WeChat Mini-Games insights and the Love & Deepspace Valko controversy | Week in Mobile Games podcast

[music] Hello and welcome to the pocket gamer.biz podcast week mobile games where we chat about the week's news and provide some insights of Craig Chapel head of content at pocket gamer.biz and with me today is our deputy editor Paige Cook editorial director for events Mariam Amad and our features and data editor Aaron Asel. How you all doing? What you all been up to Aaron? What's been going on? So, I thought I'd um yeah, open with my latest like Pokemon Champions update. Promise this won't become a weekly thing.
Yeah, we're kind of getting towards the end of this current season, so everything gets reset again sort of end of next week. Um so, I'll see whether that kind of kills my motivation or kind of restarts it. But um I think I think I said last week I was I'd made it to like the top roughly like 60,000 which you know I don't say with any um you know

bragging intent obviously that isn't that impressive.
Um and yeah um so but I've I've worked my way up a bit higher. So, um I think uh I haven't played for a couple of days, so I think it's gone down a bit now, but at my peak I got to the top 26,000. Um which, yeah, they did recently uh announce that it's at 10 million downloads now. So like 26,000 out of obviously not all 10 million are going to be you know properly playing the game but if if we pretend that they are for a minute you know I'm quite happy with um with that positioning um
work
yeah not not to say that I'm suddenly going to be you know winning esports competitions or anything but um for someone who's obviously been into Pokémon for most my life but never really into the competitive scene like it's quite satis satisfying of like, oh, I do actually kind of know a bit about how the Pokémon work, even if I've not

really dabbled in the PVP side of things. Thanks, Arian. What you been up to?
I am about, what is it, one or two years late, but I've been really into CLA obscurer and it's all I've been playing and it's all I've been doing on the weekends for the last few weeks. I think I mentioned it to you, Craig, but yeah, what fantastic game. I've been kind of sinking a lot of time into it. I think yesterday after work I played for about three hours and uh my husband came home and was like, "You haven't moved at all since I left the house." So yeah, that's kind of what I've been spending a lot of my time on. I wonder have any of you guys played it, Craig? I know you have. I think
I loved it. I I was one of my favorite gaming games in years. Might be one of my favorite ever. Everything about it is great. The game play is is superb. what they do with the ter with turnbas and you still got your reactions for parrying and dodging. The story visually it looks great. It's not like drab like a lot of other games. It's just like quite vibrant different areas really and the characters the story is is

fantastic. I didn't necessarily agree with parts of the direction but I by the end of it I I it's I thought they really actually hit what they were going for and it's kind of stuck with me. Yeah, this is my second turn-based game actually. I was a big fan of Boulders's Gate as well. So, I was expecting going into this, I wasn't expecting I don't know what I was expecting out of the turn-based sort of gameplay, but I was quite pleasantly surprised. Yeah, I think it's a really well-made game and I really recommend it to anyone who hasn't actually tried it.
Yeah, I also loved it. It was one of my favorite games the year it came out. I still listen to the soundtrack very often. Try and convinly singing in French, so I'm here singing along. Not a clue what I'm saying, but sounds great.
Yeah, it's a fantastic soundtrack. It is really good.
Yeah, it's very good.
Yeah, I nearly forgot. Like I think everything about it is great. Like I can't really pick like there's not one thing that's like wrong with it in my opinion.
Awesome. So we're all we're all playing lots of games. It's pretty cool. Paige, what have you been up to? Well, starting

with games, I So, it took me a while to get into the whole GTA 6 hype. I think because it's like been delayed so many times, it just like felt like this thing that was like we're talking about it, but it's never going to happen. So, I just couldn't get excited. But then I feel like with the recent like pre-orders going live and they finally shown some like images and things, feel like it was finally clicking like, oh, it's happening and I feel excited. So, I started another playthrough of the original GTA Vice City. I had to play the original, not the definitive because they lost like the license to some of the soundtracks and that was always my favorite thing about that game. Um, like sometimes I'll get to a mission and if there's a really good song on the radio, I'll just sit in the car and wait for the song to finish before I start what I'm doing. But yeah, so I'm having fun revisiting that. Um, and outside of games, I've just been very stressed watching England play football. It's
been horrible. It's It's not There's no enjoyment, is there?
No. like the match the other day just it was not fun to watch at all. There was part of me that was tempted to play I'm just going to walk away and I'll just

