Week in Mobile Games E43 - NetEase scales back, Jam City's Ludia sale, & why Savvy wants Pokémon Go

[Music] hello and welcome to the Pocket Gamer dob is podcast week in mobile games where we discuss the big news of the week and provide some insights I'm Craig Chapel head of content at pocketgamer.biz and with me today is our news editor Aaron assel Aaron how's it going yeah good thank you good to be back two weeks in a row unbelievable yeah we're we're back to a good start I think but yeah yeah things are going all right keeping busy been playing some Pokemon this week nothing new revisiting some Classics Ultra Moon so that's from like 2017 which is the scarely long time ago really doesn't feel like it I can't remember Ultra moon is it one of the good ones I presume it is your playing it's yeah it's that's the very last like 3DS game before it all move to Swit right so it was little bit controversial

at the time because it really should have just been DLC to another game so there was just sun and moon and then a year later they did Ultra sun and moon which is better and has more postgame content but most of the main story is the same yeah so it really should just been DLC to sun and moon but they didn't do that until the switch so but now obviously years away from having bought the game and I just own it it's like yeah sure that's it's a good game to go back fair enough I've been playing some games actually I've been trying to play more games that I haven't played before other than Apex Legends and Starcraft and surprisingly if you have a month off of Starcraft you come back and you're absolutely awful so it's actually I've try to play it but it's kind of awful to play now everyone's so much better but I played uh cocoon a cool kind of puzzle sort platform or game that was really good actually everything I was explaining like you and Paige it's like sometimes I don't really like consciously know what

I'm doing but the game feels so natural that you kind of just do stuff and it is exactly what you're supposed to do for the puzzle like my brain feels like it's breaking on the one hand and on the other side it's just like no I got this it's fine I just don't know what's happening but yeah very very good game and also played uh carryon published by devolver I can't remember who made it and uh that's pretty good it's like um it's a metania and I don't know you play this horrible monster that goes around killing people and you have to escape this lab that you you were imprisoned in it's kind of cool but I know this kind a point of sub retro Val is but there was there's no map and I just kept getting lost like incredibly lost if it there's one Improvement I could make to the game I would had a map but then it probably shorten it by a couple of hours yeah I find that's a bit of a problem with Metro vanas as I've got increasingly less time to play video games I don't want to spend it being lost in the game

exactly but like I don't need I didn't need it to tell me where to go I just needed to know how to get to an area that have already been right or like I think Hollow night had maps and it was really good for that and I still get really lost but at least there be some context yeah this I was just like I'm like somewhere on the map I'm like I don't know anyway but it was still a good game right we're going to jump into podcast we're trying to keep these short so we thought we'd open with five minutes talking about games about a few shout outs as well really quick so we've got uh Pocket Gamer connect San Francisco coming up March 17th and 18th will also be at GDC if people want to meet up just chat or do interviews or tell me about something really cool you're working on just drop me an email cre chap still median network.com a bit of mouthful and then we're doing the Dubai game XO Summit how buy pocket gam connects May 7th and 8th I'll be there as well shout out I'll also be at Gamescom latan April 30th to May 3

I think there's one on there so if people want to meet up let me know and then our own events we've got PGC Barcelona June 3D to 4th first time there PGC Helsinki October 7th and 8th and we're looking at doing others but'll also have our Jordan event back at the end of the year so yeah keep an eye out Lots going on so the first story I want to kick off with is Marvel Rivals layoffs and the speculation of Chinese companies and netes pulling back from the US and kind of overall Western Investments my opinion and I'll go into why is and I read an interesting piece from NCO part today as well actually where they kind of say similar things I'll try and quot all that but I don't think for netti specifically I don't think it's politics really at all uh I think it's just business Marvel Rivals launched last in December it looks like it's been a successful game lots of users I presume that translates well to to revenue they've got teams in China and team in the US they've laid off I

think a dozen people at least in the US so the speculation rapidly starts about you know what's going on how can you be part of a successful game and get laid off I think it's just kind of an unfortunate business reality so so some of I guess the political stuff behind this that would make sense that people think that you might think it's a political decision so obviously Trump is kind of creating terorist for everybody and kind of being kind of aggressive with allies and enemies rival States alike then obviously there's the Tik Tok ban which Trump isn't actually in favor of anymore despite kicking it all off and I should add is this possible there was delay to that ban thanks to him and I guess there is a world where that ban doesn't actually kick him ever uh but it might it depends what powers he has to ultimately stop that and specifically that is affected by darts kind of Dives away like uh it's s sorry it's had to relinquish publishing rights for Marvel snap for example SEC look got a different publisher for that and apparently the uh the powers for the Tik Tok ban as read on nil can be extended

