are doing right now what they should have

been doing all along is trying to compete directly against Sony and Nintendo, right? So, first they reduce cost of game pass. Nobrainer. They increased it too much. They lost a [ __ ] ton of millions of subscribers. They said this makes sense. And they also removed Call of Duty from Game Pass, which never [ __ ] made sense from the get-go, right? But now the value of the Game Pass is a lot lower because Call of Duty is not there. But, you know, they they got to work that out, figure that out. They announced exclusives. Now, it's only two, but they did the Clockwork and Gears of War are now exclusives to Xbox. And ironically, they had some old key art in some of the materials that had a PS5 logo on it, and so they had to pull it almost immediately off a podcast, right? And a quote from Chararma says, "To succeed as a platform, we must offer exclusive content and services. And we are looking at this closely." No [ __ ] duh. Okay? Like what have I been saying for like years? I've been saying this. This is absolute [ __ ] of them bringing their

[ __ ] to PS5. Okay? It's praise be based on what I said when I saw this. I mean, finally, they need platform exclusives. Fable, Forza, and all the rest of the content needs to move up fully platform and go exclusives. Period. End of sentence. Right. The Clear Green hardware was really cool for their 25th anniversary. That was a harking back to ages ago. I thought that was very, very cool. I think that was wellreceived. And then the other thing is that they announced that Project Helix, they're relooking at it in terms of cost of hardware and they're considering OEM manufacturers for Xbox. That's all good news because they're basically not abandoning hardware, which is would be really really stupid in my humble opinion, right? Which is kind of what they were implying before, like, oh, we don't need hardware. We got iPhones, whatever. Idiotic, right? Okay. But the biggest surprise and this is actually if true is a gamecher in my view and I don't think people really appreciate that being restricted to 30% margins to be competitive against the rest of the

organization is huge hindrance to their ability to compete directly against Sony and Nintendo. And that was the issue that was rumored and most likely true for my checks during the previous administration at Xbox. And so if they're not restricted by the 30% margin, they can use that money and reinvest in actually making a competitive platform against Sony and Nintendo. That is a huge unlock that like I can't even begin to tell you how big that is if true. And if Karma says it's true, then it must be true. And so she's giving a lot more leeway to make the investments required. Now we still have the long-term platform strategy is still a big question mark. you know, whether or not they're going to implement [ __ ] advertising and additional models that don't make any sense in gaming. And the biggest thing is that they don't have anybody in that whole organization besides Booty that knows how to manage creatives, right? So, they have this absolutely massive slate in the next 6

to 12 months, but after that fact, they need to figure out what to do with Minecraft, what to figure do with all the rest of their IPs and actually do it and create something that's competitive, right? But she has definitely reset the narrative. She's doing an exceptional job on the PR, but she's clearly has not fixed this business, right? We haven't fixed [ __ ] yet, right? Cuz when GTA comes out and 80% of the sales are going to be on PlayStation, dude, they [ __ ] lost. Okay, so they have a long way to go, but so far so good and they're doing a great job.
On the Minecraft thing, the really crazy stat this week, there was an Linia Analytics. What was it? It was like the biggest PlayStation games by copy sold. And in May, the number two selling game on the PlayStation was Minecraft with 788,000 units estimated by Lineia Analytics. Like there's an ever growing evergreen supply. New babies born turn into new Minecraft babies.
Okay, but that's a false narrative because it's like $5, right? And so like that that's it doesn't drive any

revenue. It's not it's it's not
not just popular, the second most popular on the platform this many decades into its life. The other crazy one was GTA 5 was number five on the platform. Like, who is out there buying new copies of GTA 5? That just
you got to replay the story.
Well, I will just close out our Minecraft section by saying for Laura that Minecraft Dungeons 2 is certain to be on Santa's list in the leave house later this year.
Noted. You'll be the first person I tap on the shoulder.
Okay. Over to the house of Mario already celebrating a big summer with Super Mario Galaxy's $1 billion box office hole. They closed out this week of big console game news with their Nintendo Direct. We had an Ocarina of Time remake and Kingdom Hearts 4 as the big headlines out of a packed Nintendo Direct that included Star Fox's return getting a demo already available. Uh Nintendo Sports Resorts and a new Xenolade game and plenty of core gamer games making their way to the Switch 2, including Space Marine 2, Fantasy

