Week in Mobile Games E41 - How Scopely made $10bn, and 2025's big stories to watch

[Music] hello welcome to the pocketgamer.biz podcast week in mobile games where we discuss the week's news or in this case the holiday periods and hopefully provide some insights welcome back everyone we're we're happy to have you back we're happy to be back on the podcast uh Aaron how was the holidays for you yeah it was nice thank you um I um managed to dodge all the colds that were flying around my family until the very end which made a nice change I'm usually ill for Christmas but um I was all right this year and then ill with two different things back to back immediately after doing better now just in time for the return to the office yeah I know miraculous but yeah it was a nice break got some cool things Eagle eyed may see I've got a new Pokeball which is made it's like a 3D

Puzzle which was actually surprisingly difficult to do because like when you've got all these separate puzzle pieces that are just red but um it took some doing think of that there's nothing like discernable about it the shape I guess so initially I was trying to make the Middle With You got like the black bar so any white piece had a little like hint of black on it it was like that's somewhere in the middle yeah but yeah so that was quite fun too and I got some cool looks got a massive um Attack on Titan like manga is that all of the this is like part one of about seven yeah it's quite cool I got the first one so there's no Major Spoilers for anyone but like so it's got like the drawings in massive size it's pretty cool who died yeah so quite a bit of Attack on Titan stuff I've got a new like poster in the back from it although I think the light's probably glaring on it a bit can see I can see that's the

classic image I think yeah yeah of a tackle Titan where it's the for anyone doesn't know the the Colossal Titan at the top and then presumably is that the main hero or or the woman at the bottom it eron I think yeah yeah so quite a media themed Christmas present wise but yeah it was good what about yourself yeah I had a lovely holiday it's just nice get it a little bit of a break and um didn't get that much this Christmas for anyone that's not watching I've got I've got my cat here gizar he's getting very particular with me he's he might scratch me at any moment I'm not sure but he was desperate to me on the podcast sorry in terms of the stuff I got I got like randomly I wanted to get a Snorlax figure because I have a lot of random figures on my desk my sister got me a Tor Chic instead which is actually pretty cool looks but then I did manage to still get a Snorlax so there you go I found it

back in stock and I think he's pretty cool to be honest yeah very nice his my GRE is getting very close to the screen and then I why not just went all out and I rounded it off with a gr so I'm just a massive child basically that's what I've learned the most important thing of the holidays was not just family time which is awesome it squid Game season 2 was out so I I watched that all within about a day I loved it uh fantastic fantastic show highly recommend uh people watch it uh whether you think it's is good as the first season or not down to personal tastes I guess it's it's a bit different but I I very much enjoyed it right so we hope everyone enjoyed the holidays as well but now we're all back into the office RAR to go a few shout outs obviously the big event of the year for us at least and for the mobile games industry Pocket Gamer connects London is back January 20th and 21st we hope to see you all there it's looking like it's going to be record attendance I know

probably say that every year for every single event but seriously that is what it what what we hoped it would be and what it's looking like to be gets bigger every year and uh there's even more parties this year I swear than than any other year every everyone's Ry one all music related interestingly uh and yeah can't can't wait for that so uh looking forward to seeing you there if you want to meet one of us at the show just drop us a message myself will be there Aaron and Paige um all very much looking forward to it then quickly pocket gameer connect San Francisco March 17th and 18th Dubai game Expo Summit May 7th to 8th pocket we're doing PGC Barcelona this year helsinki's coming back October 7th and 8th uh and there will be more uh stay tuned uh for that so yeah lot lot lots going on and uh it's very very exciting year head hopefully but that's enough of all that

we're going to get straight to the news Gizmo was actually sick of me talking about the events and decided to leave that was a sign so we're going to cover kind of some of the news from the past couple of weeks the last podcast we did came out nearly a mon about three weeks ago so we're GNA do bit of a catch up but the first thing that I wanted to cover we did an interview Paige did an interview with scopely co- CEO's water driver and Javier Ferrera and the headline is SC please cultural tenant of iterate to Greatness LED to10 billion in Revenue obviously that's a very kind of PR message but actually there's there's a lot to read into that and a kind of a few interesting things they said scly has kind of a long history and matching I think the right developer with the right IP and genre if you look back at Partnerships like mediatonic for yi With Buddies digit game studios on Star Trek Fleet command shout out those are Irish and UK devs in recent years course

