Week in Mobile Games E37: Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket's blockbuster launch & Royal Kingdom hype

[Music] hello welcome to the pocketgamer.biz podcast week in mobile games where we discuss the week's news and provide some insights I'm Craig Chapel head of content at pocketgamer.biz we be today our Paige cook our Deputy editor Aaron assel our news editor how you both doing what you been up to yeah yeah doing all right temperatures dropped a bit this week it's absolutely freezing in the UK for anyone it's this like we're not used to it well that's probably a light actually I just forget each year how how cold it gets it's like 0 degrees minus degrees now Centigrades none of this Fahrenheit nonsense think I have like three layers on right now I have like a t-shirt a little jumper and then a big woolly shirt on like I'm a very like I feel the cold a lot so but it did snow here and it is pretty like it feels very festive yeah I've sat right next to radiator so

and I do have a few layers on as well so do with it all fine but yeah so so what have you been up to Paige not a whole lot I have lost the argument with my partner about Christmas decorations so they're going up this weekend I feel like it's still a little bit too early but we made the mistake of shopping for Christmas presents and now we like U like decorations and now we've got them it's kind of like well they've got to go up so that will be my weekend I'm still trying to get through Dragon Age but it's it's a very long game oh I got my show you my 30th anniversary PlayStation controller today wow and I love it it's so nostalgic like I don't know why they ever got rid of the like colorful logo I think it looks so much better so is that the original logo yeah like the colorful one I probably won't use this controller I just got it because Nostalgia and now I'll be too scared to use it because PS5 controllers are terrible for getting stick drift and if that happens I'll be

devastated but yeah I'm very happy with it do they get that oh God I haven't played my PS5 for a while now I'm worried because they're not cheap to replace Aron what have you been up to so probably the most eventful part of my week yeah with the cold and the snow was um our boiler stopped working perfect timing wonderful that's that's what always happens at winter in the UK as soon as it hits you put it on it's like it's broken yeah so it seems to be working now thankfully um I think it's sorted but we did have a day yeah the snow outside wrapped up with hot water bottles and a fluffy jumper while I was working just lighting a single Candle by your desk trying to get some heat so yeah not great timing but um yeah it seems to be working since then you're much warmer now as for myself I haven't really done that much I've watched a few films of late uh I said before I rewatched Interstellar Christopher noan film and actually I I

enjoyed it a lot more this time I would say actually than the first time you were gon to say something bad then I was like he he doesn't like intercell I thought it was great and actually um I think the interesting thing about watching it the second time is because because you know how it ends then you can actually see everything from the start of the film without trying to give too many spoilers so you actually see just how well put together the whole thing is the first time it all feels a bit random almost at the end you're like why is this happening but actually yeah makes I I just thought it's fantastic and there's so many the music's amazing as well there so many great bits about it then Matt and then random Matt Damon in the film which is always always makes you laugh every time I see it I could just remember the first time I'm like oh yeah isn't it uh I also watched a man a very very different film a man called Otto Tom Hanks film which actually was really really quite a lovely but

it is quite a lovely film it's about a very kind of dark has a dark theme at it core I guess but I do Rec I kind of highly recommend watching that actually quite it was it was really nice film I don't if anyone you I've seen that one and I'm I like Tom Hanks but that doesn't sound it's on Netflix I've seen to have a look he's like this old grumpy man and he kind of hates everything and everyone and then uh a family moves in across the road and you know the classic starts opening up a bit more throughout I'm not saying it's all completely original by any means you know exactly where the story is going most of the time but it was still good right and obviously I've been playing Starcraft as well plug right so uh before we get into the news the usual plugs please do check out the top 50 as always and then Pocket Gamer connects we've got that coming January 20th to 21st in London so if you if you're interested speaking of that I

would to attend there's links in the description we've also got the Pocket Gamer Awards which is run by our sister site pocket gamer.com that's taking place in London on December 6th so uh Link in the description if you're interested in networking with the finalists and of the industry's finest I guess then yeah make sure to register and we'll see you in London I'll be there um but that's enough of all that we're going to go into the big we're going to go to the news and I guess the big story of the week Royal Kingdom from dream games has launched today as of recording we did we kind of mentioned it a bit last week but we' be remiss at least not to open with this this could be one of the Year well it is already one of the year's biggest launches and I think Aaron you took a look at the date of a Royal match it's been out for a few years now it's I think it's still the number one match free it was that took over candy cross Saga and it's made according to app magic estimates nearly

sorry it has made $3.9 billion in gross revenue from the App Store and Google play um not sure if they have a web shop they probably do right they they all do now so probably made loads more money than that I think as we said last last week Royal Kingdom has already made like 20 million is it 21 total guess 2.2.1 or two something like that yeah yeah it's main or Royal match's main audience be in America but the yeah the soft launch for Royal Kingdom didn't include the US so so UK the UK is the biggest market and uh so yeah really really strong start just just from soft LGE don't know how much marketing they'd even do for that right and so really intrigued to see how that does is it going to cannibalize uh I don't know like if you if you're playing Royal match we don't to play both I I can't imagine