Residence, Devil May Cry, Onim Musha, Lords of the Fallen 2, Lies of Pee, and much more. And for me, Rhythm Heaven Groove is the one I'm personally looking forward to. I love those Rhythm Heaven games, and I'm excited that my kids are old enough to share this one. Laura, what excited you from the Nintendo Direct?
A big Zelda fan, even though I'm terrible at it. They're slowly remaking all of the Zelda games, so I keep waiting to see which one's going to drop next. To be honest, I was I didn't see Piccopia 2, which was a big disappointment, but that's okay. I'm still
DLC announced, I think.
I [laughter] know. But the games I'm actually looking forward to as you and I like JRPGs. I'm hoping the Final Fantasy 7 last installment is going to be bigger cuz I think they saw if I remember correctly they were the second installment was a little bit more lackluster than the first. I always feel like with Nintendo I wish they were doing more and while I'm happy for what they're doing, I wish they were working faster.
What franchise do you miss the most? Another Pikmin.
You know, I didn't finish Pikmin 4. The game I have been most sucked into has been Piccopia. And I do not play Pokemon

games. Like this is the Poke. So this I'm not the IP, but I was the Animal Crossing fan. And they I'm convinced they took sounds from the Zelda Breath of the Wild Tears of the Kingdom game for the cooking into Popia. So that that was their way to expand the audience. Does it sound familiar? Yes, because this is what they took from the cooking in in those games and put it into into that game. I'm leaning more cozy and I think that's just nature of how busy things have been,
right? The only thing that's tough is I think about the time investment in some of these games. I made a joke on my Instagram that with the new Ocarina of Time, goodbye 100 hours. And then I was like, where on earth am I going to get 100 hours from? It
would take me a full year of gaming to like catch up on Zelda.
You guys are burying the [ __ ] lead here, okay? Like where the [ __ ] where the is Mario, okay? Like why is Mario not even been announced or even alluded to? Dude, the stock would be up like 20% if they just said that Mario was coming. They haven't come out with a 3D Mario in gajillion years, you know? And this is

killing the stock. The stock is getting destroyed, right? Because they don't have their main IP in the pipeline. And every single time they keeping missing that and they and they almost I mean obviously it's intentional in a way. The Ocarina of Time was actually a remake was cool. Kingdom Hearts was actually a surprise. That's an amazing game and that should do extremely well. But dude, they got to come out with a 3D Mario, right? They have to have that tentpole title for this hardware, right? They just have to and they should do it within like the first two years. Now it's at least a three years probably because it's certainly not coming out this year.
Why hasn't it come? I'm
sure they feel the pressure.
Donkey Kong was made by the same team and I think they likely couldn't split up the teams. I'll say this again is that they are moving from standard definition to HD and the amount of development required to build an HD game is far higher than the amount for a low res game and so they may be feeling that a little bit you know in terms of like the team sizes and their ability to

actually execute. So
I would imagine what you're saying Chris is exactly what's probably taking them so long. whatever Mario they're going to release is going to be the Mario game for Switch 2 and not Kart, not talking about Kart, but it has to be good. And if their core team was on Donkey Kong, that means they didn't find another team that was necessarily working on it or they didn't want to punt it to that team, whatever. If it was me running that portfolio, I can't launch the next platform or the next innovation that comes after Wonder to like it has to be it has to reach and hit all the expectations that every player that's playing Switch 2 has. So I I would feel the pressure of making sure that game was not only innovative, it was everything every player was wanting to partially maybe a bit to justify Switch 2 and more. And I would not be surprised if in a retrospective we saw that that project had restarted once or twice, maybe three times.
The stock's down 50%. They had record hardware sales for a launch of a console in a price competitive market. It's poor governance. It's poor management at this point, right? that they don't have more

temple titles available for this console or announced.
Maybe we'll see a uh uh Mario Odyssey 2 coming out with Nintendo Switch 2 Pro coming out with the next Mario movie all at once. Ultimate marketing synergy year of Mario 2029.
Dude, Nintendo doesn't roll like that, dude.
Josh, what about you? What did you see that you like?
Man, I'm just looking forward to playing Star Fox again. It's that simple for me. when they saw Super Mario Galaxy came home and were super excited about Star Fox. They were talking, didn't know who he was before, talking about him at the dinner table. Attention app and game developers, the difference between scaling and failing comes down to one thing, intelligence. Sensor Tower delivers the ultimate competitive edge that separates market leaders from the forgotten. Their platform doesn't just show you what's happening across global app stores. It reveals why it's happening and what to do about it. Need to crack new markets?

