Week in Mobile Games E30 - Ubisoft's woes and Genshin Impact hits $6bn in four years(!)

[Music] hello and welcome to the pocketgamer.biz podcast week in mobile games where we discuss the week's news and provide some insights and Analysis I'm Craig Chapel head of content at pocketgamer.biz and with me today is Aaron assel our news editor and and for the first time we're actually doing the video uh podcast which I may edit into audio later um but you as you can see uh the backgrounds that we have are two R worlds I look like it's like a just like an airing cupb or something behind me me like a spare room whereas Aaron actually has proper background it has really cool figures we're just talking about some of the Pokemon you've got on there yes yeah um my hair is kind of blocking it but for our for our visual listeners um this is my my cool Zoro art

figure with the little Zoro on the side really cool so he he's hanging out in the background listening in on the podcast and then um for our recurring listeners this is the the Beast Titan I mentioned last week week before maybe um and then yeah a bunch of other other stuff of CDs because I actually like physical media yeah fighting the system yeah one disco ATT I don't want to borrow your stuff I actually want to own it I've I've got no one can see them because I I have a rubbish background I have loads of figers on my desk I say loads I have a few I recently bought a Gengar because I'm sad but he's very cool to be honest oh yeah um kind of goes with all the other ones I've got I'll just show a quick view I've got like a charmand there it's very cool Bulbasaur one of my faves is on here by by by staring is as

I always can't go a single podcast without mentioning Godzilla I have the cutest little Godzilla I love that yeah that cool what's it called Godzilla Godzilla versus Kong that one's from he's just sleepy sleepy boy um but yeah so so that's the uh yeah now we're on visuals every week we can show off our latest figures I is that's whole star I I actually I ordered because I'm a massive nerd I ordered some uh Starcraft two figures as well from 's which which I've just discovered I wish i' never discovered it uh they're amazing somehow years after I've moved out from there I've accidentally sent them to my old flat so I to get in touch with the landlord like by the way you might just get these random figures turn they're mine um yeah I have to go get yeah that's that slightly embarrassing so uh

I guess that that's enough of all that I guess we'll jump straight into it but uh firstly we'll do some you know promotions for the things we're doing so obviously I'm sure everyone that's looked at the pocketgamer.biz website this week will will not forget that the Pocket Gamer connects Helsinki is taking place next week October 1st and 2nd uh that's actually part of finished games week so there'll be a leadership day where with igga Finland and W love games at the end of the week as well so there's a four pack there's plenty of other things going on we have our networking party uh there's still time to register of course so if you're interested in coming most people I think register probably like the last week because we all like to do things last minute we're really looking forward to that that's kind of taking over my week here for sure preparing for that I'm going to be hosting uh some cool panels I'm really looking forward to uh a fireside chat with roio about the a certain Sega acquisition so so definitely check that out that'll be that'll be real

fun and then later in the year we've got Pocket Gamer connect Jordan November n and Ted links description below oh and don't forget I nearly I nearly did uh top 50 uh we will be announcing that at Helsinki on October 2nd so if you want to be in the room and you want to meet some of the some of the representatives of those companies that will be included uh then definitely join us there we'll we'll publish that on the site uh later who who made it but uh good good luck to everyone we may may or may not already know who's in it after after many Ms working on that uh and then lastly yeah uh mobile Trad survey is still out about a week to go so please do fill that in let us know about all the latest trends really helps us kind of help you we'll provide we'll release a report about you know what developers think what what they're going through and get a snapshot of the industry as it stands right now uh so all the Shilling over done with we're

going to jump into the news and in my notes I as I do I started writing like just some quick things that I could look at and then I wrote like a thousand bullet points uh about it so I feel like we have to start with Ubisoft and the headline we've got which is one of the headlines from this week about Ubisoft really Ubisoft shares PL 20% after Assassin's Creed Shadows delay so where do I even begin it it's it's not been a good week for Ubisoft um so they released a statement that said a number of things H so Star Wars Outlaws their big of RPG had a sof than expected launch uh so poor sales is what that means they said it had a solid rating of 76 on Metacritic now kind of like are you kidding me a solid rating of 76

but you know there is a been long been a debate probably settled that Metacritic is not really the best way necessarily to to Really judge the game it's a pretty harsh metric potentially but in an industry where largely there's kind of the running joke uh in media is is it's run at a scale of you could only start at 7 to 10 and then that's it there's no number that you can get obviously that's not true but kind of generally maybe and so 76 under that is Is Not Great especially if it's one of your big games of the year and I know there was a few problems and part of the thing that they say here is Ubisoft development teams are fully mobilized to implement changes and polish so uh I haven't actually played it so I I can't really talk about you know how good or bad uh it is from from my perspective but what I have heard from other people that is that