to other other companies that have I think a million users or a million active users that would actually cover a lot of these Chinese Publishers but nothing is as influential as Tik Tok right in my opinion um other things T directors were removed from epic You could argue if that's political or general just rule breaking there are some antitrust uh concerns there you could argue whether that extends out we'll see tet was also designated a Chinese military asset or company by the us so that's not good so there is a lot I think there are a lot of concerns and I'm sure for companies well especially Ted said but for like netes that does play on their mind a bit but going back to I just don't think the decision was political so if you look back kind of its expansion started out uh because it was I think one aspect of it was it was trying to break away from actually heavy Tech regulations in China and kind of the licensing freezes that kept happening so they wanted another kind of Revenue source and they wanted to go Global break so they're not just reliant

on China so they're under regulatory threats at home as well as abroad right but in different ways but I think what's happened is some of it Western Investments has basically haven't really worked out and these Western studios are quite expensive to run and Chinese companies like n have the capacity to create hits both at home and in China black black Wukong kind of proved triaa is here really for for China as does gen impact on Star Marvel Rivals now so and I know there was obviously a US team on that but I I think that maybe there's a bit of a realization actually we can do a lot of this at home we don't need to do these expensive Investments I asked contact uh in China about like you know what's going on and some other context is so n's laid off all of his investment teams and kept one person and they think that and apparently the CEO isn't let like International and thinks and maybe they've poured too much money into overseas investment that was a month ago and I think in that context it's not just you right it's a strategic decision

at the company to Les lessen investment abroad basically lower costs don't forget in Q3 their revenue was down for games they've just released it today I I think it very slightly up like it wasn't that much so I'm sure that that's on their mind as well increase profits and revenue quite drastically this is one way to do it I think they're they they they've said I think public you know they've still got other Investments they own Quantic dream how much money they make from Quantic dream really it takes a long time to release a big triaa game they got Star Wars maybe they'll doest on that don't know but I doubt it at the moment some other stuff I I think like at home China has the capacity to to make these games they also do successful Partnerships already with Western companies to release local and Global games um and I think ultimately also the other fact about the triple a kind of quality that's coming out of China is Western studios are going to I think increasingly struggle to compete with that lower cost in China bigger teams You could argue about work productivity is a lot more complicated just crunch ever really help I think it's proven not

it's really sad to see a successful team like with layoffs but again Strictly Business last two points uh quickly is that uh I know it's different but it is worth thinking about you know this happened to inan years ago so big Publishers like DNA and gree they made big moves abroad big Investments only to retreat back to Japan that wasn't about politics that was about a failure and again with NES they think abroad other than and they want to focus on home there's been some failures there so they're scaling back a bit again with B arrivals I think just purely someone was just like just cut that make more money and also when people are saying it's politics I I fight back a bit and say like well when at Lovin makes layoffs War notice that they made 86 layoffs I think last month in California that obviously you wouldn't say and they're hugely profitable for their as business profitable anyway for their

games which they're selling them it's like nobody would obviously say well that's political decision they're worried about the political climate no they've just done it business like because they they think they can make well they're just cutting costs and focusing on Revenue per employee when when netes does it for a successful game it's it's politics so I I I don't know I just don't buy it I'm sure there is a small sense of concern about it and maybe a bit of drisking but I don't think in this context that was it that's my opinions on that I don't if you have any any thoughts yeah yeah I think I broadly agree like I yeah I think it would be a bit preemptive for them to have done it purely on political grounds like Trump's been in is it a month today I think as of us recording there yeah it's about a month yeah yeah so yeah I I don't think it's a political thing either typically as you say maybe kind of low down on the list that was an element but I don't think that was the the driving factor and as you were saying like obviously you have like the big play Chinese games that done really

well recently but um on the mobile side we talked on the podcast before Christmas I think about um you know all of the the 10 biggest mobile games that came out last year were all out of Asia anyway you know you're getting kind of far down on the list before any Western developers have done anything that massively impactful in the past year really so it doesn't seem that crazy that they'd want to focus in like Asia anyway with like their teams if that market was struggling and those games weren't doing as well as they were then maybe it would be a bit weirder but that kind of seems to be the place to be at the moment anyway I can see it more for 10 that would be bit bit more concerned I I can see that there are concerns not to that and and obviously with these things you kind I guess they can't probably have to look bit to the future rather than just get caught out and blindsided um by by random changes but it's bit difficult to to predict I think think the Trump