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Unless you've been living under a rock, you know this is web store rumbringer. 70% of top apps are using a web store and the best ones, they're doing it with app charge. Do you want a $20,000 inapp purchase? Yeah, app charge does that. How about using web- based Apple Pay checkout? Yeah, Appch charge does that. Do you want to pretend that subscriptions are still a viable monetization strategy for games? Yeah, Appch charge even lets you do that. Look, these guys are backed by Supercell, Moon Active, and Play Tikka. They get what high average revenue per paying customer means, and they're already doing over half a billion dollar in transactions a year. So, are you

going to be the first to do a $20,000 AP? Don't accept microtransactions. Embrace macrotransactions. Learn more at appcharge.com. Uh, next big story, last big story of the week, and then maybe we'll have a little bit of time for rumors. All about Paramount's new gaming division. So, this one I'm pulling from Game File, the excellent substack by Steven Tatillo. So, Paramount unveiled the Paramount game script with the announcement of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin coming from my personal fan favorite beat him up studio, Platinum Games. They also announced Star Trek Shadow Frontier from the Blubber team who's done a bunch of great horror games. They also showed Avatar Legends, the fighting game. There's a previously announced Avatar RPG, Marvel 1943 Rise of Hydra, plus an untitled Star Wars game, both coming from industry luminary Amy Henik's team, and an unannounced game from the team behind Walking Dead Saints and Sinners. I'm quoting the Game File interview. Paramount Game Group's big franchise priorities will invite

titles tied to what Kilson called their big four. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Spongebob, Star Trek, and Avatar the Last Air Bender. They also have access to Mission Impossible, Top Gun, South Park, Yellowstone, Survivor, Scream, Door of the Explorer, Paw Patrol, all potentially source material for future games. I have to say, in the era of Friends slop, Survivor is an excellent pallet to paint a Friendlop game on. I think that is underused in gaming than in other reality TV shows. All right, I'll throw to you Josh. Josh, as the marketing voice this week, what's your response here? Does an IP focused console and PC play make sense given the economics of modern AAA gaming?
I have no idea. It is so hard to measure that even now, even on mobile. Looking at it on console and PC, it boggles the mind for me. I'm going to do a little roleplay here because I think we can all use our Crest AI agent to write the Crest AI rant. The Twig rant. We all know what it sounds like, but we all

know the real Eric Crest, the nice one we meet at industry events that everyone's surprised by. So, what positive signs does real Eric see with this leadership team, with this slate, with this mandate?
There's no such thing as a real Eric Crest. It's just it is what it is. How about this? I think these guys drafted almost the perfect press release. I mean, they did an amazing job of marketing this particular announcement, but the reality behind it, not so good. And obviously, the track record of media companies getting into interactive has been an absolute train wreck over and over and over and over again. So, what I will say is they have access to some amazing IP and some relatively strong IP for gaming. So, I can understand the strategy, but it all comes down to execution and having the right teams to build the right products, right? And so, from what I see, all they have is like

two teams. One has that only has shipped VR titles and the other one that's been in development for like seven years and has yet to ship anything at all. So Marvel 1943 has been in development since 21. It slipped from early 26 to no date as far as I could tell. The Star Wars game is even further off. And then TMT game is a third party deal, right? So it's not in-house developments. I think this is like kind of an ambitious plan and an ambitious reorganization but like with very little actual output record at all. So it's like basically Hasbro has been building internal game development capability for maybe seven or eight years, right? I think they spent over a billion dollars to date on their four studios and they have shipped nothing. Nothing with the exception of MTG Arena, which is the one win that they've had, right? Everything else has been licensed that's been successful. Monopoly, Balders's Gate, etc. So I