acquired games like stumble guys and actually now I'm thinking about it they have actually a lot of UK operations so I think Studio tag games now works on stumble guys obviously it was initially created by kicker Tag Games is a Scottish Studio here so so I say UK in the region so that that's that's pretty interesting and obviously SC play mainly known now for Monopoly go which they spent seven years on uh and has been a game changer for them some stats that we've got 50 from across scop portfolio 15 billion hours of playtime 1 billion downloads and $10 billion in lifetime Revenue so they're doing they're doing all right and at the very least a third of that has got to be monoply go right they they said it made3 billion do at some point last year yeah massive massive massive hit H so how did they do it we had some interesting quotes on them Walter said having a long-term mindset is critical in game making our culture is rooted in perseverance which makes the year's

outcome so gratifying for the teams he later States Monopoly go has expanded our vision of what a game experience especially a casual one can be the journey to its success reflects the dedication conviction and resilience of our team one of our core cultural tenets is to iterate to Greatness which Roots us in a need to always learn and pivot as needed and have space for failure this is the philosophy behind everything we do so a couple things on there if feels a bit like the fortnite effect for epic in the sense that even though epic games had previously built a massive company of Unreal Engine and the Gears of War series fortnite basically completely changed what they thought was actually possible with a new game release it changed the bar of what new titles need to reach and now they're basically just all in on that platform like everything they do is going to be about that platform even now stumble guys is becoming of that fortnite

ecosystem it be interesting to see how scope can kind of Follow that up but can it wait you know another seven years for its next game ignoring the fact that kind of like supercell you know pundits analysts could end up starting to call it a failure because it just takes oh where's where's sc's next game it's been five years whether that is something that happens uh um interesting to see kind of where they go uh from there uh the other thing that's interesting quickly is that um and I think this came from m katov not about scope ple but uh a year or so ago and and he said I think one of his predictions was that it wouldn't really be about failing fast anymore kind of sticking with games a bit more I think I think that's what he said apologies m i just completely Mis Mis remembered that and put that on you uh but it's interesting because that's what's happening here remember we had that interview of Lilith games where they said they kind of stick with games as long as possible basically they don't just go it's not going to work it's not working we'll get rid of it they really kind of stick to it another thing from

the interview jaier said these are very big like statements but you know greatness greatness is a moving Target to ensure we're staying committed to our players experience that Monopoly go is a product of this mindset the game's seven-year journey to launch is subsequent deep engagement from players further highlighted and solidified how important it is for our cultural tenant to drive our decisions as without them I'm not sure Monopoly go would have made it to launch so that's that was interesting I think um I feels like the next step for scopely although they do this all the time anyway is is just another major acquisition that's what they said they were going to do like last year they're looking at well again in a way I don't know how much of this is kind of Bluster but they're looking at a massive acquisition a mega deal they called it a game that's making you know about a billion dollars in Revenue obviously that's going to be backed by the success they've had monopo go and they've got the backing of their parent company savy games group interestingly Walter said the company is already completed billions of dollar billions of

dollars of deals so I think the Acquisitions and Partnerships that has done in the past that I mentioned earlier they didn't actually have like a public price tag on them so this is a company that's raised a tremendous amount of money and spent to get where it is Success has not come cheap for scop but success it has found so yeah there's a really good interview I don't if you have any thoughts on Monopoly go scope yeah I mean obviously Monopoly go has been huge since it came out so I think it was the biggest game like new game of 2023 pretty sure and as we say like making like three billion took what just over a year to make three billion which is absurd so um as you say you know it might might have been expensive to get there but it's obviously paid off and not taken that long since launch to to get there yeah it's been a to of game changer for them I am generally I they've had a lot of successes so maybe

nothing much changes but it does sound like it's changed the bar is raised so I'm interested how that impacts I guess how many titles they release yeah it's not like they've been absolutely prolific yeah as you're saying I think the pressure is going to be on more so now as to whatever comes next yeah for sure for sure elsewhere we had a couple of Netflix stories the first one I'll do is one we did so recording this on Thursday uh publish it on Wednesday Netflix's squid game un Unleashed mobile game surpasses 10 million downloads so the title LA on December 17th ahead of season 2's release which was on the 26th at the time I wrote this story the game had 10.7 million downloads so that actually made it the fifth most downloaded mobile title in Netflix's portfolio not including the actual Netflix app GTA San Andreas is the highest with 33.8 million inst stores story sory tell ranks second with 16.8 and then you get SpongeBob get cooking uh at in third with 11.4 million and