they say it's just really the first hours I think someone said even the first 10 hours is is the problem and there's like some four stealth sections where you just kind of it's like insta fail you have to start all over again like everyone hates those kinds of missions I'm surprised they made it into the game um but then actually later the game opens up and it and it's fantastic so it does sound like this like you know this is a harsh way to put it but salvageable uh uh from there but obviously you want it good at lunch cuz that's when you're going to make a lot of the sales so yeah they're fully mobilized on that but then as mentioned the big news is Assassin's Creed Shadows has been delayed so it was going to launch in November and now it's been delayed to February 14th 2025 apparently it's feature complete but they want to polish it take the learnings from Star Wars Outlaws I wonder what that means is it for steal sections I probably not but uh interesting I think it's good to delay a game to make it better you know

years ago they had I'm sure everyone remembers Assassin's Creed Unity I think they bought the game to a new engine released it and it just wasn't in a fit state to run on everyone's kind of different devices and so you know they had the all the Articles were basically just like faces without a face just the eyes popping out or something and they they definitely don't want that again and yeah like I think it's Moto uh or I think it's Moto quote famously better a delay because that everyone will remember a bad game but they won't remember the delay but it it just kind of compounds with all the negativity I think surrounding Ubisoft lately that oh now they've delayed this and they've had like over the past couple years kind of some poor performing games um not everything but like yeah some poor performing games and then obviously you got that uh activist investor that wants to just shake up the entire company so

it's just a bad time and then if you slip into next year that's when ghost of y y y comes out I think there's room for both to be honest but yeah people have on social media been like making that kind of point and that joke that bad time to release a game when G because ghost of sushima really well loved kind of the same setting so we'll see how that does uh a couple quick more a couple more quick things uh interesting they said it's they're going to depart from the traditional season pass model and then because of the delay players who pre-order will get the first expansion free I'm quite surprised they would do that like it's a delay pretty good it's it's great for for players like Yeah from a consumer perspective well done Ubisoft but it feels like they've really taken it to heart that they've delayed this game because of yeah and it's only a couple of months isn't it yeah ex but exactly like I feel like Faz would forgive maybe maybe I'm

absolutely wrong but uh so I think with my um kind of Nintendo skew as that's what I mainly play like it's fairly common that they'll delay games so I think it's a kind of encouraging sign for Assassin's Creed that they are delaying it a bit because it means they do actually want it to turn out and of as good as it can be and you like often Nintendo games that have been delayed do end up selling really well when they come out and they you know they've delayed stuff and kind of missed the holiday period before as well like Animal Crossing had that obviously it released at a really good time because the pandemic was just just kind of good time yeah good time in um in heavy quotes but um you know so they obviously Nintendo didn't know that but they were willing to miss the holiday period to make a better game in the spring and yeah kind of sounds like you off doing something similar here hopefully we won't have another 2020 to to go along oh

yeah not an omen um but yeah I mean I guess like obviously invers will be annoyed but if ultimately it's helps the game that'll make better sales and then maybe maybe things will all be better come next year but yeah really struggling and then to top it all off there's the news today that workers at their French Studios going to go on strike uh because of the returning to office 3 days a week and they're encouraging their International colleagues to take part I don't know how feasible that would be obviously with rules different countries yeah it's it's all kicking off there and none of this is to mention their mobile stuff and and I think the fact that we don't all this stuff going wrong with Ubisoft we don't talk about mobile I think it's kind of telling in the sense that and and this isn't to knock their their mobile Studios like calibri is a really good developer but it's just like there's no seemingly meaningful strategy for their mobile division and and it's not a

meaningful impact compared to their console PC business and it doesn't seem to fit into their big strategy to focus on they say they're going to focus on open World Adventures and games as a service native experiences and unless you're really counting the live Ops for like C's called like Idol games it just doesn't seem to mesh yeah Ubisoft crazy actually just cap it off I I think it was weird like from I'd say 5 years ago just as r a time ago that Ubisoft actually seem pretty well positioned to to and even if you look in hindsight they they could have like really adapted well to any industry changes they had like already had great IP which now like EA is just redoubling on like redoubling their efforts on even though they already did a good job with that and then they had like the division and raino six Siege which were amazing GES us a service tites really and then those fr ches are kind