I can't see a world where that happens so yeah maybe they just they're making this and they think this monetizer is even better than Royal match and also maybe it's time that we release a new one for some reason I'm kind of I'm really intrigued why they've done it but I like the battle stuff's kind of interesting yeah it is it is a weird Choice it's like we said on the podcast last week about the Monster Hunter things like are you realistically going to play two monster hunter games at the same time maybe not and it's a similar thing like if the game play is quite similar I wouldn't be surprised if it cannibalizes a little bit but yeah there's obviously something they want to do with it I yeah it'll be interesting to see how that goes up and if match comes down yeah they make more money overall I guess it's a win but I just intrig L how they so what I'm thinking of like candy caga still does really well and then each sequel they release have diminishing returns but wondering how much has the industry

changed that like if if it was today they'd released canicross Saga a few years ago if they released Krush Soda Saga would that still be a multi-billion dollar game I don't know the answer to that intrigued by that obviously uh games managed to do it more recently with toy blast and then tomb blast and then Garden Scapes homecapes still not really been able to break out of that what's the other one they're doing now fish Scapes was called uh may maybe maybe they'll break out do it again but yeah it' be really to sum up I think it'll just be really interesting to see kind of where the industry is at for making like when you've got a hit puzzle game spinning it off with something fairly similar a few differences one to watch and we'll obviously be reporting on that for the weeks and months ahead so in other news there was a interesting interview with blumberg and the Hasbro CEO as basically they said they've ear marks 100 million to 150 million

a year for new games projects so Hasbro obviously they have various licenses like they do stuff with Dungeons and Dragons they've also uh it Boulders gate free and then obviously the one and only Monopoly go so they're really going big on that they've actually sold last year a lot of their film and TV stuff apparently not they're not going to co-finance movies based on their products anymore which I thought was interesting I I don't know much about that world but I guess when you see Mattel doing I presume it's co- fin is I don't actually know but when you see them doing well on the film TV front it's interesting that uh Hasbro is like going no we're going to invest heavily in gabes as well as licensing they're building up their own first party in house stuff I think they said they've got another doers and Dragons game in development one of the curious things a couple of the Curious stats so appar they've already invested one billion dollars into games and it's said the firm expects to earn $105 million this

year from licensing Monopoly go but I I'm a bit confused cuz what's the deal from revenue then cuz if it's made billions of dollars like I feel like you're only getting $15 million that seems actually astonishingly low considering how well the game has done maybe I've misund something from the interview but uh yeah I thought that was strange elsewhere in the news so it's kind of interesting PlayStation somehow I managed to see this within about 1 minute of him making the update OD linked I don't know what that says about my life but Olivier calch sorry about the pronunciation is now the head of mobile uh Playstation Studio sorry and he was previously the co-head along with Chris Davis there's no news on Chris Davis's role so I'm assuming that these are changes ch go head to head and I don't

know what that means for for Chris we've reached out for clarification haven't heard back this week at the same time so it seems like there's a bit of a shake up at PlayStation Justin kubak has been named as the new head of Business Development and Partnerships he previously worked as licensing and developer partnership for mobile so some changes going on there obviously recently they closed neon Koy SL Savage game studios I've kind of I I'm still in the place of like this the kind of head of the head of what what are they actually working on for mobile are they actually going to stick with it I guess if they're changing roles around the suggestion is they want to do it they have some sort of plan curious to see what that actually looks like or if in say a year or two years time we're still going to be saying what's Sony doing with its mobile business unless they're managing like the destiny Rising stuff

which is that's really the only game that pops to mind when I think like PlayStation and mobile but like you said if they're they're moving jobs and changing positions around surely they're doing something but what that something is I don't really know so in other jobs news live streaming platform noise has appointed its VB VP of product tumas Renta as its new CEO so he replaces co-founder yuc Lan in the top role and he will now take the position of chairman so if you don't know noise it's Aaron you did an interview was it earlier this year or or I was going to say I think that was last year actually I got a preview of the platform and spoke to them a bit yeah how did how did you find it so it was it's basically they're like I hate using the word but it's like gamifying live streaming a bit more so instead of just watching it yeah there's more interactivity essentially um at least when I previewed it I guess there

were they had a set a couple of games that were currently supported that had these gamified elements then where you could while watching basically collect cards that you would use as like predictors so you would guess like in the next however long someone's going to get a head shot for example in a shooting game and then if that happens you'd win points um and then there are different like materials that you could play and I think um so then if the streamer like collected those materials you'd get some kind of reward from it as well and it's kind of um I guess a little bit like like bits on Twitch you can like gamble so to speak and people do predictions on what's going to happen so I guess it's kind of like that but a little bit more gamified because there're cards that you

play with the hopes of something happening rather than the streamer having to set it up every time like a prediction interesting twist I feel like there's room to be for like a twitch rival but it hasn't really really panned out that way for companies that have invested significant Subs in trying to get influencers interesting to see where that goes and then other some other quick jobs news think we've got like Al media rewarded uh user acquisition platform it's just really interesting space we talked about it a couple times now keep hearing a lot more about it there's a few companies there what the others like misplay game light Etc and but Al media has just hired 17 new staff on top I believe on top of the 80 employees they have in Berlin they've got another 25 rolls open and they want to expand across Europe and North America so yeah it seems like the rewarded play Space is is kind of blown up really interesting like the ways that