see what the score is at the end because it's making me want to pull my hair out. So England played the the Democratic Republic of Congo and with respect to them and have a couple good players but like the England players are all allegedly you know worth like 100 million here 100 million there play at the top clubs of the world and it's just for most of the game it just felt like well credit to I still think even though we won 2-0 somehow they they were still the better team. I I don't know how we'll compete at the rest of the tournament with better teams. That m maybe people keep saying you grow into the tournament. That's a really nice way of saying not very good.
Yeah, cuz our next match is something like I think it's on at like 1:00 a.m. like Sunday slash like Monday for us. So, I'm kind of glad that I'm not going to watch it. I'm just going to wake up and be like, well, are we still in the World Cup or not? Like, I'm I'm kind of relieved that I'm not going to have to enjoy watching it.
All right. Uh thanks, Paige. And as for myself, in terms of games, just a quick

update. Last week I was talking about Starcraft 2 and I'm actually shocked. So I was saying that there's been these major changes and then like every 8 to 10 months or so, Blizzard comes in, they make a few changes, test them, a couple more, and then they just leave the game for 8 10 months once the update goes live off of the the test server. They actually made another update the other day. So they are still bat and they said they're going to continue monitoring it, looking at the data, whatever that means and they might make further changes. I think unfortunately I think there's a lot of people that are still unhappy with the direction entirely of this patch and it's really unclear what the goal is as well. So it's hard to give feedback when you don't know what you're trying to achieve. Do you want more people just to just defend or do you want more people to attack? Like we don't know. It's hard to say like what's worth anyway. So, that was uh that was a really big surprise this week, right? Anyway, we're going to move on to all the news. So, first off, as usual, a few shout outs for our Pocket Gamer Connects

events. We have Pocket Gamer Connect Summit Shanghai July 29th. Got PTC Nordics in Helsinki October 20th to 21st. And then later this year, we should be we're expected to be in Bangkok, Jordan, and Greg Canary. And also we got the mobile games awards coming up in Cologne alongside games. And voting is now open. So we we've released the list of finalists and if you want to this is just for the industry to vote in. If you want to vote either go to mobilegamews.com or go to pocket gamer.biz and you can vote there. Right, we're going to move straight to. So I just wanted to go through a report on WeChat miniames. So, a big thank you to Meridian Play and Jeny for sending us a translated report and also thank you to Social Peta for working with Mariam on a mini games article story with us. So, there's lots of data to to chew on. If you don't know what we mini games is, instant games you can play within the WeChat app. It's like a messaging app. Basically, the everything app very popular in China and Asia. You can use it over here, but I think slightly

different functionality. And you can play these games instantly. No downloads required. It's I guess it's like WhatsApp on steroids, but it's probably how you describe. So, as of March 2026, WeChat had according to this report, but I guess this would be based official data, 1.43 billion monthly active users. According to Quest Mobile data, as of March 2026, the overall mini program monthly active users reached just over 1 billion. And with WeChat mini programs accounting for 973 million, representing a 5.8% 8% year-on-year increase. And then according to the China games industry report, the mini games market generated approximately 7.65 billion in revenue. That's a rise of 34.39% year-over-year. The market is projected to surpass $9.72 billion in 2026. In this market, inapp purchases generated five just over $5 billion while ads picked up $2.37 billion. I thought that

was really interesting because in the west you can never get data about ads ad revenue but they they at least have some sort of estimates there which I thought was great. Then there was some data on rising mini games ad spend. So 51,000 mini games were running ads in 2025 up four 54% year-over-year. Traditional mobile games only inverted commas had 22,000 ad running titles up 5.2% year-over-year. And then they shared a August 2025 top mini games chart. I don't know why specifically August, but that's what we've got. So, White Out Survival, which from Century Games was top with 50.73 million monthly active views. A game called Bang Bang Survivor had just over 40 million and Snake Off ranked third with 36.6 million. So, really, really big numbers there. And I also wanted to share some quick figures from our social pter article. So credit to so this is from this was written by Samu the CMO at