of not not doing as great as they were yeah I it's just hard to put your figure on what really went wrong maybe they just focused on the wrong games they shouldn't have made Avatar and Star Wars they could have just focused on their own hit franchises so uh I think that's probably enough Ubisoft uh before it becomes the Ubisoft show uh but obviously good luck to all the the staff there some other news dungeon of fighter mobile has surpassed $800 million in four months that's according to app magic and that's gross revenue so they show thatb Revenue the platform and we had the the 30% for apps for in this case for the App Store it's only uh those estimates are already China's App Store and so the actual Revenue that game's made is is who knows like two three times that maybe uh in in China if you count a third party Adroid stores so it's it's unbelievable how that's doing although you did not I think you had a chart that shows like

that it's actually the revenue is slowing yeah it is I mean it's still making absurd amounts of money yeah um so I also looked at I compared it with Squad Busters which obviously has been pretty successful over here not not maybe like Clash of Clans level but it's one of this year's fellow like big games and yeah I think Squad Busters best performing day it made as much as um dungeon and Fighters wor daying bit I mean I mean Squad Busters is like I mean this is on another level though right like Squad Busters it's not uh at the moment with respect to the team it's not uh what you'd think would be a super cell level game in terms of Revenue at the moment whereas do fire is just clearly the biggest new game of the year what did last walk about was that last year I get away elsewhere in the news uh f plus

doubles down on licensed IP as it soft launches Foundation Galactic Frontier and DC dark Legion so fun plus has they do like Guns of Glory a state of survival is is their kind of big games they have worked closely with IPS um they did like the Joker in state of survival partnership um but to my surprise unless someone's going to correct me but they never actually released a licensed game before and I I don't know why I just assumed that they had because I think they actually put like the Joker name in state survival but it it doesn't count uh but now they have two in soft launch set and they look both look set for a global release so interesting decision to do that I guess perhaps that's maybe it's just classic licensing strategy works with the kind of the titles that they've made and they've added the thep or they've kind of looked at post at or

we need a license to to get noticed the one I'm most curious about his foundation uh if that really has a big enough audience the TV show is fantastic OB obviously B on the books Isaac Isaac M ASO uh but yeah the TV show is fantastic it's probably one of Apple TV's like best shows I do some bangers on there yeah but it's not like a Star Wars or Star Trek right so curious how that does and then I I'll rattle through some of these other words so uh we did one this week there so we update the soft launch every week and some these come from that uh so after1 billion dollars in player spending hybrid cap casual specialist habby soft launches Tech Bas Idol RPG KP Baro so habby kind of kicked off the whole hyper casual fig with arero and then survivor.io was an even bigger success and they actually make obviously a lot of money money through ads so that

1 billion plus it's 1 nearly 1.2 billion gross player spending loads more on top of that in ad Revenue that we don't account for yeah the next game looks kind of cool definitely check that out yeah it's called it's described as a text based Road likee Adventure RPG starring a KP bar it's available on the apps Google Play in Australia Canada Singapore Thailand and Vietnam so if you based any of those or can get an account worth taking a look because I think when Hab is like one of those companies they always have a hit but when they've got a new title that's what I've checken out and I think game with go in the name yeah our resident uh well for start as our resident Pokémon go fan but then yeah obviously a certain other Go game that did fairly well I'll reel off Investments because I've been talking a lot game Beast has raised 3.7 million for and that's a a Roblox tool platform

Vivid games has secured $1.36 million investment to grow the real boxing brand so they actually had real boxing is it real boxing I have to check uh real boxing they actually had the third one in softs but it was pulled so maybe it was a test uh I'm not sure what's going on there but it sounds like that game's still alive uh which is good uh Nitro gaves has expanded its partnership with digital ex digital streams for Warframe mobile they got a new5 million euro deal and then lastly uh some sad news that Indie publisher merge game is closing down after 15 years uh they've worked on games like dead cells and darkest dungeon and I think that came around after kind of they did layoffs not that long ago and closed an office I think just a few weeks ago uh so that's yeah really sad news and good luck to all the people there I've been talking loads so Aon please please please uh rectify the

situation right so um see our other news this week so AFK Journey has surpassed 150 million in gross revenue that's also by at Magic estimates so yeah by September 21st it had made uh 158.3 million GRS and that six days before its half year anniversary um so it first released in the West on the 27th of March this year of course AFK journey is a a sequel to AFK Arena Lilith games Idol game which made huge waves in China um so that game's earned over one and a half billion the DAT so kind of by comparison AFK Journey it's got off to a relatively modest start considering it was initially just out in the west um I think a lot of people were waiting to see how it would do after the Asian release which was in August I