they do it I I don't know if our media is different or this is how they all do it but they basically run their own user they run their own user acquisition campaigns to get everyone to their sorry to get users to their platform which is free cash and then from that you get given there's a lot of interesting games on there actually and then you get given like certain tasks to complete in those games they might be complete a level or spend money so you go to those games you do these things and you're doing it because you get as the user you get actual cash reward and and then B the idea being that hopefully you actually stay so you might not so then in which case you just kind of taking money and run but you might then stay and pay more so it's a really fascinating space and I guess what makes I guess what makes it interesting is that these companies probably have a lot of data on their users that you might not be able to get

now elsewhere yeah really fascinating evolution of user acquisition after Apple's privacy changes so a couple of quick stories that I'll go through but I really wanted to go on this King stopped supporting Candy Crush blast and Candy Crush 3D so we reached out to them Aaron sent an email and it's like these accounts are right they haven't been updated since December 2023 when they were we presumed they were put into soft La you know different spins on the Candy Crush IP rather than just releasing another Match Game and they didn't really answer the question so their quote was so our question was did you cancel these and then they said we've gained valuable insights from recent tests that help us fine-tune our approach to delivering engaging experiences testing new ideas is part of our ongoing commitment to enhancing our gameplay experience and we're always learning to ensure we design games that best serve our players so I guess from

that these were may I don't know it's like I guess you can look at a few ways those games failed in soft lch didn't hit any metrics so they canceled them or they were just literally just tests for something but for what they're not going to put blast to Cy cross Saga on it unless I've missed something and that that is a thing like having you know prototypes of things that maybe you're just triing an idea but yeah having these games and just saying that it's just kind of a test for something I don't know like it maybe seems more likely that they were just games that didn't work out so they're no longer working on them but I guess why not just say that yeah I'm not knocking like if it you soft Che it fails like great in a way yeah that is the point happens yeah curious but yeah those those games looks like they don't in their current forms I guess don't have a future but the other the one interesting

one was that candy cross soliter is actually getting updates who knows if that again if that is just some sort not intended for launch or some sort of test I have a feeling that obviously if it does well yeah they're going to launch it um which be which would be really interesting because I think K Trav for a long time to kind of expand into different kinds of games I remember for years they they kind of they wanted to get into midcore they've tried that on and off and it's just never worked and as I bring up every now and again their their long lost uh Call of Duty mobile game which I think was being made in Sweden and it just the big announcement then you never heard of it ever again interestingly I was just looking up because I think when I was covering this earlier in the week I looked on the like Play Store pages and they did refer to blast and 3D as like brand new games in the handy Crush series know they weren't pitching them as tests that not go anywhere but I was just looking

to like confirm that again now and last and 3D have both been delisted now from the play store since we wrote that story yes and I do you know what after you published I noticed that yeah the video the YouTube videos now soft launch list well I need to remove them now but they uh yeah those videos no longer accessible so they' just erased it um that's the power power of your uh of your news yeah that's a lot of that's great responsibility yeah it's a lot yeah lot of power to world and some other stories just because it's kind of so there were there were some layoffs this week qu laid off a few members games adjacent can't remember if we mentioned last week but AMD laid off thousand staff so you know we're not out of the woods at all really in games in tech for layoffs we also SP recently have there's been quite quite a lot of those

seemingly recently but the other on the flip side the really interesting thing is there's feels like there's been a lot of Investments playet has secured $140 million to support early stage game studios which is incredible mirat Capital it's a Saudi based Investment Group uh they've launched an $80 million fund to support minia game startups and then as as an example of a company actually raising super scale they've raised $1.2 million for their analytics platform their analytics service super platform so yeah there unfortunately there's lofs but there seems to be a lot of money kind of coming back around to the ecosystem well hopefully that that money from play Mir actually gets deployed hopefully it's a sign of be times in 2025 I've rambled off for long enough so paage you've got some news for us yeah first up for me um I wanted to talk about Warcraft Rumble because it's heading to PC now it's been exclusive to

mobile for around a year um and they did sort of say when they were originally building it that it was built with Mobile in mind like that was kind of like a big thing about it since it's release it's done 64 million and that's with no release in Chinese markets which I feel like you know if it had that it would obviously be a better number but it seems like over the year it's just kind of been in Decline U monthly earnings have dropped 90 2% within that year so you know really not good which then sort of brings me to you know is that why it's coming to PC like it's it's obviously not it's not working out bringing it to PC where obviously you know Warcraft is you know more popular but again like I said the whole it being a mobile game was a really big factor in it before it released I was in um like a a press thing with a couple of the game developers and a couple of of the press and stuff and they like it's a shame cuz

they were all like so excited and really really passionate about it but it just seems like even though there was the whole Mobile in mind from kind of researching it and looking into like why it's maybe not doing well it seems like maybe the game hasn't been optimized for mobile that way like well because it seems like people have a lot of like problems with it um and even just sort of certain aspects of it so like there's like not really a social element that seems to to be a big deal of people so like there's Clans and things in the game and there's no way of actually making those feel like they're active so could you maybe bring that to life a bit more in PC perhaps but is it enough to bring this game back from the brink I don't know and again looking at it there hasn't um I think you wrote the story Aaron but from what I can tell there's not a lot of word on how crossplay or cross progression is going to work between mobile and PC which to me if