social and she's also the head of overseas business and she said we're now seeing more and more cases where mini games evolve into global franchises a great example is nobody's adventure chop chop the translation it started as a wechathat mini game it reached it reached peak monthly revenue of around 700 million that's Chinese currency and over 35 million ma after going overseas it even achieved over $10 million daily revenue globally. Legend of Mushroom, I think we we've covered that before. It's globally it's now made $270 million. That was from Joy Net Games and they're also called Joy Nicecapes that started out as a WeChat mini game. And then there's Screw Master 3D. Uh it's adapted overseas generating 10,000 in daily ad revenue. So if you didn't know about mini games, it's very big. If you already knew about it, this just confirms I think how big that space is. It's a really cool stats and thank you to those for everyone for sharing that with us. Any thoughts on WeChat video

games?
Yeah, it's very much you mentioned Greg, it's very much its own ecosystem. I think the breakout hits generating I think one of them I when she sent me the article it was something like 10 million in its first month or whatever it was and we don't have anything like it and I think the conversation now especially at PGC Summit Shanghai is how do we get a piece of that pie? Can you even because you know going on there it's all in Mandarin I think is the language. So it's uh it's interesting to see that sort of ecosystem and so separate to our world as well and our understanding of games but generating huge amounts of money so worth paying attention to.
Yeah for sure. It's certainly been tried in the west like on Android instant games we had Facebook instant games which was it just never ever took off. I always thought it was going to be a massive thing. I think Discord sort of tried it and now they've kind of come back with a couple games. It's not really like a big marketplace or store. Snap games came out that at one point we were all talking about

Telegram, but we're not really talking about that anymore. So HTML 5, it's an ever story. It's here, it's not here anymore. And then that repeats every couple of years. Right. So that's enough about WeChat mini games. Aaron, you've got what turned out to be a very big story in China. Yeah. So, um this is some love and deep space news which um yeah I was sort of looking into earlier in the week. A bit of a a strange case I would say. Um so basically Infold Games they were planning to implement a new love interest. Love and Deep Space is kind of like a a dating simulator in a way with like five kind of male characters to kind of choose from, I guess, and get up to romantic activities with. And as part of the version 6.0 O update which is planned for the 9th of July. They were planning to introduce a sixth uh kind of romantic option um which was supposed to be part of a like

long-term content plan and this resulted in a lot of negative feedback from players very negative. So there were like hundreds of thousands of complaints made on whitening. people apparently were sending feces to the developers studio in protest and like flower wreaths and um a lot of like crazy stuff basically and people saying they were going to stop you know playing the game apparently they lost like a million followers overnight in China upon announcing they were going to introduce a new character which seems really bizarre to me that that would get such a kind of visceral negative reaction. So, I was kind of looking into um you know, a bit of maybe why people weren't so happy about it. And so, there was some speculation from people that because Love and Deep Space has gota elements. I guess if there's like one character that you really like and there's kind of new content that comes out for five

characters, you've kind of get a one in five chance of the one you want getting the thing for them. Whereas people were then speculating like, "Well, now if there's six, you're going to have worse odds on the one that you want if you don't care about the new character, which I I kind of get that angle of it, but I don't think anything official was said on that necessarily being the case." And then there were also a lot of people complaining that um it was kind of taking development time away that they could be working on the stories for the established characters that people already like rather than using resources and time on this new character. But Infold did say that the team has been growing so they could basically take on more work. It's not a case of this is particularly replacing something else they could have done. But anyway, people still weren't um happy about it. So all of that and a lot of backlash against Infold Games has ultimately meant that this new character called Valco is basically being removed. He's not going to be part of the update. And Infog Games have basically promised that