think just in general like interactive is a very very tough for movie people and people that want to build interactive content don't want to work for movie companies and it's just the same old issue that's been around the last 30 [ __ ] years and it hasn't really changed. Even Amy Henneck, who is a beloved out there, and she is an absolute amazing game developer, right? She's now made a game in 15 years since Drake's Deception in 2011, right? She moved to the Star Wars EA project, which got cancelled, and now she moved to this. And so, this shit's hard. Like, you need to invest in the right people and the right teams in order to build this stuff. And it's expensive, and a lot of these movie studios just don't have the the taste for it. So,
Amen, Eric. Amen. [laughter] Again, this is a really well-crafted thing. We were part of the PR spin with Mishka's interview, but the proof is in the pudding, dude. Like, let's make some games that are successful with the teams that you got
on the third party teams. They did draft

two really successful, wellrespected teams that ship. You know, Platinum Games, I love them from Bayonetta. They did great with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles beat him up. They've done a a Kora beat him up and others. So, I have high hopes for this Teenage Mut Ninja Turtle game. Blubber did great with Silent Hill 2 and Blair Witch in addition to their original IPs like Observer and Kronos: The New Dawn. So, there's not a lot of third-party studios to choose from in this era of extreme consolidation. And I think they chose great ones,
right? True. That's the other challenge is there's like no third party studios left, right? What are the Silent Hill guys doing for these guys? Do you know? Um, they're doing a Star Trek horror game, which I think
God, Star Trek is a tough license, though. It's just for dorks like me. You know, it's like
old people.
It's a big big audience. Lot lots of people will be interested. All right, Laura. I I know you're much more than the puzzle queen. You're also a core gamer like I keep alluding to here. So, does anything on this slate get you excited?
Well, I tell you what I think was missing from this leak. I don't think

they mentioned any mobile. Like, mobile didn't come up once. every title seemed it was premium or for a PC console. And the IPs, as we kind of alluded to, are all very they're mobile friendly. They've been in mobile games before and mobile publishers have licensed them for years. I don't know if it's phase two or if they're just like citing the omission is basically a a stake in the ground that mobile is not going to be their core business. I don't know. And to the point about Hollywood, [laughter] the graveyard of broken IP dreams is large. And I get it. So maybe it's that they tried so many games on mobile with IP and they haven't kind of landed where they wanted them to land. So I understand the hesitation. Avatar RPG, which was mentioned and then it was announced that it was killed. To me, I was excited by that game. I love the Avatar Last Air Bender IP. The Street Fighteres version they're coming out with is less exciting for me, but that's not my type of genre. Overall, for the announcement of the game studio, I'm cautiously optimistic and I'm waiting till there's more delivery of games and a clearer slate. holding all opinions

until I see more.
Yeah, makes sense. And hopefully, you know, with a new big moneyed publisher coming in, maybe there will be some new thirdparty studios springing up. I'd certainly love to see the announcement of new well-funded game studios to counter the news of the past couple years. All right, to close it out, Eric, I think you wanted to discuss a rumor with Mr. UA Monthly.
Yeah, you know, I really don't want to do this, but I'm going to do it anyway.
You're like Randy Botto Man Savage. I don't want to go there, but I have to, brother.
There was some rumor and speculation out there in the investment circles that Apple was going to bring back ITFA, right? And so I have some thoughts here, but they're not very well informed at all or constructive. First of all, it's more kind of on the lines of like Apple's a steaming pile of dog [ __ ] They're hypocritical. They're destructive. And they're justing bad people. Right? If this were true, I mean, if this were true,
like howing haphazard is your [ __ ]

privacy strategy if you're going to remove IDFA, destroy the entire industry for [ __ ] years, you know, and let everyone figure it all out on their own and then bring it right the back, you know, like what the is wrong with these people, right? But, you know, that's actually not very helpful nor constructive as I as I So, I guess I'm going to ask someone that's a little bit more careful with their words, Mr. Josh. understatement of the summer. [laughter]
That's a compliment.
Okay. I It's a pretty low bar, Laura. I don't know if it's really a compliment yet. [laughter]
I'm not saying this is true. I'm saying if they were to put back IDFA for everybody, right? And if anybody doesn't know what IDFA is, it's basically unique identifier for per device that you can target very specifically for purchases and whatever. What would that actually mean for the UA ecosystem? How does that actually change things out there? And more more directly, you know, apploven loses some of its advantage. You know, Facebook would come back in a more