Bloons TD fourth with 11.2 um I haven't looked ahead of this podcast it's probably now the third most downloaded given that it was making it was it was making quite a lot of downloads every day um most of those downloads actually cover the App Store 7.4 million uh well Google Play accounted for 3.3 million that's surprised me uh the interesting thing about this is I think we might have discussed this on the last show maybe the the app is actually pable by anyone with or without an account usually you require a subscription um I know the current place kind of provide something extra for subscribers but I think in this case it's pretty good to capitalize on a massive show and kind of another way of helping promote it and engaging people with that kind of Ip that franchise elsewhere Netflix still the VP of external games at Netflix lean Loom has left the streaming firm after three years she was responsible for heading up it second and third party development

and Publishing operations overseeing and sourcing its portfolio of games we asked Netflix for comment on that but they decline to provide a public statement so something on the record I don't know the circumstances of course of her departure but is another change for Netflix and comes as the you know as part of a big shake up really under the new president Elaine tascan I mentioned GTA there obviously they they they had the trilogy and they taken two two of the GTA games out after after one year it rumored to be a $50 million deal if it really if that is true I think yeah it's a lot of money for one year but yeah interesting changes going on at Netflix um and then it's just a couple other kind of quick stories I wanted to mention ESP from last year uh it's a sad story to start the year with this but uh Vancouver Studio hothead games is closed Canadian uh developer obviously they found it in 2006 they went into bank crcy after 18

years they had a crossplatform AAA title in the works but both the mobile and console Publishers pulled out of the deal uh and the mobile one allegedly cited a change in strategy not sure how many staff are actually impacted 10 states kind of between 51 to 200 that's like the general figure in March 2023 had said they on their website they had a team of 40 plus developers back by five person Central Tech team as well as marketing QA and art stuff they call themselves one of the biggest Indi mobile game studios uh so really really sad story to see them go um hopefully we'll see best of those this year but I guess we'll see another story I wanted to mention which kind of made me laugh cuz I don't know how serious it is Seer is exploring the possibility of launching its own video game Subscription Service similar to Netflix and Xbox game pass what does anyone want this why why would say even consider doing this not

to say that they don't have franchise that are beloved if you looked across their portfolio I mean just none of these games are really surely none of these games have crossovers Football manager player are they playing sonic are Sonic players all playing like like a dragon are those players doing Total War is a bit alien isolation to comes out some point Madness I I I I presume what it would actually be if I had to just guess if they did this I think they Pro this the so the interview was with s president CEO of America and say Europe shuji Yi I imagine he he's just talking he's just arching a question and he doesn't want to say no so he said but he said we're thinking of something and discussing something we canot disclose right now he called subrip products very interesting he said confirm the was evaluating some

opportunities so I guess if you were to read into that like maybe a subscription like they do like a bit more similar to Nintendo where you get access to old games or maybe maybe they bring like their a lot of their portfolio to Xbox game pass like as in old games that could be quite interesting and that would get them money for not much I think this obsession with subscriptions at the moment is mad good luck and then the last one I want to touch upon back to scope please they acquired perfect worlds changfang studio for $4.5 million it's a bit of a complex deal so the move will see most of that Studio's employees including the core team leave and set up a new company in China and scopy will hold a minority stake in the new entity Cheng Fang Studio was previously working on a project called uh code name piie some of the related game assets and documents are being transferred to scopy as part of the deal scope recently told us that

it basically picked up portions of an in-game development sorry portions of an in development project H and it plans to kind of build on it as an assumption I you just assumed that the newly formed team is what will be working on it while scle owns some of the assets and then I guess some context around that is I'm pretty sure but not 100% sure I think like if you're based outside of China you don't really own 100% of an operation there you have to work with a local partner to set up a business that's probably what's happened like how that it's kind of shaken down like scop can't own the whole thing tot guess I think that's what it is apparently according to a stce of mine but they're not related to the project perfect perfect world CU they they are themselves going through financial issues I believe I think they laid off like was it a thousand employees last year the reports coming out of China they were going to probably lay off this team anyway and so a deal kind of came