they're never going to introduce a new love interest. It's just going to be these five and basically trying to appease people and um I think give like some bonuses and things to like basically apologize and they put out like a statement basically saying they're they're sorry that they you know hurt their audience and um you know they're going to try and improve things. It's just overall very it's I'm still wrapping my head around this one to be honest. It's a it's a strange story that not introducing new content is the good outcome that people wanted.
So I don't think you mentioned the the number that part the key part of the controversy there which was that to my understanding. So there's a couple things this character has links to like I think the evil I believe it has links to like the evil corporation in the game. So fans were kind of unsure about that. And also it ra it started to raise political issues because they used the number 731 which was the number being

used by Japanese military. So that even sparked apparently this is what I've been told that all of the media from the China central government were reporting this and condemning paper games for for doing this. And I think in your story you say that they said that it was just automatically it was just an automatically generated number. wasn't supposed to have those links.
Just don't know the real story, but all of this is kind of compounded together to to create this massive controversy. It's not clear just simply from app magic looking at app store if this has affected it or not yet. We'll see in the coming months, but Love and D space is a massive massive game around the world. It makes loads of money, but you can even tell when I was at Gamescom last year, one of the most popular booths and the consumer expo for was the Love and Deep Space Zone, which was massive. And then they had all the big kind of love interests like all Yeah, it was it was a really great move by the way. But yeah, so hopefully hopefully they can kind of hopefully they can get past this and I'd

be surprised if they don't release any new characters ever again. But
yeah, that seems crazy. Like the outcome is we'll never give you anything new. Like that's I understand the government part of it. If there's if that's an issue, I understand them not releasing the character right now. Like take it back to the drawing board. make sure you know there isn't something you know a political issue here and then release it when the character is actually like ready because I saw a lot of comments that were like it seems like a lot of the backlash is from Chinese players like they're not happy about this but it seems like a lot more of the sort of global players they're almost on the other end they were like I saw comments people like they're in tears because this new character's like not coming to the game or they're like you know I didn't play when it originally came out so I was really excited for a new character that I get to know the same time that everybody else is because everyone else has already been playing for so long. But yeah, I thought the result would be yeah, we'll go back to the drawing board, release the character when we've ironed some stuff out. But yeah, it just seems like that's it. He's

just not going to be in the game at all.
I think just again, I'm not knowledgeable on this, so I can't speak to all the political issues, but I guess I at least because within China is obviously a very very sensitive topic, right? So that means you can't just go back to the draw board, right? That that is now scrapped. But surprisingly, you can't even do another as completely separate character. No links to anyone. Maybe that'll change, maybe not. But I guess this is kind of an example of just always be careful with what you put in your game, especially in relation to sensitive historical, cultural, political issues. Always listen, try and listen to the fans and Yeah. But yeah, that's that's massive story. I I was generally quite shocked.
Yeah. And just to add, like the game has introduced new characters before, as I say, like there's five at the minute, but there were three love interests when it launched. They added one with version 2.0, another one with 3.0. So obviously they haven't, you know, for four or five, but you know, they were planning to do the sixth one for 6.0. So like yeah whether

it has ultimately all spawned from the kind of number controversy and just kind of snowballed from there because yeah like I don't believe there was any major controversy with those other characters that got added but as like the statement now from infold games you they have said they commit that no additional love interests will be introduced in future content plans you know it's not just this character they have said there just won't be new love interest
right we'll move on from that one to something else. So, Paige, what else have we got?
Yeah, bit of a lighter story for me. Mine is just a new game release. So, I'm always really intrigued with Netflix and what they do with games. I I find that I don't know, I think it's like every year we get sort of a new strategy from them. But, there was a game that when I originally saw the trailer for this, I didn't realize it was just like a Netflix game. I just saw it and I was like, "Oh, that looks pretty cool." And then I realized it was a Netflix thing. So, it's called Unhinged. It's like a new interactive horror experience. It's done from Night School Studio. So

