TWIG #388: Xbox's Spinout Plan, Metacore's Mass Layoffs and Netflix's FIFA Flop

They've had 3 years and this is all they could come up with a bunch of [ __ ] shite. The biggest event in the history of sports and this is what they come up with.
[music]
Welcome. Welcome. Welcome everybody to this week in games episode 388 and today it's boys only or also known as Eric Crest torture session cuz me and Phil are back from Ibiza and he cannot run away from the nonsense that we're going to talk about today. So, who's in the first chair?
Eric Crest strategy and investing.
Hola, me llamo Felipe.
[laughter]
Monetizations are
Monetizations are from a Mediterranean island not known as Ibiza and myself Mishka friend of the founders. So, in this episode we are going to talk about Xbox. So, the honeymoon is over. Sharma is taking the gloves off. 100 days are up. Studios are being shut down. Old dogs are being taken behind the building

and shot in the head and they replaced by tech bros. We will look at the strategy and execution of what is to come. Then we are going to briefly talk about Believer. If you forgot, this is the LA-based company founded by Lightspeed and A16Z. It has all the ex-Riot bigwigs under one roof. They ship now an AI tooling not the game. So, we will be talking about that. Supercell concluded Metacore acquisition. There's some insights behind the PR headlines. EA has launched EA advertising because EA needs more money not because people need to see more ads. We'll also talk about micro dramas even though the crew today is better known for micro aggressions. Netflix FIFA is out and just like everything that FIFA touches, it's a stinking pile of [ __ ] that someone overpaid for. And finally finally we shall argue that apps don't threaten games. Like true economist, Phil has made graphs that support unquestionably

his point of view. But he's not the only economist on on this podcast. So Chris, you will be rage quitting by the time we get there. Anyways, let's get into the most important part, which is shills. So I have something for Miss Jen. So she said the last chance to apply to Deconstructor of Fun round tables in Los Angeles on June 22nd. So this is next week. Apparently we can squeeze few more. There's 100 people signed up already. Folks from major game companies, licensers are coming. There's a chance to network and grab beers and peers and grab also Chris and Jen because you both will be there. Right Chris?
My ticket is booked.
So Chris will be there in LA in flesh. Anyway, sign up to the newsletter. There's events in Gamescom, Limassol, Tel Aviv, Belgrade. All the kind of stuff is in the newsletter. So sign up for that link in the description below and attend our events. On the podcast side, shilling for the content, we had

Batuhan Çelebi from Grand Games. I think that was last week. A lot of people liked it. I suggest you listen to it. I liked recording it. This week we had Roblox safety duo, Matt Kaufman, Roblox chief safety officer, and Eliza who doesn't want her last name on LinkedIn so I shall not say it. She has safety products at Roblox. They joined on podcast to discuss why my wife uninstalled Roblox and whether it is safe to reinstall it today.
Wow. How desperate they must be to come to you for help.
[laughter]
It was it was absolutely self-serving. I play Roblox games and I played it with my daughter and my wife was like, "Our daughter is not playing Roblox. Have you heard about Roblox?" So she gave me like all these kind of things and I contacted Roblox. I'm like, "Guys, like is this true? Like what is going on? I need to You know, I need a kid to play this with. I need to learn about these games. Anyways, Roblox is back on the menu in the Cat Cafe household.

Also, we have so much content coming in on Deconstructor Fun. We filmed six podcasts last week with CEOs of Supercell, Playrix, you name it. CD Projekt Red, FunCraft, Mattel. So, sign up to the newsletter. You'll see when those drop. And talking about Puzzle Monthly, which one do you want to talk about?
Puzzle Monthly episode 3 released. This has been like in the chamber forever. I don't think I've ever been in a podcast that's had this many insights per minute. Certainly not Twig.
[laughter]
So, so I would recommend tuning in. I If there's one thing to come out of this podcast, is I beg of you, someone making a merge game, do hard order labeling, just like we've done in Match Through with hard level labeling. That was one of the conclusions from the podcast. We spill all the secrets about what's going on in merge. Remember, the most fast-growing genre in casual. Maybe have guest stars between each, but who knows? It was a ton of fun to be on there. It's really cool crew.
Yeah. Yeah, and more people have actually

wanting to join. We have more ladies in line to join the podcast. I think it makes sense to to add a little bit of a gender diversity to that. It kind of turned quickly into a bro show. Actually, Laura was on that episode. So, so yeah. And regarding Puzzle Monthly, actually, I have a correction. I jumped the gun. So, I got messages that, "Bro, you just kill shot at Good Job Games." I was like, "What's going on? What happened?" And apparently, I wrote a LinkedIn post. I pulled the transcript of the latest Puzzle Monthly, but that wasn't the one that was released. It was the one that was just recorded and in the latest Puzzle Monthly, that is not out yet, the crew, the puzzle villains, as I shall call them from now on, are talking about match villains from Good Job Games and what has happened to it. It's spoiler alert, they spent tens of millions scaling this very, very good looking and very well executed game, but doesn't seem to have overcome the match three payback or CPI hurdles. So, the next

puzzle monthly, probably in a week or two, will be quite focused on what is it called? Match Villains. So, apologies. That LinkedIn post has been taken down. Anyway, Phil, can you fill me in on what happened in an island that we were on cuz I did not attend much.
Well, you you were there. We did see you in your cheetah workout shorts. We're trying to figure out where we can acquire some.
Snow snow leopard snow leopard just to be very clear. And I was working for the full two days and Phil was attending the event.
What kind of work were you doing in cheetah shorts, dude? You [ __ ] whack job, dude.
Jesus Christ.
This is snow
That visual, I'm not going to get that visual out of my head all god damn day, [laughter] dude.
Well, everybody who was guest, you're welcome. They are very short and very snowy. So, Phil,
All right. Under the details, Aream, our good friends at Aream, put on an event they called Horizons. Mishka and

yourself went. I gave a talk, more on that later. I can't say enough good things about these individuals. They are full of integrity. They have humility, which is rare amongst this class. I would say investment bankers definitely moving up the hierarchy chain way above EC's. EC's pick it up in terms of your ability to put on conferences and present yourself. Incredible diversity of guests. Talk about a powerhouse guest list, Mishka. I mean, I can't believe who I talked to at this conference. Getting getting the tea, some high-profile guests. Eric, your arch villain was there. Lars,
[laughter]
shut up. There were CEOs from almost all all major European companies. It was really interesting to see what happened. And not only that, the star, I would say, were the Swedish Indies. I think the Swedish Indies had a lot of attraction around them. And I also say Akin. I think the Turkish government should officially give this individual some sort of title as promoter of Turkey. This guy showed up. I could not have been more impressed with this