about from that but that's just yeah that that's not like an internal source so that's all the news from me Aaron what have you got so we've had a few milestones for different mobile games over the holiday so most of my newsy stuff is going to be to do with that today uh catching everyone back up to speed so first off Zen Zone Z hit a new record in daily revenue on December 18th so that's more than 5 months after its release and according to at Magic it made 8.6 million that day on mobile so this beat the1 million that it earned on July 5th which was the day after it first came out obviously typically for quite a lot of games they'll be really well to start with and then things kind of even out down the line but yeah here suddenly yeah the revenue Spike on December 18th hit a new record and so this was driven by the release of

version 1.4 which has been quite a big update the game it included some new characters in The gure but when I was looking at you at Magic's graph for this um the scale of the on December 18th I thought there must have been more at play than just the fact that there's some new G characters because you know it's a gatcha game they're often introducing new characters and there hasn't been a spike like that previously and also for reference so this version 1.4 launch made 8.1 million on its first day version 1.3 made just 3.6 million on its first day and version 1.2 made 2.8 million so it's not just that a version update means they make like 8 million plus in a day but there was something else I thought going on here so as I researched it for an article that I say is worth checking out the update introduced a lot of stuff that you know sort of expect like new story content

say some more characters but they've also overhauled a number of gameplay mechanics and streamlined some of the character upgrading and progression through the game apparently they've optimized some combat and redesigned some of the story stages that had already been implemented there's multiple new areas um new game modes so you know it's pretty sizable update which I think um yeah goes a lot of the way to explaining this sudden kind of surge in spending um so I've I put a graph together that's um in the article you can see just the scale of the increase from pre version 1.4 to when the update came out and the revenues also sustained more which I think could be partly attributed to a new game mode they've added called deadly assault which is kind of like the current end game challenging content it kind of resets at particular intervals to keep

players coming back so whether that's why the revenue is kind of sustaining at the moment or more so than previously but yeah whatever the um the exact cuse clearly something there is um is worked for ooe and the updates also helped Sone zero finally surpass 250 million and and again this is all just mobile numbers so um it's still no genin impact you know 250 million not bad pretty good I let you say finally passed I know compared to genin and took ages yeah I know five months I mean curious I I don't know the investment level of as z z zero the rumored uh development costs for GED impacts were 100 million to make it 200 million a year to sustain it um and then it makes billions of dollars endless in zone zero is bit different from that and

honai star rail but again like presume the if that's the level like the dev cost must be pretty high yeah sounds it sounds like it's doing well yeah and obviously genin and ho is still huge as well so I imagine ultimately this is just more even if it's not as much revenue as they make on their own it's still just more Revenue coming in yeah yeah although didn't they um I'm having a quick look now didn't they uh uh the revenue kind of dropped off right so so so so genin impact like context successful game uh but like these are all that magic estimates um if I to look now I think November 2024 is its worst month ever so we've been talking about a lot of gross revenue net revenue got in front of me which is $26.6 million for November 13.6 in December again this is only abs Google Play there not the Chinese but

party Android stores not other platforms maybe uh there's always possibility that players are being kind of redirected a little bit to towards spending elsewhere to kind of avoid the the cuts there's a lot of reasons why the revenue might be down and also technically uh was it a foury old game now yeah uh but yeah but notably like there's a notable drop in Revenue if I was to look at one of the peaks in September 202 81.8 million net revenue in one month so that's the kind of drop we're looking at it's not even just a story of cannibalization anymore I would say but there's probably there is that is probably a bit of a factor November 2024 revenue for honai Star R 80.9 million December 39.1 sorry everyone that we're mixing gross and net here but I haven't I haven't got the time haven't got the two seconds it would take to do the maps but yeah so anyway the point

was actually yeah there's actually a surprising drop definitely a few caveat to that and they're still making a lot of money but with the dev costs yeah maybe they maybe they've readjusted maybe I don't think we like to see end of service anytime soon God oh could you imagine sorry it's not making enough money anymore yeah anyway yeah so that that's hoo verse um next up so in fold games Infinity Nikki uh earned 16 million in its first month that's already been over a month now somehow so yeah this is back to gross now gross player spending um and according to Magic so yeah 16 million in 30 days this was largely due to players in China who spent 10.1 million or 63% um it's worth noting as well though again at Magic data is for Google Play in the App Store so obviously China has