there isn't one that's going to be a major negative if you've been playing this game on mobile for the past year and then it comes to PC and there's not some sort of cross progression like I know I personally wouldn't want to start again I'm I would like to assume it will have that feature but yeah I think it will be um a really big negative if it doesn't yeah I think so far they've not said it's not going to have crossplay but they haven't confirmed it will m just not commented on it so as you say you'd think like so many games do have crossplay now as well it seem like quite an oversight to not do that yeah it's kind of just become the standard really um otherwise yeah because people just don't want to start things again like I would assume that it will have it I just don't know if uh PC and mobile having it on both places is is that enough I guess like if you can do it you might as well but I don't know if investing more into

the game that's kind of found on the most accessible device around is is I guess I can't what I'm saying is I can't yeah can't really see it being more successful on PC I wonder if there was just ultimately an issue I don't know I'm not like a I'm not like a big Warcraft fan so I don't know kind of what fans are after but like if I I guess if I just look at the style of it is that what like World of Warcraft fans want from from this game yeah that's true I think part of the thing is is that obviously that genre like on mobile is quite popular so just having the warcraft name attached to it isn't enough for it to be a good mobile game so I don't know like yeah was mobile the right choice from the get-go or wasn't it but yeah you know it would be nice to see it make some kind of comeback I'm just not sure that will happen I feel well it's not like to me it's not like if mobile is the right choice it's just the itself is that the right direction to go

with that IP all other Clash Royale cloes have failed it's like that Meme from Arrested Development where the guy is just like going yeah you know everyone always makes that same mistake you know they think that it's failed for everyone else but it can work for them and then and then he's like but I think this could work and then it never does yeah it's a shame but um yeah I can't maybe but I can't really see it working as on PC and maybe that'll be another game that just sort of ends and then next up from me also if you can hear aie my cat meowing in the background I'm really sorry I think he's just like excuse me it's my time but I think he has some opinions yeah he's like I'm really passionate about that game but yeah hopefully he'll get distracted in a minute but second from me and again I for the second time on this podcast I'm going to commit a crime because I'm going to talk about Pokémon which I

always just feel like is an Aaron thing but I'm bracing right now waiting for Aaron seing well that's what I thought I even if I talk about it Aaron Aaron will be there so it's fine it's not like I'm talking about Pokemon without you but yeah the Pokemon Trading Card Game pocket is doing very well for itself so it went past 100 million in gross revenue in less than 3 weeks it's over 120 million now and I think it's something like 6.4 million in Daily player spending so yeah doing really well no surprise it's most popular in Japan but I think like the US Market's like really up there as well we also ran a feature on the site today from yakob Remar who we we have quite a lot now he always gives some really great Insight on just like game design stuff and we do like a little analysis on things like that and he he just sort of went into like why it's maybe working well on

mobile so you know they've taken this you know the the original card game that people know and love and they've just really simplified it so you know instead of like a huge 60 card deck there's now 20 and rather than a really complex Energy System it's really simple you just automatically get given energy every round and that sort of takes over um and then you sort of went into detail on you know just how they're monetizing it it is one of those games that does kind of create that sense of fear of missing out so you know if you see that somebody managed to draw a card that you really want you can use like these sort of rewind things to get it back and then you can do it but you can also pay for those if yours hasn't refreshed in time but you really want that card like it is tempting to go in and buy it um and just the way that they've started it with you know the old Pokémon cards that people more of my age demographic are more familiar with and it so worked because I haven't played a Pokémon game in years

and I'm playing this and it is because I saw those cards and it like I'm 100% the target audience because I was like oh I remember getting those cards like the actual cards and it's like why not do it all again digitally and I'm also wondering if um like the social media aspect has helped a bit because it seems like when it came out I was seeing all of these people on social media just like posting what cards they'd got and then again people that were like oh I haven't played a Pokémon game in years and again it kind of creates that thing of like friends are doing it and they're doing it so I'm going to download the game so I think that's probably part of the reason it's you know had this really really successful launch but yob was saying in his feature that he kind of predicts that it will keep up momentum there's unfortunately been some leaks already about events and updates so there's stuff planned for December I think there's stuff planned over Christmas there's more events planned for January so they've obviously got you

know a very long Plan and there's only three packs you can use right now and that's only one like one generation of Pokemon so there's really kind of no end in sight for it it's just whether or not it keeps the momentum that it's got now we'll hand over to the resident expert so I'm quite proud of myself I called that this would be a big uh big release before it came out and covered it a few times in the build up on the site it felt like no one was really talking about it which I felt the same about go like before that came out and I was at school and telling people about it and like no one seemed fussed but then obvious it came out and it was huge and I was getting the same kind of vibes from this and as you said Paige with like it's very like Kanto focused which is like the Nostalgia button for his kids um not for me but that's uh yeah so