individual. I hadn't met him in person before. I think he said something along the lines of Turks stream like the Americans and work like the Chinese. And I forgot I forgot what the saying was. But my god, this guy is incredibly smart. And, you know, I think the Indies in Sweden, don't count them out. I know Mishka and Eric like my stuff my stuff my dad's. But there is something interesting going on in Sweden. There's something in the water. And I think what that next step is for them to scale is TBD. But you can't deny the success and how it separates us from the East. Mishka, I barely saw you. How was your deep tissue massage? You missed my talk.
I did miss your talk because I was recording with Akin.
Good excuse. This is a good one.
Content week for for me, but huge thanks to Aream and and for arranging basically a podcast studio at the site. And so many of the guests were eager to come on a podcast. So, it was a weird treat and true privilege to have those podcasts. Anyways, without further ado, let's talk about Xbox news because there's a lot of them.

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your live ops. Let's talk about Xbox news because there's a lot of them. I'm just going to go quickly through the top lines and then Eric is going to take us off because he's he's fuming. So, Xbox news this week. Double Fine, Compulsion, and Ninja Theory are being spun out as Xbox looks to reduce its first-party studio profile. Treyarch studio head, Mark Gordon, steps down after 22 years at the helm of the studio. Inside baseball, I had a private tour to Treyarch back in 2013 with crew from Supercell. And here's the takeaway. They have this interactive screen when you enter Treyarch that shows players of Call of Duty around the world playing. That screen you will now see at every Supercell studio because the idea for that was imitated proudly from Treyarch studios. So, anyway, inside baseball. Nadella says YouTube monetizes Xbox better than Microsoft. Oof.

Xbox Studios boss, Craig Duncan, is leaving only after 18 months. He was definitely a bad luck to join Xbox during the last days of Phil Spencer era. So, and then, um, Microsoft is considering spinning off Xbox. And I think this is inevitable. The question is whether it will be more valuable, less valuable after they finally spin it off. So, Mr. Eric Cress, take us to the land of hedge funds and equity and and sovereign wealth funds.
Yeah, I think in general people are probably tired of talking about Xbox, but the deluge of news this week was pretty insane. And if you think about it from the perspective of a PR beats, right? So, they went on a positive, positive, positive thing like just what? 2 weeks ago and now all the negatives are coming out. This is all by design, all like planned ahead of time. Like, you know, let's get all the fluff out there and now let's go for the jugular, right? Um

Duncan was there for 15 years before he took over this new role which he was only there for 18 months and now is leaving. You know, Mark Gordon leaving after 22 years is a huge deal cuz he's in charge of that studio. Nadella comments are basically kind of suggesting that they need to stand alone, that Xbox needs to stand alone, they need to be profitable, that YouTube makes more money on them on gaming than they do. And then like the other piece of news was that they want to accelerate the Bethesda IP development which is kind of a contradiction in terms because all of Bethesda IP takes forever to make and they have one team. So, it's like I that doesn't even make actually it didn't pass the smell test that they know what the [ __ ] they're talking about. So, I guess at a high level cuz I don't want to talk about this too much. The thesis around spitting this thing out and making it an independent entity is starting to materialize from the ether. You know, getting rid of these studios, making it more profitable, like, you know, focusing on HD content and the you know, the best content they

have. And then talking about profitability, right? The contradiction in terms of how they approach the profitability issue is that they no longer have to worry about the 30% targets according to Sharma. Then the CEO of Microsoft basically says, well, they're they have to be stand alone and be profitable. So, there's super contradictions here. But my biggest concern and what these tech bros and Sharma don't understand is that these businesses these creative enterprises are led by leaders, right? Of creative, which I've said a million times is the hardest thing to do in gaming. Actually, the hardest part about it being a CEO is actually the indirect management of creatives, right? So, these type of people that they're losing, Craig Duncan leaving, the head of trick, like this is bad news, you know? They may not be the best, they may have made mistakes, etc. You know, people like Serge from Ubisoft, like when he left, that's when the company fell apart, right? Cuz he was in charge of all the studios and the creative design, creative movement. So, you cannot replace these people with [ __ ]

tech bros from like who knows what from Facebook or from Google or whatever the [ __ ] they're from, right? And so, like that's what concerns me the most. Like you lose that leadership rung, you're [ __ ] [ __ ] okay? Like long-term, right? But I don't think this actually even matters for Sharma, right? Again, as my post suggested, she's going to package this thing up, sell it, and bail, and do something else, right? And become a CEO somewhere else, or you know, another leadership within Microsoft. I don't think she really gives a [ __ ] right? And so, we're starting to see that kind of manifest itself with these kind of big changes, you know, shutting down studios that just announced a new game, shutting down another studio that had like a really highly rated like award-winning game. Like she don't give a [ __ ] you know? And so, we'll see.
We will see. But like I think she does give a [ __ ] I think she gives a lot of [ __ ] because she put her career online to package this company in a way so she

can sell it for more than it's valued right now. Based on this, do you think the moves that she's making, even though they're cold and without any heart, like are they increasing the value of Microsoft or not or of Xbox or actually decreasing it?
My point is she doesn't care about Xbox at all. All she cares about is what her career, the next level next stage in her career.
But next level is based on this company being spun off, being more valuable than when she took over.
Uh not necessarily. If she solves the problem for Satya the other thing I've heard is that she may not even be looking for a job outside of Microsoft. She may be able to like leverage this and become the heir apparent for the future of Microsoft, right? She's a CEO in training type thing is what I heard from some of the people.
And it makes sense, but like if this goes well, she's going to be you know, she's going to be the next CEO of