um you know more popular alternative app stores on Android so their spending is likely a lot higher than that um and also Infinity Nikki is the series first crossplatform game so it's also going to be making money from PC and console but yeah looking specifically at mobile yeah 16 million in its launch month which is the best launch the series has seen by quite a big margin so love Nikki made almost 400 th000 in its first month and then shining Nikki made just over 6 million and again Infinity Nikki 16 million and those previous games went on to make hundreds of millions over the years despite being smaller launches so it's probably safe to say infinity Nikki you know is off to a good start and has potential in that regard it's made more than double shining Nikki and like yeah a lot more than love Nikki started with but it's also worth noting its Revenue did decline quite

considerably after the first few weeks it picked up not to the same level as like like I was saying with Zen Zero but when version 1.1 for Infinity Nikki came out that caused a bit of a spike in Revenue there was some new content that seems kind of geared around the new year they added like shooting stars and stuff for the sky it's supposed to be a kind of cozy Adventure game I think they were trying to build that Vibe up a bit more and they also added some new outfits into the gapa which players can spend to try and get these new costumes for Nikki which did boost its Revenue but it's declined again after like in the week or so since then and it's a couple more weeks until the current like event stuff comes to an end so presumably there won't be any other content coming I think it's January 24th that the current event wrap up so I'd imagine we'll see another Spike after that with whatever comes out next for now the the revenue

has slipped quite considerably from from where it was sort of early in December but yeah I say it's still the the biggest game in the series it does go to show as well though just how massive love love and deep space was for infold because that made 46 million in its first month um which makes Infinity Nikki's 16 look quite small but again compared to what they've done before the their last two games then have been pretty massive for them in launch periods at least of course worth saying you mentioned crossplatform typ also again some of the revenue kind of gets bit hidden also in China gets a bit kind of hidden away maybe redirected um I recorded stting to get this published on the podcast Me Myself and Oscar Clark who's been on show a couple times we kind of went a bit more in depth on the on the design I can't really speak but Oscar is very

very much an expert on Infinity Nikki and um spoilers but I think one of the things that we both came away from it was more like first time us experience was that my issue with infinity Nikki is that uh I think that a lot of improvements need to be done to just the on boarding that whole the whole first part of the game I think there was a lot there's a lot of potential in it it's really hard to get to it I personally think unless you're such a big fan that you're kind of willing to oversee some of that sorry overlook some of that on boarding and that's just from how they introduced mechanics the tutorial could have been done better and absolutely they can change that I wonder if that kind of impacts a little bit Revenue uh um it's like you can get as many people in as you like how many of those are they actually going to keep as the game goes on there's improvements they can make there that we kind of delve into on the podcast overall it's there like a lot there I think to like but it is interesting that very Talent team and I think they're willing to be

probably patient with this I'd love to know the the cost to make love and deep space versus Infinity dicki my assumption it's just an assumption would be Infinity Nikki cost a lot more to make and it's making less yeah I would guess the same but again it's early day you know a lot of Studios that make that much money in a month be be pretty happy but this seems like a pretty sizable investment so I guess we'll see how it does it over the coming months yeah way too early to say if it was like a massive success or yeah and like as I was saying you know the previous it's done better than the previous um titles in the series and you know some of them have made so much money so yeah you can't entirely based on the launch mon there no gen impact no no it's not genin impact on a bad day um yeah and then so the last one from me which is another numbers piece is um we're starting the year off with a bang Pokemon Trading

Card Game pocket gets another mention so it's now surpass 400 million in lifetime revenue and it's done that in just 10 weeks since its Global launch um so it surpassed the Milestone on January 6 and yeah obviously yeah one of last year's most successful new games even though it came out on October 30th so only had two months to start a c ating that Revenue but yeah it's just raced yeah raced through really it's already the second biggest Pokémon mobile game so go is the only thing ahead of it now over to Pokemon Masters which has long been number two I think that's around the 350 million ballpark now and that's been out for over five years and again so Pokemon pocket has overtaken it in 10 weeks so this really is you know very successful game and not just because it's Pokémon obviously that that helps it but um as we've discussed