it's it's been sort of an I didn't expect it to go quite as big as it has already I think it is up there as like one of the biggest launches this year probably now and yeah like last weekend I went out um to the pub and I heard the sound effect on someone else's phone the pocket so I went and spoke to them and yeah they were playing it and they were showing me so you know they've actually put some quite serious money into it already they've got all the cards to unlock the like secret me at the end and um we like compared how many because I think it totals up how many cards you've pulled even if they're not all different cards I think that's how it works and like mine I've been free to play just doing the threee packs and I'm up to about 300 cards as he was on like 2,000 and something already um and it was just yeah didn't expect to you go out last weekend and

actually yeah see or hear someone yeah playing a a Pokemon game in public you it's like because it is just one of those franchises where people do literally want to catch them all even if it's just a digital card and obviously the more packs you open the less likely it is that you're now going to get new cards so like for me at the moment I'll open a pack and i' like yeah whatever nothing knowing that so you do get that temptation to be like oh if I just buy a little bit of gold I could open 10 packs and then I've got to get something new so it is it is just one of those games that has that it's very easy to lean into going from someone that's usually free to play to paying have you got many of the uh like special immersive cards yeah I've actually got some good cards I just don't get anything new for like the last few days but yeah I've got some good ones and yeah I'm I'm enjoying it it's very it's very nostalgic so I'll be interested to see how for people like me who are playing it well I kind of downloaded it for that Nostalgia but now

I'm genuinely enjoying it so when there's maybe cards later on that I'm sort of like what is this a Pokemon like that I don't recognize will that still be there will I be sort of that invested at this point that I just carry on or because I don't have the Nostalgia will I kind of drop out so yeah I'm kind of intrigued to see how that will sort of transpire as time goes on yeah that's an interesting point actually because from my perspective I'm like I'm liking it but it's like I saw the like old ones yet again yeah they always do this it's like can we get to like some of the new ones because these ones are the best arrow this is how they do the Nostalgia yeah but I've got Nostalgia for other ones what about my Nostalgia but yeah like that might end up sustaining it you know we might see resurgences with it as it Taps into different page demographics I remember having the cards as a kid yeah in your

shinies I still have some somewhere and aren't some of the cards like worth serious money now as well like I need to get up in the attic and have a little look you need to dig those out yeah yeah wonder if they're worth more now because of the game yeah maybe yeah I had rubbish cards just cerpas and whatever the interesting thing you said there I I definitely want to push back on like Pokémon go was launching like well at least my perspective it was a big deal that it was coming out I think like I don't think or like more broadly yeah I think both so like in the industry there was people talking about it for sure like it was quite a little buzz around there and friends were like just rolling out quite slowly around the world if I remember right and there people talking about it it was definitely notable whereas I think you're right though with the trading card game like I was just like I

don't really I was almost I don't really get it because they already had a trading card game digitally and it was like well that didn't work what what I didn't get it and then yeah but now you're right you B on like it's blown up massively successful already made just a an absolute crazy amount of money in a very short time I feel like it's a surprise hit for some people probably not I think for most rest of this yeah obviously not we'll just have to start taking all of our predictions from Aaron yeah I did want to touch Point actually real quick the uh because we were chat about in the cor Aaron you're going to write about it next week but uh I guess a sneak peek uh Dan Sullivan made a really good point about like the playground feel of it and um like the secrets so I know you touched upon some there yeah CU there's like been a lot of rumors going around about like Which packs you should open cuz you get presented with like kind of a carousel

of packs to choose from but it's almost like secret stuff that they don't CU secret stuff they don't tell you so you only find out about it apparently just through chatting with other people playing it which I think is a really really cool idea because there's some secret cards it doesn't tell you how to get and then they're real so I think that also FS the the like discussions where it's not real like the you know back in the red and blue days like the me under the truck rumor supposedly was big in playgrounds a truck yeah that's how you were supposed to get Mew in red and blue it wasn't real but that was apparently what everyone believed um in uh Vermillion City I think oh yeah but yeah so with this like because there are some secrets that are true I think that's also fueling the ones that aren't because you know the game's not telling you so it's hard to figure out which ones are legit but yeah yeah some of them are right we spent a lot of time on Pokémon

they're really interesting but we got to move on so Paige you've got something else for us yeah one final bit from me I'll try and run through it kind of quick but the end of the year believe it or not is fast approaching so we've already had some uh predictions on the site and these came in from kali's vice president of mobile publishing John Wright um he actually shared some with us last year as well so um yeah it's good to have him back sharing some more um but yeah I'll just quickly run through a few of the ones he mentioned so he sort of predicts that HTML 5 games have have already kind of got bigger again this year but that will continue he feels the same for things like you know alternative app stores and d2c web stores all those types of things he thinks will be more popular On The Rise but at the same time he did say that he think that the wall Gardens will continue to win and win big

as well as AI becoming more prominent is something he said um he actually said that he thought it would be like 2025 will be the first year where 50% of like a game's like core Foundation is made with AI he did say that obviously like a human team will be there to sort of you know go over it as well but the you know a whole bulk of a game will be made just using AI so I thought that was like quite interesting um obviously in the feature he goes into way more depth on all of these things so like do go give it a read but yeah there was other things in there too like sort of like a boom in anime games and those things becoming more popular same with trans media a lot more trans Media stuff so yeah just some interesting talking points and I think I feel like you know maybe towards the end of the year on a podcast I'm sure we will all give some of our predictions but yeah I don't know what you guys think like do you agree with some of those all of those I think uh the HML 5