Microsoft.
My point is that her ambitions do not necessarily tie out to what's best for the gamer and what's best for Xbox. That's the whole point, right? Like spitting this thing out and and destroying all the value within it and making that transaction with Goldman, you know, like you know, like that's not necessarily good for Xbox or gamers, right? So
Who buys this? Like who is this that somebody?
It's a consortium of the willing. So Microsoft will maintain ownership, you know, 30% or something like that. Then they'll the Saudis will buy a piece, you know, the Emirates will buy a piece, you know, I don't know. Who knows? Like is it private equity, you know, [ __ ] like Goldman around here.
[laughter]
I mean there's so much money chasing these type of opportunities that they're going to figure it out. Like the Goldman guys you know, these sovereign wealth funds need throw money somewhere, right? And I

think it's going to be a [ __ ] train wreck and a disaster, but it's going to look great on paper, you know, until until it doesn't.
Can you at least rewind a little bit for me? Cuz you said managing creatives is the toughest thing to do. And yet it feels like Xbox's value proposition, like it's two most valuable franchises are Halo acquired from Bungie. So, they they didn't buy the creatives, they bought the IP. And Gears of War
Yeah.
which they bought from Epic Games.
Do you think it was just rotten at the core going all the way back even before they Game Pass mistaken pivot?
You're saying that like the value really comes from the creatives, right? And that's that's where really Xbox lost, I would argue. It feels like we've been in agreement in that. They haven't delivered on Gears, they haven't delivered on Halo, they haven't delivered marquee entries entries in their marquee franchises. And so, they haven't been able to deliver sales in Europe, so they've retreated. Like that to me has been the causal chain of their downfall. But if you're telling me that like look, it's the creatives from the beginning and they've only acquired the IP, they are [ __ ] because Gears of War and Halo took a turn when it went to what? 343?

Didn't do well and I don't think was it the Coalition? I don't think they've executed either.
There's just such a long history of failure in this thing. So, like you know, Fable that they blew up all their studios basically. Like fundamentally, right? The Halo studio they got blown up. The only thing that's delivered for them is really the Forza team on a regular basis, right? Amazing studios, but double A, single A, like in order to try to expand the catalog, right? And these teams that are getting cut now are those teams that that were acquired then. Then they went after the big ones like Bethesda and Activision Blizzard, right? Because they failed to manage those studios. So, there has been a historical mismanagement of studios at Microsoft. This has been their Achilles' heel, right? In terms of competing against Sony. They had the teams, they just didn't never executed against the products, right? So, yeah, this is not a new story. What I'm trying to say now is that whatever remnants they have left of what's what these studios were, they're losing

all the leadership to help kind of manage them to the next level, right? And so, now we're talking about Call of Duty people leaving, right? You know, Bethesda people seem to be relatively secure. And Blizzard people leaving, you know, like then they start to losing like real like these huge teams that they've been buying. Like now they're at risk of that because Sharma and her tech bros are in charge and they have no credibility with any of these teams at all, right? Like so it's like, you know, so like this is the risk is like you put people like this in charge and no one wants to work for you then, you know? Yeah, I mean it's it's a long history of poor management on the studio level and this it you know, it wasn't Sharma, it was it was prior management that that really screwed this [ __ ] up, you know?
Rest in peace.
Yeah, no, it's really bad.
Did you guys have a chance to to read Super Joost's a newsletter?
Joost.
Joost Super Joost. It's Super Joost. If I want to say Super Joost, it's going to be Super Joost.
[laughter]
Super Joost. So Sharma's next 100 days

and it was interesting read. Like in short, he basically made a point that Spencer ran Xbox games as an executive managing a platform versus Sharma as a platform operator running a games business and that basically is the whole story in one line. He reads Sharma's Xbox as a company adopting to the distribution phase making content cheaper and more accessible rather than chasing the next big blockbuster hit. And he kind of puts in the dividing moment the price cut of Games Pass Ultimate from 30 bucks to about 23 bucks in April as well as pulling out Call of Duty from day one launch. He warned in his newsletter about the price cuts that it's a one-way street essentially and I agree with that because looking at any other streaming platform, everybody is raising prices. Xbox is lowering them. Crazy. He talked about how their new North Star is DAU or daily active players, not units or subscribers which kind of rebuilds the business around

engagement and I read this as an ad tier incoming. And then his conclusion essentially in the post is that layoffs are inevitable because Xbox spent hundred billion dollars over five years while revenue fell nearly half a billion. The subscriber count stalled. They made price cuts to the subscriber tiers. Hardware costs are climbing and the headcount essentially is the only lever left to pull in this disaster.
I thought Ybarra did a reasonably a good job on this one, right? I think the coverage of all her positive news was almost sycophantic. It was like really weird, like people like she's going to be hated. Like I mean, the gamer community is just going to despise her for shutting down these teams that were beloved.
And it didn't make any sense for the first 100 days of this like PR hurrah how she's on the side of the gamers. And this kind of let me thinking about because like one of the podcasts that I got to re-record is with two CEOs. I'm not going to name them because maybe

they will pull the podcast because one is a PE back CEO and the one is from a public company and both of them became CEOs last year over companies that they didn't build essentially. So I talked about like the first 100 days. I thought that was an interesting story and they both had the same key elements like arrive with board alignment and a plan that the board has approved. Like you don't make the plan by listening to others and then shaping it. Like you already know what needs to be done the moment you walk through through the door. Then they talked about changing leadership team immediately. Like you already know which heads are going and it's really like 90% of that team. And then they also said make the hard closures and restructures inside the first 90 days because you're still sort of an outsider. You're not bound by the existing organization, your relationships, your assumptions. And when I read the Sharma's approach here, it's almost like an inverse playbook she front-loaded the popular moves, the price cuts, the winning over of the

skeptics and then back-loaded all the painful stuff, the structural work, the studio sales, the layoffs into this sort of a second phase of 100 days. And it could be that this was like strategic way of like let's set your reputation and then as a good person and then become, you know, do a couple of evil things. Or she's just a games industry newcomer and maybe didn't have the fully board backed plan on day one and first part was about building credibility and that was kind of necessary.
Yeah.
What do you think about that, Chris?
Here's my high-level take, right? What she's doing now makes sense to eliminate a lot of the casual, smaller, double-A, single-A teams that are not profitable within their organization, focusing only on the core studios that generate profit, that make the big games, like the focus of all major publishers, Take-Two, EA, Activision of old. If she's trying to compete head-to-head with Sony, this makes sense. And I was a