previously you know there are there are quite a few Pokemon mobile games and they don't all like explode in popularity like go did this is kind of the closest thing we've seen since then and interestingly it's kept a fairly consistent Pace in getting to the 400 million Mark so it made its first 100 million in 17 days and then it hit 200 million after 30 won so you know 200 million in this first month and then it took 35 more days to get to 400 million so it doubled that and only took like four days longer to do it so there's not or at least up to up to early January there wasn't any overall decline then but when you actually look at the individual days the second month was a lot more varied the first month was very consistent and just growth basically and made a load of money second month you had some days that um were a lot lower

in Revenue well below the average from month one and actually brought the overall average down so it was about 6 and A2 million was the average in month one and 5 a half million in month two but month two also had the game's best day yet and hit 8.7 million on December 21st uh which weirdly that was 4 days after they added the first expansion pan so I was surprised that it wasn't the day the pack got added or maybe the day after but no it was four days later um here it hit its record Revenue so the pack added more than 80 new cards for people to collect which obviously are the main kind of driving monetization model for the game so yeah it makes sense it would get a boost it's impressive I think that it yeah outperformed its initial launch because that felt quite huge when it came out but also interesting that it started to be kind of less consistent in how much

it's earning and it is currently back down to a bit of a l I think um because it was a smaller expansion pack I guess a lot of people who have spent on it have kind of got most of the cards from it now so again a bit like um Infinity Nikki I think we're kind of in a lull until the next update and you know when they add more cards and stuff we'll probably see another big sorry I was just trying to get grosser you this time confuse everyone yeah the only thing I add obviously got R of the screen the only thing I add is a massively massively successful game still is even though revenues dropped it is notable that yeah daily revenue say dropped went back out significantly and then dropped again to a mere 2.7 million in a day but it is notable that drops yeah that is a big fall from like nearly 9 million what what does that look like in six think that's the that's the question but

already monster success and uh yeah kudos to we're going to move on uh swiftly to the week in view section we're going to look at kind of the stories to look out for this year and predictions from the mobile mavens that we ran first up I'm going to run through some of the trends and stories to watch in 2025 again these thisit these aren't predictions this is like stuff that has happened stories that we're expecting to happen and just kind of the really obvious stuff then I'll start with one five web games that just I feel like there's a I say there's a consensus for me a a few people but I feel like this is kind of one of the big things to watch this year and maybe over the next couple of years kind of WeChat games sorry WeChat mini games making billions of dollars telegram games seen huge sech popularity there's some bot activity there but even

Facebook isant games is back whether that actually is a thing in the end who knows last year former EA CEO and founder trip Hawkins said it Games first he thought browser gaming was a great opportunity called it kind of one of the next waves and and then I wrote last year kind of everything as a games platform so you got LinkedIn Discord uh New York Times does its games and I actually play I kind of hate myself in a way LinkedIn is the most absurd thing to have games it should it still should not have games on it I I think but here I am I I play some of them and I enjoy them so the jokes on me but yeah we that that that's just an obvious kind of thing to watch this year and see how it does there have been four starts for HD B 5 before I wrote about it at least 12 years ago as a as a big new thing and then just nothing really nothing happened and then yeah kind of these other these other platforms again like Facebook kind of went away now now it's back I think we spoke on the

podcast before maybe a lot of that was actually down to weirdly like Apple and Google Gardens of the app stores yeah we we'll see how that all shakes out this year and whether it's a real opportunity I'm not talking about web stores that's that's another thing again web I I feel like that was a 2024 Trend but it obviously it's still going to remain one web stores Dr consumer that's very much a big thing that's going to be happening this year more more Reven will move off platform and the interesting thing to come out of that will be how accurate do these intelligence platforms like sets of tower at Magic at figures other game Refinery when they provide you with player spending estimates how accurate are they like they are still providing a snapshot of App Store and Google play but one how do they they're full clever people they can figure this out but how how do they adjust their revenue estimates to

account for the biggest games moving their revenue away from from those stores and then for big games that start declining down the charts it makes it look like they're they're on a big decline but maybe they're actually again just shifting that Revenue away maybe making more money and you just don't see it so that's interesting so that that all kind of comes into like the regulatory environment that's a thing to watch this year feels like it's crunch time for those kind of battles legal battles that have been going on the European commission for digital markets act kind of will need to show its teeth properly it already kind of is but if you're serious about holding out the rules I'm interested see what it does the first ever fine from the dma to Apple so that's first ever f for the dma period it was reportedly expected in December uh so we should expect news from that very soon that will be pivotal in kind of some ways how successful those we stores can be they'll be a lot more successful if it's so much easier to