meaningful way because they've been, you know, flailing in terms of like since IDFA like what are kind of the other ramifications and benefits for publishers? I don't know. Whatever you think, but let's assume it's true.
This is assuming Yeah, this is never going to happen. This is like a Mickey Mouse Disney fantasy kind of like style scenario.
No, but these Okay, these investment rumors are rumors based upon
people talking at the highest levels, right? So, it's like,
right, but then there's this the opposite is also true where there's now rumors that Meta is going to stop competing completely on IDFA with with Apple. There's so much noise in general.
No, no, no. What I'm saying is this is not like some line UA person that talked to like some Apple person,
some guy at an MAU conference.
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. They're at some like [ __ ] conference like Games Beat, you know, like talking to like these AUA people. Um, all right. So, if it were true, what does that actually mean? That's what I want to know.
It's never going to happen. Apple didn't

take away IDFA. They took it away from everybody but themselves. And then the report is that in the first year after they did that, their ad revenue grew 264%.
But that's a distinction without a difference there, Josh. Do you know what I mean? I mean, like,
yes, I it's impactful, but I I get it. So, I'll play this game. Since the IDFA apocalypse, the industry has already recovered quite a lot.
Yeah, Meta specifically has done an incredible job with probabilistic attribution. You can already run probabilistic UA. They call it their family of apps. That's Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp. So you can already run UA like normally again. So for the last year that's been true. Google is further behind. They haven't really done the same on YouTube. Like if you're on an iPhone right now and you don't have YouTube Premium, go watch 10 ads. It's hard to find a game ad. That

wasn't the case 5 or 6 years ago. Google is probably the biggest beneficiary, at least on shipping. We don't know the tech behind this, but on shipping, they're the furthest behind. So, if this were to happen, all of a sudden, it would be way easier for game companies to reach people who are on YouTube or even Google search. Meta may get a little advantage, but really only because it can bid into inapp ads more easily. Google and Meta are still having trouble bidding into iOS. It's a half full, half empty on AppLov. I believe that these networks are going to come back to iOS regardless. And so this would if it IDFA was turned back on today. It probably would take a little bit more time than this, but it would move forward those the duopolies re-entry dramatically. But yeah, we would just have more reach

more quickly. The biggest thing would be things like Google we could be buying a UA into. But again, I hate this question, Eric. I hate this question [laughter] cuz it's never going to happen. We've been having rumors in the last week, and this is pre- cans. And cans in a week and a half is like the last big ad tech thing before summer. And all the ad networks, they always release their news drop the week before. And now we're having a bunch of noise to obiscate and make it harder to stand out with rumors that, you know, Meta is giving up on iOS. Apple is going to get rid of IDFA. There's so many rumors that don't have that much merit going right into a critical communication window.
Wait, did you did you hear this rumor before I said something on
the rumor was partially triggered? I think the last thing I saw was there was a note about Apple's conference about privacy. And that caused some hand ringing.
Oh, about like what could happen.

Even this morning, you know, we had this article about Apple being more selective about what apps are allowed to remain on the store and there was immediately some hindering there, too. There's a lot of reactiveness right now, especially when it involves the biggest companies that are the most tight lippeds because they they leave the most to the imagination. And also, Apple has this track record of doing absolutely despicable things, like almost like randomly and without any talking to anybody about it. Right? this is not above the pale for them just to basically say hey look we're bringing back IDFA because we don't like the way Apploven is dominating this industry and taking you know all the all the margin out of user acquisition on our platform right as I've said a million times about Apple right all the decisions are made by six people right everyone else is theing tail wag of the dog you know and so like they want to do a privacy thing they do a privacy thing and that

trickles down no matter what the implications are for the rest of the business like they that's how they run this company, right? As they should, right? They're aing super successful company. Let them do what they do, right? You can't deny the success, right? So, there's a world in which Apple could just come out at the next conference and just say, "Hey, look, all you guys, we're going to do it this way." Right? Who's going to push back? Who actually can say, "No, oh, that that's not going to work for us." [laughter]
I'm calling it on this Twig. Twig 387 is over. It is in the books. We had some fun with the rumor mill, but that's enough. I will go back to the injured list waiting for every host to be out or Laura to be too busy. And until then, thank you all for listening. Reach out on the Deconstructive Fun Slack. Let us know what you thought of the episode.
Thank you, Ethan.
Thank you.
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