huge critic of when Microsoft was acquiring a lot of these small studios cuz I thought like these are not the type of games that's going to broaden the audience, these are just too niche, right? And so in essence, what she's doing makes sense if you're going to spin the company out or go after Sony, right? And make a profit more profitable business. So in that sense, I'm relatively positive from the perspective of what's to come of Microsoft. Where I'm negative is like again, as I said earlier, she's losing the these key leadership positions because she's pissing people off because she's just doing this really haphazardly with a bunch of tech bros that don't know [ __ ] all about gaming, right? So that's where it becomes a disaster is like you can't manage the churn of execs because she's not popular, right? Now, meanwhile, she's pissing off everyone in the ecosystem, IGN and you know, all these like, you know, gaming bros that think these teams are beloved. It's a [ __ ] impossible situation is probably the problem. That's why I just wanted to focus on what the news was and

how how bad and good are things are going, but this is the way it's going to continue to go until they figure out exactly what the real strategy is going to be moving forward. And it's going to be a mess. So let let's move on.
Okay, so the next story is fascinating. So it's introducing Clayrion, our open-source Unreal plugin. And who's introducing Clayrion or Clarione or however you ever you pronounce it, it is the company known as Believer. And if your questions are, is this the Hybern startup that was paying their founding team members like 800K annual salary? Did they finally ship a game or a demo or maybe a screenshot? Is Believer still active cuz there were some challenging raising the last round. Is their CEO still working at the company or is he back at Riot? These are all valid questions, but we're not going to talk about them because we're going to talk about AI. And the credentials of the team. So let me tell you about Believer because they

raised a single disclosed round of $55 million in series A funding in mid-March 2023. The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners with support with of his second favorite venture capital A16Z.
Yeah, both of which have been shut down, right? They're completely gone. [clears throat]
They are completely active. Their gaming investment is concluded and they have moved their investments into other sectors. These funds are far from being shut down and they're very profitable.
no, no. No, but the gaming is left high and dry. All their investments have no Yeah, there's no one no one to talk to.
Craft Ventures, Riot Games like Michael Eisner is on our cap table and and so forth. So like the president of McDonald's is on their cap table. So they they raised from the who's who of who and they probably raised
Okay, can can I just stop for a second?
Just go.
This deal This deal was by far the ultimate of the grift, right? Like if if

there's any deal that you can point to to the pinnacle of the [ __ ] grift of these big BC tourists, this was the deal.
And it makes sense. I'm I'm just going to tell you like what the grift was at that point. So, the 55 is Series A, they probably raised 5 million before that to work on the demo. But, think about the investors and think about the leadership team that is able to raise this type of investment. Their CEO, Michael Chow, was a former Riot Games executive producer of League of Legends: Wild Rift. Their CPO, Steven Snow, was a founding member of Riot Games and an executive producer of the original League of Legends, who actually came out from retirement for Believer. Their CTO, Landon McDowell, was Microsoft and Riot alumni. Their Chief Creative Officer, Jeremy Van Hoosier, Bungie EA. COO, Tim Shu, Twitter Riot. CMO, Shankar Gupta ex Riot. So, their founding team is like Real Madrid of 2005 with Beckham and Zinedine Zidane or Patriots of 2007 for our American fans. It's like this is the

best team of the best era of the companies they worked at. And what they were building is a large multiplayer open-world game built on original IP. Thesis, per Snow who's their CPO, is the open-world genre has been capped by a single-player boxed product focus. And they wanted those adventures to be social. So, what this announcement is about, they surely are probably still making this game, but they pivoted how they build it. Their founding AI thesis was too dreamy for how nascent the technology was. So, they have shipped MCP plugin for running cloud code against live editor state. And the company is now partly tooling story layered on top of an un-shipped open-world game. Chris, is this still a gift or it's it's coming together as a as a as a returner for this multi-hundred million dollar valued company?
I mean, none of it makes sense in this current market, right? You know, the initial in this investment didn't make

any sense. The million dollar salaries that they were giving and now they build a plug-in? Like that's [snorts and laughter] that's their business, the [ __ ] plug-in? I mean, come on.
To Unreal Engine.
Let me just let me just say, I am not a believer.
Okay, [laughter] that's all. Clearly. Uh all right, let the news continue. So, Supercell has finalized their acquisition of Merge Mansion maker, Metacore. Hmm, that's a a mouthful. I did accidental journalism on this because I was just talking to a bunch of people and actually some of them on different topics and some of them worked at Metacore or still are working at Metacore, so I got to ask the question of like, "By the way, what the [ __ ] happened?" And the consensus is, "We have no idea what happened and why this happened." But, what happened was is Metacore lost 159 jobs in Finland. Also, Germany and Sweden offices were closed down and their stated headcount was 280. So,

majority of the company, probably 70% of the company has been axed. The Supercell had already invested about 180 million to this company. They gave them credit line. They own 70%, so this was firmly in Supercell's portfolio. They are taking the rest of the studio that burned through that 180 million plus of its capital, failed to ship a second game across years of soft launches and is now cutting more than half of the staff to survive on one title. They're putting a new GM from Small Giant to head the studio. And the CEO of a Small Giant was like a GM, like a COO of a Small Giant, so he wasn't like the creative of Small Giant. You know, a smart guy, a guy, and no nothing against that, but he's not the creative. He's Supercell must pay really well because Small Giant is the company behind Puzzles & Empires, which is a Zynga studio, highly profitable, but you know, now he's a GM at Supercell running this game. And this is a live ops roll up declining of a declining single hit

asset. It is not a growth acquisition story as they are trying to spin it. And my main question is for the, you know, uncrowned czar of merge two, like is there a way back because this game is currently eighth in the genre that it essentially created.
No, they're done. They're toast. They're [snorts] done.
Okay.
I I think I think this is this is like so one of the things we've been talking about is like, oh, let's look at Blizzard versus NetEase Marvel Rivals versus Overwatch, and I think that's a real Western success story of productivity and design and all the things we're really good at. And I think this is an example where we get absolutely bodied, which is mobile gaming, which there are no moats, which it looks like a competitive market, which margins rapidly evaporate. And I don't know if Supercell's the place you go to scale your game. They've been able to take a couple of their pre-existing franchises and scale them up. They haven't been able to develop new games, and I don't know if I've seen a U They haven't done a U-shape outside of their own walls, right? Their investments, as you love to