stuff yeah that's on the rise Dr consumer that would be a big thing but I think he actually says as well like it's still going to be slow just just because just the amount of legal battles going on and then actual compliance to those it's like oh we'll find a way to comply that just keeps the status quo okay so curious to see the the big finds that uh Apple in particular gets like in the EU and then what happens from there the AI stuff interesting obviously must be seeing something that's suggests that yeah 50% of her GES would you say games core Foundation yeah has made with AI be quite I kind of be quite surprised if that happen but uh yeah I guess I guess that is kind of the way things are going 50% sounds a lot though um yeah but if I guess if it works yeah I

guess if that's including like Indie developers yeah small teams like yeah it's I don't think it's referred to like a big triaa game way way way too early for that probably but yeah interesting interesting I I think I agree with a lot of it thanks for that paage Aaron you've got some news for us yeah so first from me so Square Enix has another Final Fantasy mobile title on the way um so they're recreating the 2013 MMO RPG Final Fantasy 14 um I think it originally came out in 2010 and didn't really work and then they re-released it in 2013 and it's still been going it's like just a crossplatform yeah long running game I think it's covered like PS3 through to PS5 and it's on Xbox and PC and yeah now they're finally making a mobile version so Square Enix developed and

published the original 10% owned light speed Studios is developing the new mobile game which Square Enix will be like supervising and they'll be publishing it as well um yes it's kind of good to have it properly confirmed because a few months ago it was in August there were reports that a mobile game based on Final Fantasy 14 had been given a license approval in China so we covered at the time that you it looked like there was going to be something to do with Final Fantasy 14 on mobile but we didn't know then whether it was a direct port or a spin-off or what kind of form it would take um and yeah it looks like it is it is Final Fantasy 14 but remade for mobile they've changed some of it and streamline bits and pieces from from

what they've said to make it more of a mobile experience uh so I think it's also going to be run separately to the PC and console versions which I guess sort of makes sense with how late in the day it's releasing as well compared to the 2013 version uh they haven't said a release date yet but pre- registrations are open I think it'll do really well like uh at least initially obviously with China it's just probably uh we'll take the 100 150 million and run on the first couple of months and then it'll just tank dramatically I I don't know how popular Final Fantasy is China maybe maybe she's popular but I think uh these are probably unique examples but like with the lineage IP South Korea and I I know how ridiculously popular that is it's but when they did the mobile tites like in G you know that I think that made like a billion dollars and then

RuneScape I think did quite well on mobile you know people quite interested in just either re-engaging or just moving some of that some of their play time over to mobile um I can't remember if those were crossplay though maybe that I don't know if that's an issue or not um like Lineage 2 Revolution was obviously his own mobile specific game so anyway what I'm trying to say is maybe in Japan some other countries where it's popular that actually could do pretty well but we'll see so yeah next up is a monopoly go story uh which is that so player spending was down 58.3% in October um compared to its peak in March this year uh which is still like huge numbers mind because that was so it made 117.8 Million by at Magic estimates this October um so yeah still you know very very lucrative but that was down from 282.30

and stuff so it could still be higher than last July potentially but yeah revenue's been down month on month since April this year August is the one exception when it spiked a little bit but um yeah broadly speaking is down this year which I guess whether that was inevitable or not whether it could have ever kept up the crazy momentum it had in year one but um is still a very successful game worth noting that that is just app

store Google Play Revenue so we don't know if some of that revenue or a lot of that Revenue has been moved to their web shop which is totally possible um but obviously I guess when when you're hitting like nearly 300 million you're probably going to decline but I I just love this is just how successful it is that revenue declin from its high by 58% and in October it's still the world's apps or Google play only but by Revenue was the eighth top grossing mobile game in the world still so if that's your decline you're doing all right yeah and then of course they've just brought in you know they've got the new ad campaign out which whether that will really make a difference or not but they've got you know the power of this the celebrity thing yeah they've got like Chris Pratt they've got everyone they got Will Ferrell a couple of other people so these things do make me laugh though like I I understand like celebrity sort

of like you know getting them in and it can obviously like boost if you see your favorite celebrity but I love like the little quotes that the celebrities give because they're always just kind of like what so they got it up because it just made me laugh Jason Jason Mar he said my approach to playing Monopoly go is similar to how I play the bass creating Harmony to bring everyone together for a good time I was just like what who wrote that who wrote that my God He did apparently but but yeah it just these things just make me laugh like I get it like it is great to have you know your celebrities in there especially with like a lot of mobile games even just this year there's I feel like there's been so many like celebrity endorsed games or celebrities in these games and things but yeah the the little quotes always give me a bit of a a bit of a chuckle it's interesting going down that road because yeah like say because the squad Busters was the other one that comes to mind Chris Hemsworth and Christina Ricky and