Administration and what they're going to do at any given moment and then how long or or how much action will actually be taken yeah but then you could say the same for China as well really like they've often come out with potential new rules that don't end up happening or sometimes they do so there was the licensing freeze three or four years ago then last just over a year ago they were talking about banning like daily login bonuses and loot boxes and stuff which then they kind of rolled back on so I guess wherever you are like politics is going to play a role in it but it's just choosing who politic the interesting thing I I I don't know if it will happen at this granular level because like when they impose tariffs on stuff know it's just like very broad like if us seems to be want like reciprocal policies at the moment they charg something they're going to charge that back and so I wonder if at some point in future this is pure speculation but they like to operate for a foreign business to operate in China you need to work with a

local entity right and so and also publishing gages require licenses with the US start imposing a similar system on China so that would be one thing to watch but who knows if that would ever happen so that's that's net is but a there's so many big stories this week we've got so much to cover in a short am of time um but Aon you've uh you've got one of the big big yeah yeah so some pretty big news so Niantic is reportedly in talks to sell off its whole games business including Pokémon go supposedly this would be to scopely for approximately three and a half billion so this was initially reported by Bloomberg who were informed by several people familiar with the matter and apparently the deal may be officially announced in the coming weeks um but as of right now there's no guarantee that an agreement will be reached at all but yeah if it all goes as sort of the um the word on the street suggests then um yeah scopely could be coming to own n

Antics whole games catalog so you got like Pokémon go Pikmin Bloom Monster Hunter now Aid do so yeah that would be a pretty big big deal really I do Wonder because obviously a lot of niantic's biggest games are using like licenses from other companies IPS so I'm curious like how that would play out behind the scenes if um if scopely ends up taking over them presumably then like Pokemon company would have to deal with scopely regarding what Pokemon get added to go and ccom would OB have thought to them about Monster Hunter updates and stuff which you know I'm sure can be done but I just wonder how um how these other companies kind of feel about it whether they have to be informed if like their license might be changing to a different company but yeah quite interesting and obviously a lot of money it all goes through I think I feel like this deal is so scopely mentioned last year that they were looking at uh a game that was

making like a billion dollars annually to try as a mega deal to invest it I don't think anyone thought was Pokemon go which is not it highest but it's still extremely successful oh uh you could argue if it's on a decline the other games in 96 portfolio mon Hunter now does actually make a fair bit still um obviously it's nowhere near the same level it's like it's not the level of Monopoly go either Pikmin blue is actually like bit on the rise yeah but it's it's very small literally comparison to anything else in the portfolio but I feel like this is a obviously scope is own by Savvy games group Saudi Arabian company and and this it seems like this deal is basically being pushed through from The Savvy in scopely running the mobile business right so it goes through them rather than necessarily a deal that scopely would pick up itself but you know scopely is well vers in handling these Partnerships I'm curious how how it works how it's going to work with Niantic after cuz that would be I don't

know what the costs are that's an extra cost because obviously it uses all of niantic's Tech which I presume Niantic keeps going forward right and focuses on yeah because I imagined they would just transition into being a tech company yeah really which uh three three and a half billion dollars like I saw uh M do unlinked I think saying it's important to because we don't know that much information right at the moment this is all unofficial but like if it was a 3.5 billion deal how much of that is in earn outs um but whatever n it gets going to be a really tremendous amount of money but like what what do they do after really like no cuz there there's no other Pokemon go is it is it that use its Tech I think like who else what else makes a crap like like that so I can only really see it being that if they took the deal then it's like okay well we' we've got3 and half billion dollars like we're happy with that we're kind of done it kind of an exit perhaps cuz you say like what yeah they are Pokémon go basically

and I think if I don't know I guess I don't really know what's going to happen after but if it is a slow we're with the a tech company it's like good luck obvious got a lot funding Le had a lot of funding can do anything we'll sit but you know tell obviously Talent te but we'll see we'll see what happens yeah I will be um interested to see how much sure the games change if they do come under scopey though and um you know what monetization changes there might be whether we'll see ghost start rise again if you know if scopely start making it more like Monopoly go but my slight concern is I'm very strongly averse to ads in games I just can't deal with it so if Monster Hunter now ends up getting ads like I'm going to be quite sad well well I mean but they they still have the licensing Partners who will have influential voice right yeah and Savvy will want to keep this as a Prestige thing they don't want to ruin the games yeah I suppose so yeah maybe they won't probably worth mentioning that I know it's not the Pokemon company but Savvy has like investment in Nintendo and that