point out, have not done very well. So, what is a more hands-on approach, if anything, going to do? I I don't know. I will tell you Gossip Harbor is running away with it. I do expect Revenge of the Travel Town and Fun Blade is another game that is coming out of the [ __ ] nowhere and is crushing right now as well.
Out of Shanghai or Beijing?
Uh I think it's Shanghai.
Well, boo. No, no, I don't know. Yeah, it's super weird because Supercell is not known for user acquisition. Like most of the Like their two games that go back-to-back, Clash Royale and Brawl Stars, are essentially kids games at this point with the creators running these massive pumps of volume. So, are creators going to help this game to scale up to volume? And the way I also understood by talking to some of the people who worked on this game and worked around this game, it is not built on the you know, the strongest tech stack. This was the first game of the studio, a little bit weathered. So, running live ops on this might not be as easy as it may look on the outside. So,

but overall, I would say personally, I think this is the right move from Supercell because they've been as owner of this company looking at this game decline year after year and the company again not being able to ship another title. Anyway, moving on to Electronic Arts launching EA advertising.
So, EA has launched EA advertising, a formal platform for brands to integrate into, I think, sports games via dynamic real-time placements. Stadium signage, scoreboards, broadcast overlays, custom in-game challenges, branded rewards. It includes a proprietary ad server and an SDK built directly into their game engine called Ross bytes. Okay. Now,
[laughter]
everyone's going to be a little bit surprised here because I actually fully support this movement,
No. I don't believe that these no.

Yes. 25 [ __ ] years ago, I was a supporter of in-game advertising for sports games because it makes sense in the context of sports games. Like, advertising is part of sports, right? It's like, you see it on the field, you see it on the [ __ ] cars, you even see it on the players advertising, you know? All the Rakuten [ __ ] right? On the jerseys, you know? It's actually the only place that makes sense for advertising in games real-time is in sports. It certainly doesn't make sense in Battlefield, it doesn't make sense in The Last of Us, and it definitely doesn't make sense in Elden Ring, right? Put a Coke bottle in Elden Ring or something. But bringing advertising to sports game makes [ __ ] sense, right? Because it's in the context of what sports is. So, as long as they do it well and there's no technical glitches or issues around that pull you out of the immersion,

advertising in sports makes sense, right?
No.
And
No, I'm sorry. Build Build me the model that makes this make sense, right? Build me What is the impression eCPM revenue ad that FIFA gets by having those [ __ ] banners that go around the stadiums change from like Exxomi
Intersport.
Intersport.
Intersport.
to Intersport. Like what what is what is that revenue ad give give me that on an ARPDAU basis.
We're talking two different things. We're talking about whether it makes sense to try versus whether it makes sense from a business perspective.
I love you're retreating to my positions. I This is awesome.
I am not objecting to the idea of trying to do advertising in games that are sports related. That makes sense to me. The business model never [ __ ] made sense, right? Ever. It doesn't make any sense. And I and I know I'm going to get some hate on this, right? You really can't measure like the the the reach. I mean, I think they'll do a better job this time around than

when it was like 25 [ __ ] years ago, right? I'm sure you could put together a spreadsheet that's proves out that this makes a lot of sense, but I am with you on that. On the business side, this just seems like you're creating more problems probably than solving them.
work out? Why didn't it work previously? What do you Why do you think
was so bad.
Burnout was going to happen like that.
No, no. It was Need for Speed. Okay, so so
[clears throat]
the story I remember, and this is so long ago, like and my memory is not what it used to be is that Need for Speed they had [ __ ] billboards with [ __ ] Best Buy on them and it would be glitching the [ __ ] out dude. It would be like it'd be like you'd be driving by and it would totally take you out of the immersion because this thing would be like flashing The whole thing was a nightmare right? And there's no way of actually determining impressions cuz you're going like a [ __ ] thousand miles an hour around this tracks. How the [ __ ] can you decide whether that's an impression or not? It was a It was a disaster. I mean of epic proportions. And not to mention the call frame rate glitches, you know,

control issues. It was It was just a nightmare right? Nightmare. Like implemented poorly right? But the tech was like archaic back then you know? You got to imagine they've gotten come really far and all these like [ __ ] advertising bros out there are bitching and moaning that I don't know what the [ __ ] I'm talking about. Like everyone [clears throat] wants ads in in [ __ ] interactive is basically their whole like stick. I've seen pitch decks about that. It's like ludicrous. [ __ ] ludicrous. Dude, Eric but Eric has done a disservice to this industry by saying everything is an ad network. Not everything is a [ __ ] ad network. Get your [ __ ] out of our [ __ ] games you know? But anyway, it'll be interesting to see if they can pull this thing off in the context that makes sense which is [ __ ] sports. So we'll see.
What do you think the year one ad sales are going to be?
It's going to be It's going to be mice nuts.
Yeah.
Absolutely mice nuts.
Can you Can you imagine they have like BDs probably running around and selling these to brands and like taking out people in Manhattan for dinners and whatever sleazy [ __ ] they do.

Yeah. It's still disgusting.
Every time I think about it makes me sick to my stomach but um but
Oh my god.
actually execute it reasonably well in a sports game? Absolutely.
Just make Roblox experiences with your brand. It's cheaper, faster, bigger audience and no sleaziness.
It's not the audience you want though. You don't want the 13-year-old and under.
Yeah.
All right, moving on.
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We haven't heard much from Navic these days or maybe I'm just not paying attention. I don't [ __ ] know. But they created a really good piece on micro dramas, which is a kind of a hot new kind of sector within within gaming that I I looked into a little bit. And basically again, if you don't know, they're like serialized content on mobile, you know, it's like really short episodes that are like 1 to 2 to 3 minutes.
It's easier.
Quibi?
The corpse the the corpse of Quibi is alive.
It's like the uh the social platform by the mega moguls of Hollywood.
shut down within like 6 months. Okay.
And it was like in 3 days.
[laughter]
It's the Concord of of Hollywood.
But the point here is that they actually did kind of unlock these type of things.