believe and basically since then yeah the revenues really surged um so it's it was at 71 million before it released in like China and Japan and um other Asian market and so it's more than doubled from there in like six weeks to the 158 million and Chinese players already account for about 22% of Lifetime Revenue even though they've only had it for like six weeks so China's already the second biggest like contributor Revenue wise behind the US and then South Korea Taiwan and Japanese and Japan round out the Top Value yeah it's clearly you know the Asian market is where it wants to be I I think with um AFK Arena I think that actually started as a global outside of China launch did extremely well and then released later in China if I

remember correctly the uh the interesting thing here in the chart if you've done so using that magic data is you can obviously see like the initial launch Spike when it launched ear this year and then it Revenue kind of declines each month after that and then August 2024 like you said massive massive Surge and actually oh oh it's partial muff isn't it CU cuz the revenue currently was I was about to say is below April I guess naturally we still got a few days left yeah yeah obviously yeah it's not I mean I doubt in the next few days it'll kind of more than double back to a yeah so to go up 3x or something two and a um but yeah no it's clearly yeah clearly launching in Asia was a a good idea um so yeah then moving on so tales of the Shire which is an upcoming Lord of the Rings game um is going to be

releasing on mobile as well as other platforms um but only for those with a Netflix subscription uh on mobile so um I've been seeing this one promoted for a while as a console game and initially saw it in a switch presentation so it's um it's cool to see it will be coming to mobile as well will be in a kind of exclusive way but I guess that's quite a win for for Netflix um to be able to offer its users you know like this full and a console game but for free on mobile um when it comes out um next year I believe and it's been being developed by wet workshop and take to subsid subsidiary private division so weter Workshop worked on the Peter Jackson vilages the Rings and The Hobbit um and it looks like they've captured the kind of sh aesthetic it pretty well and I

think the fact they're involved in those films which um I mean I like all six of them um Blasphemous as that may be The Hobbit films are actually pretty good they are the worst films i' they're just so bad the first one I think I had I think I watched in like a few different settings it was just so boring and so stretched out there's a whole seene with San in it that so unnecessary well if you grew up on it Craig you might might look at it differently you that's true that's true I guess yeah I grew up on the Star Wars prequels and actually as a kid I think I like them if I watch them again they they're they're terrible yeah to be fair like um two what is it attack of the Clones that used to be my favorite I Rew watched it a few years ago like actually this is I I I'm glad there's someone else I I I felt bought I was just like why does attack of the

clothes get such a bad rap I thought pretty good and you watch it again you're like oh this is this is this is the worst one anyway yeah so with um with this Lord of the Rings game uh so obvious it's a big IP for uh for Netflix to kind of be involved with um it sort of fits their it's a funny one because it kind of fits their strategy a lot of their mobile games they've kind been building on the shows that they have and then going to releasing games in them but obviously here they don't have a net um they don't have a lord of the ring show but Amazon do at the minute so that's a bit of a just a funny one obviously Netflix aren't really involved in making this game as far as I know um particularly because it's launching on consoles as well but yeah just a funny funny thing that inadvertently it might go and watch ringss of power it's all right yeah yeah hbits way better the um ignoring that

the uh uh I'm still like if I let's talk about like Netflix in general I still not really sure what is it they're going for I feel like they're still in between eras of you know what they were doing before now they brought in a new president for for games like what is what is their strategy what's their direction do they currently have one who actually runs that Strate is it the is it the co CEOs of Netflix or is it actually the guy they' brought to do it and the other executive team that you know that they've got there and and what is it they're going for they try to go for everything they go for licenses it's like yeah it's actually a bit weird that they would just get this game at all I guess it's recognizable but it isn't one of their IPs but then when they do do their own IPS super eval meore is fantastic developer and I'm sure they're going to make an an

absolutely amazing game but they with they but the rebel Moon IP I mean the rebel Moon films are they're worse than The Hobbit films I'll say like they are actually I only watch the I can't bring myself to watch the second one and I'm a I'm a sucker for these things I can easily watch anything than sci-fi the first one was so awful that uh yeah I don't know I and then obviously they're doing intera fixed stuff with Netflix stories I just what what is it they what yeah kind of seems like they're just throwing everything the wall and it is right I I I guess there I don't know what I'm talk about when I say this but I guess like the uh their TV film strategy I guess you know they they go after lots of different Niche audiences um as well as the you know stuff that really hits home with kind of everyone and that works but they're just not really doing that with games at the moment we'll see how that looks in a year's

time I guess yeah uh so moving on uh we've got so du lingo uh is introducing AI powered games called Adventures so it's du lingo language learning platform which is already quite gamified uh to like help kind of encourage people to practice new languages but with this new adventures mode uh they're going to be giving users like story lines to go through and apparently make like a full duo lingo Universe with all different characters to meet and I guess interact with in different languages so the goal is to provide gamified but realistic scenarios uh so that could be like ordering drinks at a cafe or getting a passport check but yeah I guess it'll be in kind of a a gamey context with whether you'll have an avatar don't know