they're the people behind games like Oxenfree. So they're like quite narrative games. They're they're really good. So yeah, this one it has like a really strong cast. So there's like Zoe Kravitz is in it, Sadie Sink is in it, and Troy Baker is in it. But yeah, I haven't really dabbled much with Netflix games. Like I just feel like when I go on Netflix, that's just not personally what I'm looking for, which I think is part of the problem cuz I think a lot of people maybe feel that same way. But this is definitely one that I do intend on trying. I will give it a go at the weekend. It follows a character called Ava. She's trapped inside an apartment during I think it's like a category 5 hurricane. And as though that wasn't bad enough, there's then I think the premise is like there's a killer that's after her because you know she's not got enough going on already. So yeah, like what's interesting is so you play the game, you watch it on your like you have it on your TV, you scan a QR code and then your phone becomes the controller. So you can use like your phone flashlight and it becomes her flashlight. Like your phone will like receive calls, texts, like it'll vibrate

when that's happening. So the whole point is like your phone. It is the controller, but it also feels like it's part of this sort of interactive immersive experience. Can't speak to how well it works, but I'm sure I'll update you on next week's podcast after I've played it. But yeah, I think like more importantly for me, I just like this is the sort of experience that makes a lot of sense for Netflix and maybe something they should explore a little bit more of in the sense of like just being something very narrative driven. I know they've had sort of games on there before that have tied in with other shows that they've got that have but like they're very minimal gameplay. I think it's literally just like, you know, a piece of artwork of a character and you choose a dialogue you want to do. Whereas this is at least a little bit like the phone like you're getting these texts and calls. that feels like a an immersive thing. And yeah, I just feel like that's a like a potentially really good fit for them. So, I wonder if it's a direction that they would explore more. From what I've seen, I think this game is very short. I mean, like I think you can potentially complete it in like half an hour. So,

very short experience. But yeah, I just wonder if there's potential to expand on it. like games sort of like I don't know you like the old Telltale games and I don't know not maybe as detailed as this but like Detroit Become Human those kinds of really narrative choice based games that they're essentially like watching a really highquality drama TV show when you're making the decisions along the way. I feel like that could be a good fit for them because yeah, I think in general with Netflix games they've always had this same issue of kind of how I mentioned earlier. It's are like are people using Netflix for games and like who are you trying to target? So I see like lots of videos about like when they put games on the platform and I always hear the phrase like oh core gamers like core gamers don't want to use Netflix games because they see it. It's kind of like when people say the same stuff about mobile games like ah they're not real games you know core gamers aren't playing them. So if those people aren't going on Netflix to play the games, but then also just

your general everyday, you know, person who maybe dabbles with mobile and watches Netflix also isn't using it. I think that's still just the issue for them. It's like who are we trying to target? So I'm not saying that them going down the route of exploring these really narrative driven games would fix that, but I at least feel like that genre feels like an interesting fit. like I said that I've seen plenty of games go on there and I've never had an interest in trying one, but this is the first game I've seen where I'm like, "Oh, that looks like quite a unique interesting experience that I'll go out of my way on their platform to actually try." So, yeah, we'll we'll see. I'll I'll let you guys know what I think of it. But, yeah, I just thought it was a pretty cool idea.
I think it's pretty awesome. I I curious how does I know I was speaking to publisher. They're making a certain type of game and I think that deal fell through basically cuz Netflix changed his strategy. probably around last year, but this almost sounded similar in terms sort of but not it wasn't going to be interactive. Let's see how it works. I think it's a good idea, but like I guess

brings you back to Bander Snatch and that was kind of fun at the time.
It did make headlines, but I I don't that didn't really like move things to to go in that direction. So, I don't know if this is any different. Yeah, very cool. All right. Thanks, Paige. So, the last thing I want to talk about fairly quickly is actually another non-mobile thing, but I wonder what I guess I guess it just affects gaming at large for like the next few years. So, let's go down. So, PlayStation is going to stop releasing games on discs from January 2028. You can still buy them in shops games, but they'll come with a digital code instead. I guess PC gauge probably going to be doing that for quite a while as well. And that came after Rockstar said it's going to launch Grand Theft Auto 6 without a physical disc. It's I guess someone as old like me. It's just really weird to hear about that. I have a So I have a few views. So Steam does very well, right, without discs. So there is totally a market for this, but discs are