Like there's a company that's done a really good job of this, right? In terms of 1 to 3-minute type sections within the first two or three you know, sessions and you have to pay to unlock to keep seeing it. And and the content is [ __ ] trash. Like it's actually horrific like rom-com [ __ ] right? But it works for this particular audience. And anyway, it's been growing really dramatically, you know, 860 million downloads in Q1 of 2026. Uh 800 million MAUs around the world, which is insane. The thing that they talk about is that the revenue is basically flatlined, right? Because I think they've hit that market saturation. You know, they have a massive audience, right? But the monetization is not very deep and the churn is super high, right? So, again, it's like being stress test now at these really high levels. And on top of that, they're attracting a more broader audience outside of like tier one English that don't monetize as well. And so, they have a retention problem, an audience problem, and they basically just hit the saturation point. And so,

what I think needs to happen is they need to figure out ways of innovating on the monetization side and how they deliver content. But anyway, but this is the same type of thing we've seen over and over again in this industry is like certain things work really well for a while until they don't, right? So, this cliffhanger paywall thing of you get 2-minute clips, and then you unlock it, right? Like, that mechanic can only work so long between before people are just like, "Fuck this." And then they bail, right? So, when you talk about retention, they go like a day one retention is like 27%, but it collapses to like 7% by day seven, right? That And then on top of that, like you take these MAU numbers, which people love to talk about MAU numbers, but they're doing it like, you know, in in Africa and like, you know, India, where no one no one monetizes, no one converts. So, it's almost irrelevant as to where, you know, these these downloads are. Download volume is not a moat, right? Like, monetization is where and engagement is where and retention is

where the real moats are, and they need to figure that stuff out before they could continue to grow. That's kind of what my my take is.
So, the retention on these is really bad?
Oh, they're horrible. Terrific. Cuz it's terrible content, you know?
It's AI slop at its finest. It's like it's so sloppy.
Well, yes, there is a lot of AI slop out there, but in their defense, they actually do have people, real life people like acting these things out for like 250 I was talking to someone it's like $300,000 to make like a a series, like a full series, right?
Which games have you played? Like, which one would you suggest to get the premium micro drama experience?
With the series, which we'll be talking about in a moment.
Oh, that's I can't wait.
You're going to have an absolute blast. I I think I'm surprised you're so negative on this, Eric. I think this has been like quietly growing in front of us. If you showed me this in 2024, I would have [ __ ] laughed. I mean, everyone laughed at Quibi, right? But the revenue that is coming from the

short-form genres, as we're seeing in front of us, it's true that on a download basis, there's a lot of tier three, but revenue is still what? 30 to 40% United States? I'm surprised it's had this level of penetration in the US. I mean, what is the box office? What, around 20, 26 billion? So, maybe this is doing 6, 8 billion a year? Like, there's clearly something here that's interesting. There's merge drama. I don't know if you've heard of that, where it's a merge game. And it's short form video into the core loop, baby. We talk about this on monthly number three. Yes. Yes, it exists. You unlock credits, stars that let you watch your own. I I think there's something I think there's something super super interesting here. I've been surprised. Remember stories from Pocket Gems?
Yeah.
I'm curious why they were never able to capture the sort of like narrative interaction. There's clearly price variation here. I mean, I think that's one thing the Navic piece does really well is it really points out that you're trying to get people onto these $200 subscriptions cuz they do have coins, they charge for

things, but you do want to get people on the subs eventually. I thought that was interesting. I agree it needs another growth cycle, but I've just been surprised how quiet this has been a revenue generator. And outside Hollywood.
Yeah, I guess the context here is we talked about this a year ago or months ago about this, and I was basically saying that this is an insane genre that looks really good cuz I I I talked to Dorian, CEO, and I it was fascinating. I guess my point is is that like you need to innovate on the conversion and the engagement, right? Because this is the point of the piece from Navic is it's kind of flatline, right? Which makes sense because I mean, there's just there's only certain certain amount of people that are willing to like to pay for this type of content.
But, so Dorian is also like UGC, and they are like heavily skewed towards like LGBTQ, PS5, like all that all those. Like, they have like quite a non-typical love stories, if you will. Anyway,
But, [laughter] I think it's
Definitely something to look out for and see see what they do. All right, moving on.
Moving on. Moving on.

Who wins the World Cup? The world's most popular sport is having its greatest event. It is a time to revisit a race that may surprise you. If we look at mobile DAU for the top games, eFootball is about to cross FC Mobile. And Dream League Soccer has found and a nice steady state at around 9.8 million DAU. FIFA's floating around 19 and eFootball's around 16 on mobile. And when we look at revenue, hold hold on hold on to your P&Ls. eFootball has actually overcome FC Mobile in terms of cumulative revenue.
Jesus.
For yeah, 1.9 billion to FC Mobile's 1.6. So that is pretty remarkable. We still have Dream League Soccer, which is lagging so far behind. And if we break this down a little bit more and kind of look at country mixes, because when you look at football, which is something we haven't talked a lot about on this podcast, one thing you need to have your sensors on about is that

there's a ton of tier three that gets involved in this analysis, which can really [ __ ] with your ARPDAU numbers. They can [ __ ] with your DAU. You just need to be very careful in how you do your filtering. So for instance, if we look at FC Mobile and we look at the share of their DAU, the plurality is held by Indonesia. And they also remember have a ton of regional operators for all the SKUs. And that goes for the HD version as well. You remember South Korea operates a version for the Eastern market. So that's just one thing to be aware of, but still has done remarkably well in Asia, which I think people forgot, particularly for eFootball. It's Asia and it's Brazil. And we think about revenue, eFootball has absolutely crushed it basically on Japanese strength alone. The Japanese, as we know, monetize at super high rates. Remember every time we look at those annual numbers of how much the Japanese mobile gamer spends, it's some crazy [ __ ] amount and that's the same case here. They're playing eFootball like it's a mobile gacha game, and that's really good news for Konami

because one of the things they've done to actually grow the eFootball franchise, I would argue the turning point of the mobile eFootball franchise, is they actually moved away from seasonal resets, which is something that you're seeing a lot more on mobile. Like FC Mobile also did this. And so what they're doing is it's straight OVR inflation. So when you're playing some of these games, you're getting players that are in, let's say, 105 OVR on day zero. So it's a really accelerated progression. They're doing power inflation. They're not doing seasonal resets, which used to be huge churn points for mobile. And the other thing that's been remarkable is that eFootball has been starting to do these collabs, which you rarely see in games like FIFA. When I say collabs, I mean like anime [ __ ] collabs. They did a Yu-Gi-Oh! event. They did a Naruto Shippuden event. Captain Tsubasa. Like these are a lot of Eastern-geared IPs. And what they'll do, cuz it seems like an awkward integration, is they'll have a footballer, like, let's say, Neymar, and then they'll have a Naruto character behind them. So it's a special edition of the card. You're not actually getting the Naruto character. They're in-game