others interesting K Harrington in the Game of Thrones Zinger game as well I guess that one that one kind of makes sense because more sense yeah it's attached but uh yeah yeah but the point you're both making here lots of celebrities inv um anyways then yeah last one from me is net marbl solo leveling AR as officially reached 50 million installs across PC and mobile the game is currently celebrating its 6th month anniversary so it launched globally on the 8th of May this year uh the six months were a couple of weeks last six months now but celebrations are still ongoing by at magic at Magic estimates the gamees made almost 140 million in Gross and that's just on mobile so yeah another big success this year Revenue

has declined month on Monon ever since release so its most successful month was May when it came out and it made 58.9 million on mobile at that point so I guess close to half of its lifetime earnings so far were in the first month it fell to 30.8 million in June and then kind of fast forwarding to its last full month so October it made just 7 million on mobile um so yeah quite a quick decline really but um something I found quite interesting looking at the the data for the story was that it's um Peaks and troughs in terms of Revenue aren't as defined as many other like recent gutes because i' I've covered quite a few lately and like weaing waves and Tellier resana and typically you see a

big Revenue Spike when there's an update and a new character to try and get from the Gaper and then he us out a few days later and then kind of just coasts along until the next update and then everyone spends again but solo leveling arise hasn't really done that at least based on at Magic's data it's sort of just been quite consistent but also declining uh yeah it's an interesting unusual case for the genre thanks for that Aaron uh we're going to move swiftly onto the weeked view section page you've got supercell what's going on yeah so supercell is integrating Clash mini into Clash Royale um this is supposed to happen sometime June 2025 have I don't know if we did speak about it on the podcast but I know we covered it previously that they had kind of said this was going to happen but now it's just sort of spended that yep it definitely is going ahead head and what the idea behind that is so yeah

I guess rather than this game just sort of fade into existence their deciding let's bring it into Clash Royale and make that more of a make it feel more like a a platform so yeah like the the idea I get um I was actually talking to Oscar Clark who obviously we've had on the podcast quite a few times we were chatting about it in one of our morning calls and we were sort of debating at like I get the idea of it and the concept of it but I guess I just I'm still finding it hard in my head to visualize like how does it actually look in the game and how much of clash mini do they actually bring over is it like the game in its entirety as what it was or do they change it a little bit so it kind of doesn't feel like there's this game within a game getting very Inception with that but yeah we were just sort of discussing you know how does it look and Oscar sort of made the point of you know if they are saying it's they're trying to build more of a platform that would kind of insinuate

well doesn't that mean that more than one other game to play so is this sort of the first you know sort of idea that they've got let's put Clash mini in and could we expect more things like that to happen or is it just you know Clash mini didn't work out on its own but it's a good enough game that they don't want to get rid of so we're just putting it into a different game so yeah it is it's one of those ones where like when I sort of read it I'm like okay I get it and it makes sense but I'm suppose I'm wondering how it's actually you know going to work I think they did say they already have like a couple game modes right and so yeah it's an interesting approach see if it works the interesting thing is that they're obviously doing I don't know if this is because of the platform approach or something's going to change obviously Clash but something's going to change next year but I think over the past year revenue's actually gone up a fair bit not like BW star's level but they did stop the

decline I don't know I don't know if they doubled monthly Revenue I can't remember now but it it went up I don't know if it's that because of this approach it does it kind of it makes sense in a way like it always seems a bit weird you have all these players and then you just give them like I know they're there for that one experience but you could try and keep them by trying to do other stuff that might interest them within that platform so I'm curious how it works out for for for supercell especially Clash Royale is quite an old game now yeah is it technically a metaverse is that is that what they're doing that's going down the rabbit hole but yeah interesting uh thanks that page so Aaron what have you got for us yeah so um I've got another kind of Revenue based uh story so Final Fantasy 7 ever crisis has surpassed 100 million

in Gross player spending on mobile and it's done that in just over a year so it released last September uh and then you hit the 100 million sometime in October this year a bit like solo level arise solo leveling arise its launch month was its most lucrative and then it's kind of worked its way to the Milestone from there they also launched the game with so in last September they had two banners with special weapons for cloud who is like the Final Fantasy 7 character and for the main villain separo um so yeah I think they started quite strong and then yeah hasn't done so well since there even when reusing those characters but finally It's Made made it to 100 million the majority of player spending has come from Japan so far so the Japanese market accounts for 71% of that

mobile revenue and the US is second with 20% uh but yeah it's an interesting game in how they've monetized it because it's another gure but yeah typically they'd have like you'd summon for characters and have a set you know a very low chance of getting the cool new character and usually get but with ever crisis it's more built around getting like weapons for the characters again like when sephar off came out last year it was like a young version of him and everyone got him for free but then you could like pull on the GAA banners to try and get a new weapon for him and new gear and stuff rather than have to pull on it to get sepher off at all which is quite a unique approach to the Gap as far as I'm aware I don't know many games that give you like the cool

characters for free very often and then it's just like if you want bonus equipment for them you have to you know run the gauntlet but yeah so it's it's like a moderate success I guess compared to some of Square's other games it's you know and with the Final Fantasy 7 IP I guess you could argue whether 100 million a year in a year isn't that great especially in the context of some of the other games we've talked about today but you know it's still going finally hit the the Milestone I guess whether it whether they can increase spending from here and kind of speed up the way to the next 100 million um wait and see I wonder what impact um this is something we can look into cuz I always get I I get very confused with Final Fantasy games in general there's so many numbers and then like sequels to those games how many sequels are there to Final Fantasy 7 I don't actually know