at the minute but um yeah I guess it makes sense obviously AI is a big topic of the past few years maybe not the best look because they had some contentious cutbacks and last year it was about 10% of their contractors so they parted ways with in favor of getting like AI to translate between languages instead of paying people to do it which yeah so I guess that that wasn't a great look and now they're using AI even more but um within kind of this game mode which obviously everyone is using AI these days I guess it's a tricky balance between making the most of the the tap without kind of adding too much to all the the joblessness going on these days yeah I it just sucks for for for people but you know gener ultimately I mean there's a massive debate here we could have about how how

good some of these gener AI tools are and how and how legal that they'll ultimately be to use but it's obviously already having as as I've openly admitted it's just already having a big impact on these companies and on jobs that you can just automate more things than you could before and they'll continue to do that you know a lot of things have always been automated it's just it's just the scale of these new products and then so last one from me bit of a well in a way a more positive note but um genin impact has reached its fourth anniversary uh already I'm flying by but um so it's made 6.3 billion in those four years according to at Magic and recently launched its version 5.0 update which has introduced a new land called natland uh which is very like fire themed so I believe that's going to be kind of the base for most of the new updates for the next year until the fth

anniversary where a lot of the kind of new game content's going to be set it's it's got its own like law and new characters and basically is to keep people interested for another year here's a load of new stuff so um yeah obviously huge game ho verse has done really well with it 6.3 billion is a lot it's also the fastest game to ever reach five billion but this past year has been genin's worst year yet on mobile um it's the first time that it's made less than a billion in a year I think in its first year it made about two billion and yeah this year it was like 900 million and something which obviously still huge just a total failure yeah uh yeah they should call it a day now I think that's C time to shut down the servers but no it's so obviously yeah it's still a huge game but um there is a a mark decline I'd

recommend looking at my feature about about the game there's some some graphs in there that I made with the at Magic data which does really sort of show that it it's steadily dropped for a couple of years and now it's really I won't say fallen off a cliff but it has quite dramatically Fallen this past year which yeah it seems like maybe versus other RPGs are kind of taking players attention there's only so much of a a market for these kinds of games as I also looked at genin's most successful updates of past year financially and although there will obviously be other factors like what was in the update but all their biggest ones were before zand zero came out and their revenues dropped even further since that released so the evidence does kind of Point towards they've kind of hit a

saturation point with the audience but even so obviously yeah still a huge success it's uh I guess worth pointing out that this is just the mobile app store Google Play Revenue so it's available across platforms and then bit like the dungeon fighter mobile stuff mentioned earlier for party Android stores don't count them either so it's probably still making you know most definitely making at least a billion it's probably making multiple billions just from that game and we've spoken before on the podcast I won't leave the point but like the interesting thing about that you were saying there about hongkai star RSO Zer kind of taking that money away but the interesting part of hoo verse that they just managed to keep that player base within them rather than within their games rather than going to arrival and losing them forever so that's quite interesting yeah and then and it um there's not much known about their next game yet it's

called Astro weave Haven I think and they got like a license approval for it that's basically all that's known so far um but yeah it seems like that's not going to be so much an RPG so maybe yeah they're going to yeah try something different maybe Target a new market who knows might end up coming over to the kind of RPG Trio they've got going on at the minute yeah yeah all bit like Happ just another Studio that when they they've been so successful at doing what they do that uh when they announce a game release one it's it's one of those worth kind of taking notice and see seeing what they do and also if they're trying something new is it just they've reached like you said that saturation point or or or they they've noticed that actually oh this this this kind of thing maybe it's as popular anymore we'll try this instead so that's just so that brings us to the end of the news and due to technical difficulties we're going to

wrap things up there but we we're pretty much done unless people really wanted to hear me R about uh Orion AR glasses at better um but another time we'll save that for but thank you everyone for for tuning in h thank you Aaron for taking part and putting up the technical difficulties of wild yeah that's all good um I got to hear a bit of the um the AR glasses is rant even if no one else did so it's all good how lucky you oh it's for the best even even the even Virgin Media my internet provider were like no actually we don't want to hear take him down yeah yeah it's just like no absolutely not just a little bit a little bit of it's really bad weather today and uh yeah a little bit of rain in the UK and everything falls apart even though it rains all the so so thank you everyone very much for listening

we'll we'll be back again next week I'll be recording live from finlands because I'll be at pocket gam connects how sinky and finished Games Week H have a great weekend hopefully I'll see you at the show but if not I see you very soon thanks every again everyone goodbye see you