events that are themed towards this. It looks like on the chart it doesn't do a whole lot in the short run in terms of revenue, but you have to imagine there's been some effect of all these IP integrations. At the very least, moving away from these seasonal res- resets seems to have been a growth cycle for both of them. Let's see how this ends up performing. You know, if we look at the Steam side, eFootball still sucks. It's not even close to FC. FC is up from 300,000 DAU in the last couple days to around 400,000 DAU on Steam alone, which just shows you what this World Cup cycle is going to be. I don't think people understand how big the World Cup is in terms of these games, and you'll see so many football games launching right now. I have Rematch on here. Remember, that was the one that blew up recently with reinventing some of the core mechanics. Goals. You remember Goals from our our Swedes our Swedish friends that launched recently and I don't think has been doing too much.
crypto? Was that crypto thing?
[laughter]
No, nope. They dumped They dumped Web3 very early on.
So, it was a crypto thing. You're like, "No, no, no, it wasn't."
At one point it was Web3.

It was yes. And then there was that that [ __ ] French company that was crypto football thing.
Sorare. Sorare Sorare continued.
So, Sorare. Where Where is Sorare? I know they they're maybe a client maybe maybe a client of Phil's. Oh, they're an amazing Web3 company. Mhm.
[laughter]
So, here's here's what I'd say coming around this. I think there's a ton of insight you can get by focusing on regions. I think this is a regional story. I think that people ignore how powerful Asia is when it comes to football and what a global phenomenon this is. And congrats to Konami. Like they really have pushed this game to the max.
And if you want to make our Turkish audience mad, you can say, "Did you guys really lose to Australia?"
[laughter]
All right. Can I Can I Can I Can I just interject one thing here?
Please. Please.
eFootball is a [ __ ] juggernaut and FC's obviously doing quite well. And if you notice, both of them don't have any of the FIFA branding at all, right? Like the World Cup is like FIFA, right? And then the branding is nowhere because

FIFA is completely on their ass as it comes to interactive. And the latest thing that they've released is this Delphi's Netflix FIFA World Cup, which is a [ __ ] trainwreck, dude. Absolute disaster.
How do you play that game? How do you play it?
I tried to play it and it looked like a
streaming.
It looked like a PS1 game, dude. And it was like it has a one out of five on BGC. They basically say the game sadly misses target like a Diana Diana Ross penalty after a comparing a rush to dev cycle to a poor graphics, slow gameplay, chunky control. GFinity call it an abs- absolutely terrible, uninspired, insulting to the fans of a beautiful game. It's like AI slop together just to ride the World Cup hype. So, like this, like coupled with the absolute worst trailer for interactive for FIFA World

Cup from FIFA. If you see this trailer, it is literally the worst. This [ __ ] right? We didn't see a [ __ ] screenshot or a video of this game before it launched. Like it was like it is unbelievable how poorly they've managed interactive. And all I have to say to FIFA is like why the [ __ ] did you not just play ball with EA, dude? EA has all you need for this [ __ ] And yet now you're going out and doing deals with Delphi, which is like I don't know. The biggest like
Chris, don't hate the player, hate the game because Netflix paid for this. Nobody gets paid. Like this is not Apple Arcade where you get residuals. This is one check. I bet Netflix paid 10 million. They put in like a 30% bonus because it shipped so fast for the for the championships.
It's opportunity cost.
It fits perfectly Netflix games portfolio.
Netflix it makes sense. For Delphi it's a [ __ ] lunacy. Like it's like why are you why are you putting yourself out there? Like this is the worst game ever.

I'm here for Delphi. I think this was a smart business move. They paid in advance. There's no residuals. Put the game into lovable. Give it to Netflix. Say thank you for 10 million dollars. See you never. This was one off. You're not going to be even around next time we'll make a game. So, put your all your eggs on 007.
No, first of all, they didn't make 007.
It's with Eidos. I know.
They they negotiated
Not Eidos, but uh but the uh the
license. They don't they don't get [ __ ] from that.
IO Interactive, yeah.
Of course this is going to happen. They've had 3 years and this is all they could come up with, a bunch of [ __ ] shite, you know, for the biggest the biggest the biggest event in the history of sports and this is what they come up with, right? This is what they're supporting it with. Meanwhile, eFootball, FC, all these other games are cleaning house, right? And they don't even have the [ __ ] brand, right? And so like they're like completely out to lunch on this [ __ ] So, anyway, moving on.
Delphi, well played. I congratulate you

for bamboozling
Why are you shilling them? They're they're
I'm not shilling. I'm I'm I'm just saying like this is if I understand your point. I agree 100% with your point. But from the perspective of just business, they bamboozled FIFA and Netflix all at once. That's good. I applaud that. On to consumer apps. Let's Let's go to the final final stage of this. Phil, take away the the rope and show the economist who you are underneath.
[laughter]
Underneath Underneath those yellow glasses.
At the Arena event, my talk was entitled three truths and one lie on mobile gaming's next decade and there has been a narrative that has gotten on my nerve which is around consumer apps and the success that consumer apps pose. And so what I wrote as a claim is that consumer apps pose a serious threat to games. That's something we talk a lot about. And I label this as false.
Ooh.
It's time to talk about why. So the first is the infamous graph we've all

seen in Sensor Tower which feels like this Rubicon moment which is the share of IP revenue from games versus other other is finally greater than 50%. It's more than games. Remember Eric, our good friend Mr. Eric Seufert, he published a piece called The App Store is the game store. Well, no longer because other has surpassed games, right? That feels like the narrative. But if we break it down and look at the subgenres and which ones are responsible for that growth in other, you'll notice there are four categories that are responsible for literally almost like literally all the growth if we adjust this on a real basis. Entertainment by far by far potentially around what? We're thinking about the plurality of growth has been from entertainment then it's on very second distant photo and video then there's productivity and then there's other. Those are the only things that really matter in this analysis of apps having a greater revenue share. So let's then break down those four categories and for each of them let's look at the