but I I wonder like how much of an impact all the cancellations of like Square enix's other games that the other Final Fantasy games has on ever crisis maybe it's none but like if you're playing ever crisis and you see the other Final Fantasy games closing down does I guess one do the players see that and then if they do do they think this is probably going to close at some point maybe that's not the way people think but I'm just curious it kind of make You' think yeah some people must feel like that CU yeah like Brave exus closed in October and I think we covered that that had made like 900 million it's been out a lot longer than ever crisis but yeah I guess if you saw all this game that was nearing a billion has been closed like yeah what's what's keeping ever crisis

going and just looking at the revenue like I don't think it's making I'm just going to have another quick look I don't think it's making like okay no it is making more money than like xious was when it was closed yeah I think the revenue is kind of I guess is it stable I just why it's going the wrong way hopefully this is one they keep live but if I was a player I'd be like what what's the point spending money on this the they're probably going to close it at some point find something else and I think it's um maybe telling it's interesting at least that in the summer they had a crossover with Monster Hunter and because I have to bring monster hunter in somewhere um and because U yeah ever crisis and Monster Hunt are now released they both released last September and Monster Hunt and now was made like double or more what um ever crisis has it's interesting that back in the summer they had a crossover where Monster

Hunter stuff came into Final Fantasy but at least as of now no Final Fantasy stuff has come over to Monster Hunter now so obviously I don't know what what the deals were behind the scenes but it comes across to me at least that they kind of wanted a bit of help from Monster Hunter but Monster Hunter doesn't need their help in return yeah that's interesting all right thanks for that Aaron so I'm going to do a very quick weekend views um based on a article I wrote last Friday which was just a headlined our developers burnt out on mobile the reason I I did that is because a couple of startups they're both X supercell the way just the way that they I think we kind of touched upon this kind of a few weeks ago but it's just the way that they're pitching their startups it's kind of always sounds like they're just burnt out by the business models and the user acquisition models of mobile and they don't want to do that

anymore I think you can't get away from it to be honest but like just a few quotes that stood out like a bit odd sorry bit odd they they just raised 80 million and they said the studio aims to create games that attract players through motion and Innovation rather than just conforming to traditional metrics and then the CEO uh also said we started bit odd because we felt something was missing in gaming today I think I might have G through this last week and then said the mobile gaming sege has been incredible but it's also steered many studios toward Finance first thinking over relying on metrics and following the competition our approach is a bit different we focus on designing games that St the soul Embrace quirkiness and tap into the emotional magic of gaming Classics anti-hero Studios kind of said somewhat similar things so their CEO bryv s Martin we we spoke to them and and they said that idfa was a positive term for the industry as it forces game developers to refocus on creating games that are worth people's time and attention then he says when I look at

other companies and startups in the industry I often felt they were focused on short-term business models it's kind of the same thing without an expiring vision for the kind of company they wanted to build as a whole I felt we were creating an inspiring future for our industry players or developers so those com kind of go against the grade of how you actually make a successful company seemingly at least historically our pre preious changes I'm interested to see what the future of mobile games looks like I feel like it will things are obviously changing and they're going to change because and that maybe that's kind of confusing a lot of different factors here but maybe that's why like there's a rise in like rewarded play because it's a better way to acquire users but then you're kind of still stuck in the foundations of the industry which is user acquisition like how do you how do you get out of that kind of what is now the traditional model and move away I know Anti Hero was talking a

lot about basically brand marketing they still do Performance Marketing but they're kind of Shifting to kind of creating IPS that people love and that can kind of go viral I guess by point in general it's just like if there was a better way to do this a better way to make games and Market them wouldn't the world's biggest Publishers be doing this already maybe you sort of see that in in hybrid casual but yeah I feel like obviously you got in a way like you obviously say these things yeah we're going to make great games you're not going to say anything else and and I think I touched on this before previous podcast you also not going to say like we actually what we're going to do is we're going to go after Wales and we're gonna get as much money out of them as possible you're not going to say any of these things right even if that's what you wanted to do I don't think that's what they want to do anyway but I guess like the pr messaging would obviously kind of lean this way anyway but yeah it made me just wonder like are developers kind of just burned out in general by the model these

are only two examples but they are from the world's biggest games developer maybe they have a different view of what mobile looks like from being within the most successful games one of the most successful m games companies that you could do other things that might not work but yeah these are the big experts and this is how they see the future so yeah interested to see what they do right that brings us to the end of the weeky mobile games thank you very much everyone for listening thank you very much Paige for your inss good good to be here thanks very much Aaron yeah thanks as well always good to talk Pokemon you got Pokemon monster H you got it all in you got it all in this week the quer has beened it up this time I spoke about Pokemon a little bit mixing it up we'll no doubt be talking more about Pokemon Trading Card gay Pockets next week when it's probably crossed like another Milestone right thanks everyone again we'll see you next time goodbye