also very popular one because people like to own stuff and there is still a market for that. So in the BBC story, Chris D is is at the game business. used for MCV and MCV covers specifically retail used to cover that and he was saying you know there sure and I think even PlayStation shared data like majority of people are now just downloading stuff but there's still it's still a big market there still million still millions sold that way and now you just potent I don't you maybe you still get that but at retail then it's probably a bit of a shock for them and then there's the secondhand I was trying to think of other ways this affects game so there's the secondhand market so get their prices to games and hardware is all going up. So, I feel like ultimately console gaming is becoming even more and more niche and so they're going to find it really hard to expand the audience further and further which is going to affect things in the end like game pass and subscription services. This is going to end up on a massive ramp. Also, the secondhand market is quite important for people that

can't afford like generally to buy lots of games each year. So, they might buy one and now it'll cost like 78 quid. You can go to the history of how games used to cost a lot. Price has not gone up inflation, but let's face it, regardless of all of this, they are expensive to buy. If you don't think they're expensive to buy, I think you're just well off or like well off enough. So, people might buy them with the knowledge that they'll then take them back to the store after a while to sell them and get some money back. Or, and this is kind of what publishers, platform holders really hate. they'll go to the store and buy secondhand games which the publishers kind of shafted out of a bunch of money in that scenario. But the fact is is that is kind of forms part of the market and also forms part of the audience. So I started thinking okay if you get rid of this entire market who then is that less of an audience to watch say summer games fest or or anything like this there's I this is a massive assumption that's probably wrong but I can see in the future that there'll just be fewer

people interested in games because they're just priced out of it and there's no way into it and you've got and we already talk about like I hate using the phrase but the attention economy and so people watching like Netflix or playing or on Tik Tok or just doing other things that aren't games. I don't think this I think the result of this pushes people away and I think Issa was Issa Muhammed our free last I've actually forgotten some of his comments but I think he said that in Africa 90% of people don't even have a PlayStation account and I think it was someone correct me I think it was just because like you couldn't do the payments there
yeah I think he said you essentially can't make like you said like 90% of people in Africa literally can't make a PSN account which means you can't use the PS like PS store. So they play their games obviously with physical discs. So how are they supposed to do that?
And so games are going to get cheaper by the way just cuz they're like at least the top end AAA. Maybe that's the thing

that'll end up being the the most impacted potentially by this top end AAA games that cost loads and loads to make. The audiences in my mind shrink. I could be proven wrong. so many I I'm sure for like decades at least the last decade every year is every generation it's like is this the last console generation I doubt it but you know and then my last thing was just like again what's the future of all this look like I don't think cloud gaming is ever going to be an answer for like highric hardware in future for consoles either so it's not good for esports or competitive games and frankly cloud gaming is just not taken off in the past 10 15 years online guy Kai everyone It's just not Xbox. It's This is not happening. I don't think it ever will. And there's no emerion markets that you can get that will pay those prices for games. It's all a bit of a random assortment of of opinions there. But in the end, I I just think interesting decision that kind of sounds like it makes sense, but I think I have like potentially farreaching

consequences around the world.
This one was a difficult one for me to read cuz I think out of every gaming medium, PS2 games was like were like my first love. like time spplitters, every addition of like WWE, the Warriors, so many Gran Turismo. Like I I spent probably more time. Yeah, it's it's been my favorite gaming medium. Even when the other sort of PS3, PS4, PS5 came out, I still kind of stuck with my PS2 for some reason. But this is really it's sad on that part. And obviously from a business point of view, I think the article that I read said that% of their sales go through digital now, but like you said, Craig, it feels like it's becoming more exclusive. Like Isa has pointed out, so many people live in rural places. How are they going to get access to games? It just feels like it's another push to make it this exclusive thing. And also, what's going to happen to your digital games when the servers go offline? It also seems like this thing is like we don't own it. We just borrow it. Um cuz you're not owning that physical physical disc anymore. So, there's so many questions that arise out of this. You can kind of see why they did it if this