top apps within each of those categories and how much of the growth they drove. So if we look at entertainment remember that was the big one, right? That was the one that had driven all the revenue. Well, 26% of the growth in entertainment over the period we just saw is TikTok. Then it's HBO Max then it's Peacock TV then it's Paramount Plus. This is not when we talk about like consumer apps this is not what we mean when we mean consumer apps these heavy hitters. The only one that looks like it follows that story is real short which we're just talking about that micro drama more homegrown. Productivity we don't give a [ __ ] about that's not consumer apps consumers never pay for productivity tools. So the fact that ChatGPT and Google One are big movers is irrelevant. Photo and video YouTube no one gives a [ __ ] Snapchat no one gives a [ __ ] CapCut potentially interesting but again that's more tied into short form video and then Canva is another consumer app story I'll give you that one that's 9% of the growth and then other is kind of interesting it's Audible Hinge Tinder Duolingo Life360 but again that seems

like a rather equal category. So there's a variety of things that are driving the other category. So I put these things together and it doesn't look as exciting, right? You control for entertainment you control for the top leaders in entertainment you control for like these giant AAA corporations basically onshoring their apps back to the App Store and suddenly consumer apps does not look as exciting even Duolingo, right? Duolingo is like the poster child. Do you see how long it took Duolingo to get to be a billion dollar company? Over 140 months you look at Monopoly Go it was 20 months you can scale this so much quicker
Yeah. If it's a mobile It didn't No, it it took Duolingo to make $1 billion. They became a billion-dollar company way faster.
Correct. What I'm talking about is a run rate.
Yeah. Revenue.
Yeah. Yes, revenue. So, that to me is a very long time to make your first billion. That is a really long payback cycle. Monopoly Go, Gardenscapes, all these things scale so much quicker. Everyone loves to talk about your subscription revenue, but I think this is really where it really hurts them. They haven't been able to grow advertising. They haven't been able to

grow in-app purchases. They're almost too reliant on price cap subscriptions, even with Duolingo Max. So, I don't think this is as exciting of a category as people make it out to be. I think there's still interesting things happening here, but it's but you I don't know. I think about it more as like if we just thought about this as a new genre and compared this to something like merge, I don't think the revenue comparisons would be that far off. So, just a little bit of cool water.
I'm going to pour a little bit of hot water, but but those make sense. So, the way apps So, you basically put it took in one graph, which is the in-app purchases and of of apps and games and showed that now apps are making more and then disproved that point, which makes sense. But, if we look outside of that graph and the effect of apps on gaming ecosystem, there's two other KPIs that are affecting quite seriously. One is share of users' attention. So, while I don't have a graph for that, we can see that players are spending more and more time. I know it's somewhere in Sensor Tower's graphs. They're spending more

and more time in apps versus games. So, we're losing attention to the YouTubes and the TikToks and the the ChatGPTs of the world because players only have one screen and that is the loss of share of attention to apps. The second part, they're seeing tailwind secular tailwinds, if you will, from the rise of CPIs that are being increased by the rise of products coming into the market. So, as there are being more and more apps released, that those compete for the marketing channels with games and because of that, the CPI's increasing and that is hurting games. So, I would say the share of attention and the CPI's are other factors in addition to kind of the stories behind the in-app purchase decreases.
And to be fair, there's a lot of monetization that happens off platform on consumer apps. We only see IPR. So, I also think that's a fair That's been fair pushback.
By the way, this is I know that like this is what I heard on the event. I think I can say this. Bro, so one of my favorite hybrid casual game, I [ __ ] you

not, their their their founder was there. I'm not going to name it, but I've played them [ __ ] 2 years. Absolutely amazing sword game, not magic sword, a different sword game. The The founder said that half of their in-app purchase revenue, which are half of their overall revenue, is coming through web shops. And I thought like no web shops are monetizing in in like puzzle games or especially hybrid casual games. Did you know this, Phil?
That's crazy. That's a crazy number.
We're talking about tens of millions of dollars for that game. Like this game is a 100M a year game. Over.
Oh my god, can I I just can't wait till Sensor Tower comes out with the data and just [ __ ] deflates all this [ __ ] around web shop stuff because it's just it's getting annoying, you know? It It's not a market
I believe on these individual case studies of games that have are losing revenue hand over fist, but the share of web shops is is higher. Who gives a [ __ ] right? Like it doesn't matter,

right? It's a sinking ship. It's like a [ __ ] Yeah, it's a finger on the dike.
Web shop is a sinking ship?
That these games are sinking ships and they're getting a lifeline sent to them by these web shops, but that's not going to solve the underlying issues with this this industry, which is [ __ ] user acquisition costs.
It will just show that Apple 11 wins in in end.
Yeah, it'll show that we've since hit saturation of web shops. Web shops are as a percentage of the overall business is is slowing and it's it's it's not going to be the holy grail of of this industry to help save industry.
I don't know if it's saveable, but I I think it will save your EBITDA and I like web shops. So, on that note
sit No, it does not stop it does not save your EBITDA if you're spending more money on UA, okay? That that's [ __ ] It's total [ __ ]
Yeah, you end up spending more on UA, 100% because everybody is jumping in on web shops. They're getting more EBITDA and that EBITDA is flowing into Apple ovens and metas and unities of the world.
Apple oven's the only beneficiary.
It's exactly what I already in my

presentation.
[snorts]
You shut up, Mishka.
The last correction, I should have done this earlier, is
reintroduce
at the end of the last podcast that I thought that that there was a rumor about IDFA coming back and that that Apple's going to reduce relieve, excuse This was just a rumor. This is not what I think is going to happen. All I was trying to figure out is what would actually happen within the ecosystem and and and I got I got good answers on that from all the different sources, but I am not of the camp to think that Apple is going to be that stupid and that like disingenuous to like put back IDFA. But then again, I don't put it past them either. So, it was like it's eh, who knows,
[clears throat]
right? But anyway, I just want to be clear. All right. That it? All right, kids. Watch watch football. Root for your favorite team. Whatever that team might be. And talk to you
Europeans are discovering America. It's been gorgeous. I'm excited to see more of their check-ins.

What?
[laughter]
Uh on that note, goodbye.
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