link out which you can do now in the Europe but like the rules are so confusing and complex and apple still tries to say I know but you owe us for that USIC go into your platform for the next 12 months it's so dumb well not dumb Apple's trying its best I guess but it feels ridiculous is probably the more accurate description and it will also help with kind of help with it will also impact kind of how third party marketplaces do the epic game store uh which I think made 10 million downloads in Europe but it only has like a few games on it it's to Total missed opportunity it feels like right now but we'll see how that does Xbox's stalled plans leg idea what's going on with that they're blaming all these court cases every now and then for for not launching it and they still yet to actually announce it outside of I think a conference and social media that be the case uh and Google is undergoing kind of a stay of execution so it was found to be Monopoly and then there was a they

wanted like I guess an injunction and they largely got that except for for one issue so this is not allowed to do this still as of now it was ordered not to make deals with carriers or device makers that block pre-installation of rival app stores in exchange for money Revenue share or perks so while there's some other aspects of the ruling that uh kind of on hold and so you can kind of do do kind of whatever it wants this is one thing that it is not allowed to do because I think that was actually the main issue as well that came up in the case uh that they were basically acting like a monopoly using their influence and money to stop Rivals uh from competing that was so that was interesting and then obviously still right now I still don't know is today the I feel like today might even be the deadline or or tomorrow there's their potential us Tik Tok ban uh the Supreme Court is is is listening to this and they they might make some sort of decision whether to delay that a bit or just to I guess let through what is bipartisan legislation I'd be shocked

actually if this gets delayed although nothing I should probably say nothing much would shock me about these things anymore but um yeah so that could that could really be a huge impact so again big thing to watch out for regulatory changes and that could have a significant impact on user acquisition if Tik Tok was banned in the US some other quick things you talk about Aaron but like AI there's a lot of stories going around that we have inter quotes from the mavens but I think the one thing newswise to look out for is the SAG after a strike for performers that continues to Rubble on and AI is very Central to that topic and that AI will be you know I think if you really put it down to one fig it's a voice actor goes into a booth does recording for a few hours leaves and then the publisher owns that forever and then they can use that voice use AI to generate whatever whatever they like from now until the end of time and so obvious obviously workers are a bit up in arms about that and what they what they would get out of that how that would work and then rewarded play that's going to be a

massive thing this year I think it was kind of emerging as a trend last year uh I mean just see how it survives in the long term but I think that's going to be a big thing particularly at Pocket Gamer connects London the thing that's interesting is is how the UA model kind of works over long term there there's a careful balance between giving consumers value so these things work by I I will download an app say like Al media that free cash I'll download that uh I'll play game like Monopoly go and for complete set tasks I get actual money for that that I can I think take out as actual money or as a foucher for like I don't know Amazon or something so there's a balance between give consumers that because that's that's why they use the platform they want to actually make money not just pennies and then Publishers then get a worthwhile return on investment for those players kind of continue to use it so really interested in that and the last thing I got is is just like one one thing to watch is how if and how Chinese Publishers extend

their influence it's no secret there is 10c been Mak making massive Investments and on mobile you know Chinese publish aren't just gaining influence from Investments other companies like L games M hoyo and others have built kind of truly Global billion doll hits black myth Wukong on PC and consoles probably really a landmark for what's possible in Triple A it's kind of at the level that we see in the west and then we've also had recent big launches like Marvel Rivals Delta Delta Force One I spoke to I can't remember if it's GDC or Gamescom one investor a former executive kind of questioned how West Publishers can compete with this it's kind of said that bigger teams cheaper costs bigger budgets truly Global expertise now so how how do you compete with that uh especially when in the west we're talking about the issue of higher development budgets can you spend 300 million to make sustainably to make to make those top triple games especially if they're going to fail we've seen some big examples of successes and big examples of failures in recent times so