if that 80% is completely accurate. I'm sure it is. Yeah, it's kind of sad as well from a personal standpoint. PS2 is such like a discs, physical discs are such an icon, such an iconic part of a gamer's experience, especially from a I'm 31 and I I mean I I grew up playing PS2. Yeah, this one's very difficult for me as well because I see it from both sides. I understand that it is kind of a sign of the time. So you said PC did this a long time ago. When was the last time you bought a PC with a disc drive or put a disc in a PC? A long time ago. But at the same time, they have different storefronts. If I go on my PC and play a game, there are different places I can get those games. Whereas, you know, with PlayStation, if all they've got is the PS store, you are locked into buying it there. Yes, they're saying they'll still do retail bits of code, but, you know, sort of traditionally the prices and things like that don't budge as much. You know, like with Steam, you know, they have a lot of much bigger sales and things like that. It's a little bit more affordable in that sense. I also think it's very bold of them to do this and say, "Hey, listen. We're going digital. Don't worry about it. Also, we're closing the

PlayStation 3 store and the PS VA store. So any games that you have there are gone and like you know recently obviously they had this thing of I think it was like 500 films and things. They were like yeah but you can't access those anymore. So it's just you know kind of bold of them to be like don't swear it guys it's going to be fine but you are losing access to these other things and you know you're supposed to believe this can't happen in the future. So, I do like really understand the concerns there about, you know, digital ownership and yeah, and just, you know, for a lot of people that are huge collectors, it's kind of feels like literally an end of an era. If you're that kind of person that, you know, wants to collect games, that's not really going to be a thing. And I think it all but obviously confirms that whenever the PS6 does happen, it will be the first fully digital console. I remember when the PS5 came out and obviously there was the option of digital or you could get one with a disc drive and even that caused like a huge outcry. So the fact that the next one, you know, if this all goes ahead, you know, it's not going to have a disc drive cuz they're not doing discs. So

yeah, it's it's a very strange sign of the times. Like I feel like I was literally talking about it at the weekend with some family and I was saying like, "Yeah, that's where it's going to go eventually." And then a few days later this story happened. I was like I wasn't thinking yet. Like it just Yeah, it is. It is crazy. I understand it from a business point of view, but I also massively understand all the concerns around it. And like I said, like with what Isa said, how how do they play games if they could only play physical? You know, you're going to have to make it so that, you know, people can play it in other places. And maybe, you know, if you're getting money back from your less manufacturing and all those kind of costs coming back to you, maybe some of these games need to be a little bit cheaper. I don't see them doing that, but people will be thinking that it should happen because yeah, it's like you said, people are just getting priced out of playing these games now.
So, it's a couple quick things is that the thing that you mentioned which was great. So, it was that already told PlayStation users in the UK and Europe that 551 movies that they've paid for

will be deleted from September 1st, 2026, which is wild. And then all of this comes around and you just did an article page about the kind of the stock killing games movement and games ownership. It comes at the same time as all this. It's got to raise a lot of questions. Again, I'm not like 100% against all of this because ultimately has kind of been proven like Steam Works, but I just think like we've been discussing there's lot of potential issues down the road. It doesn't help you actually expand the audience. So are you now just forever you've just got a shrinking audience for consoles? Maybe that has been the case for a while anyway. At least at least for like PlayStation and Xbox and you can't expand out of that. We'll see.
I wonder if uh discs will become like Pokémon cards where they become really rare and you have archavists that kind of like have all the top. I wonder what that means for that kind of side of collection. I still have all my PS2 games. I'm not I'm holding on to them.
They're going to be worth a lot more. I I do want to part this just because it's becoming more expensive to make these consoles and they're kind of also looking ahead of one where the trend is

going which is more people are downloading and two how do we make these how do we make this hardware cheaper so we can get out the door at a reasonable price that people will pay like the Steam shoes are so expensive
feels like it's the end of an era
yeah I was going to say that a lot of them don't feel reasonable
feels like the end of an era it feels feels like death it's really sad when I read that it was actually really really sad
yeah yeah very that is a good way to put it end of an era very much so right uh we're going Stop there. So, thank you all for your insights today. Really appreciate it. And thank you everyone uh for tuning in and listening to the latest show. We'll be back again next week, of course. In the meantime, have a great weekend. Cherish your physical software and uh you might not see you might not get it again. And uh yeah, we'll catch you on the next one. Thanks everyone.