yeah there's there's kind of shift going on there and obviously money's kind of going to Middle East coming out the Middle East as well so those are things to watch I would say this year but you know the juicy predictions Aron what the expert say yeah so um yeah in particular as you mentioned a bit there um there whole AI thing which a lot of people um highlighted in their prediction so yes it's interesting to see where the kind of current state of the conversation is Ludo ai's co-founder and CTO GE GES doesn't think that AI generated games um are going to kind of take over the whole industry this year or anything in fact he said we're far from creating complete games autonomously he said that current AI is good for pattern recognition and adaptation rather than true Innovation but he does think that generative AI is helping to democratize game development which obviously we've heard quite a lot

over the past couple of years it's allowing Indie developers to develop projects without such massive budgets and teams but I say yeah so GES doesn't think we're we're reaching the point where there's no need for the people anymore then yeah or nor will we in 2025 gev Inc coo Olga loova thinks gen will evolve from being a toall to a true differentiator she expects it to kind of reshape the kind of decision- making process and creativity and she expects 2025 to be a year of consolidation and Innovation toy co-founder Alvaro PTO meanwhile thinks AI will make the games industry more personalized so kind of a range of opinions on AI there but all broadly positive I think you could say I do wonder if we've kind of reached a point now where people are are generally quite accepting of AI that is just kind of a

part of development now I think it's safe to say it's less of like a novelty buzzword companies are using compared to like web 3 felt kind of like that at some points uh and I don't really hear people talking about it so much now whereas AI actually seems like a kind of practical thing that so many developers are using I guess the get the general trend is there will be more of that in 2025 um AI is still not going to take over the world yet I just really slightly it is a massive buzzword and and I think in some cases in some elements bit of a f i I think I me if I made a ridiculous uh prediction I don't know I'm I'm talking about really when it comes to AI but it of all people I think Elon Musk was saying this today but like you've seen the lot of people say this it's that you you've actually kind of reached the limit so sorry if I'm talking about Genera AI specifically and and text basically things like chat

GPT and that they are very complex predictive text generators to me to really if I really brought it all down into one statement that's kind of how it feels like it seems weird that people are talking about kind of a general like an artificial like general intelligence and I think even Microsoft wasn't there an open AI like their internal definition of artificial general intelligence is like they boiled it down to if it makes us x amount of money that's their big definition it's not his an autonomous artificial intelligence that thinks does it own makes decisions it's wasn't that which I thought was really odd but I don't see how you kind of get there from the things that we see as impressive as they are and now now you have to kind of watch out the things that make me skeptical is you kind of have to watch out for like mad cows now of these algorithm sorry of

dtive AI Technologies platforms kind of feeding off of each other on the web and then they just start the hallucinations become even worse but anyway a lot pessimism there I lot of these xert I think they're kind of not getting too carried away in some cases and some cases they're very bullish on it and I think John W said last year expected a game this year presume s by mobile we have uh will be 50% May by AI that was a big one we've got Peter fedor's on it were quite interesting he he was talking about kind of changes in team structur so he said companies to scale 10x with only a third of the workforce and then he said yes this also means job losses current roles so like for me just just again kind of part of that AI story to watch is how and I think we we will still see more of that this year after what I said said about certain tools are not sure about

they're still definitely as you said practical uses and so what is that ultimately going to mean like how advanced do they get that it impacts production and then does that mean bigger projects keep them the same amount of stuff that's what companies are trying to tell us and I'm very skeptical you would invest all this money to a tech to what make even I don't know make even bigger games the same cost that don't make any sense me so it feels like that will that will have a huge impact potentially over the next few years on jobs but we will see please do check out uh we're kind of running at the hour mark now but please do check out the predictions uh our article on on to watch I'll link them in the description below um but that's all we got time for thank you very much Aaron welcome back and thank you for all your insights and today yeah thank you 2025 everyone happy 2025 should said this at the open we've kind of gone through last year's survived to 25 we're

now here and what people are trying to say another term so five five in 25 is now the term uh that sub using we'll see I keep always saying that this this show we'll see we'll find out what that looks like over the next few months are there going to be loads more Studio closes layoffs kind of going back a little bit to AI how how impactful that be but let's hope uh kind of the worst behind and people don't have to be so fearful I guess ultimately trying to say so anyway thank you everyone uh for tuning in we'll be back again next week and then after that I hope to see you at Pocket game of connects London January 20th 21st have a great weekend and we we'll see you soon thanks bye