and they they are looking for Prestige and they're looking to bring these kind of games and that with into Saudi Arabia as well now yeah I don't think they'd want to yeah make any changes that would be detrimental ads could work but yeah if they were like optional or if it's like oh you've run out of pokeballs you know watch an ad and you can get five more or something that you know but then that probably wouldn't fit in with like does does the Pokemon I does Pokemon brand want like yeah Rand this ads appearing suddenly game right so yeah I guess it'll be quite complicated it's Tim a kid ip' have to be very careful yeah we're going to move swiftly on to to some more news so Aaron you broke this one this week Jam City is greed in principle to sell ludia which is uh seems crazy to me so the the background of this is that Jam City bought ludia three and a half years ago uh Jam City I think throughout his whole lifetime has been desperate to go public

last time when I was working at Pocket Gamer from 2016 2019 that was always the story when are you going to go when are you going public and then a few years ago they they were going to go public I think as a spa can't remember and they were going to merge of ludia to do it and then they couldn't go public even with a spa I think that might have been when Spa's kind of died out I can't remember the exact timing and then that didn't happen so but champ you bought Lugia anyway now Lugia's like interesting team they they've made a Jurassic world two two license titles so so you know that's the background only three and a half years ago since then they've made uh layoffs so apparently 2022 into a source and restro it in 2023 they laid off another 45 people the game's performances as a quick look they they look like they're either doing kind of level with let say last year or worse and definitely worse than they were I think when they were acquired curious what I guess what the future looks like really fugia how much the deal is worth

is it a loss for Jam City by the way they're I should have mentioned they're selling to a Consortium of Canadian institutional investors which is pending approval from the Canadian competition Bureau which is currently reviewing the sale and then as's a quick quote city has been approached this is statement they sent to us jab city has been approached byid is in discussions with consum Canadian institution investors to acquire the monal studio and its portfolio both parties have come to an agreement it's I'm going to not set the full quote but uh it was L's they said was one of 10 Jam City Studios and it's only midcore team the sale surpris like the sale is not expected to have a significant impact on its overall business as the company's largest of most popular games are casual narrative and puzzle and puzzle style premium mobile titles interesting to say premium in the context I know what they mean but it makes it sound like as approv again yeah if the sale is approved J is committed to Prov se's transition that

supports the continued success of ludia I I wish ludia the best hopefully it works out I don't really know what the plan would be moving forward for them at all if they especially if they're being bought by investors I don't know I'm intrigued what they're actually working on with a smaller team that would I guess make it worth the purchase for these investors yeah so that was that was huge news uh Aaron you've got more so you've got uh epic games yeah so the Epic gam store on mobile is apparently going to be a focal point for epic in 2025 so they're planning to work on building an enhanced at library and discover experience so this comment was made in epic's review on the store's performance last year so through 2024 so apparently it saw 94 million new crossplatform accounts made uh which brings the total to 898 million now we asked for clarification on like specific numbers for mobile didn't provide any but we can kind of

extrapolate a bit from the numbers that are there so like we know that EC users totaled 295 million in 2024 which was a 25 million increase and we also know that there were 94 million new accounts in total so 69 million had to come from platforms other than PC and epic also said that the increase in accounts included those created through partner platforms and the epic games store on mobile so yeah presumably you know a fair chunk of that 69 million came from mobile and it's also interesting to note that apparently a lot of the most popular games on the epic gamer store last year were crossplatform so they named like genin impact oncl star rail weathering waves so obviously that doesn't strictly mean they were people making Mobile accounts to play them but they are available on mobile as well as PC and yeah it's kind of interesting to have some numbers for the year even if we don't exactly know the the mobile

numbers for right now but yeah that's sort of where the land lies for now yeah a couple figs on that like I think actually I don't know for sure but because 90 Fillion you 9 Fillion 94 million you account quite a lot but I think that includes people just playing fortnite on Console as well which which would be a substantial amount Mac don't know how much that would count for mobile the last time we knew I can't remember if this is back in October November Tim Sweeny said that they had when they launched the epic game store in the EU they got 10 million Accounts at the time so it's not unreasonable to think that they've added quite a lot since then so could be fairly substantial this isn't a commentary on how successful the Mobile store has been but yeah like I'm sure a fair chunk but also the console stuff really it makes it you don't really know what's going on and I think the fact that they didn't answer probably says a lot yeah to be honest yeah I guess if if

it was a really solid number they right want to brag about it exactly and uh I it's not mobile really but like what really shocked me is so the Epic gam St has been going for quite a while now and [Music] they invested so much money in it bringing all these games to the store the free games that they've got the you know the low of the revenue share which will obviously have an impact on how much money they make like compared to say steam but it's they really like all this money that's going into the epic game store they're really just still the the fortnite company and I don't know if Mobile's really going to change this to be honest because it's it's so difficult to to compete with steam how do you compete with the App Store and Google Play especially when they make it really difficult to be a good store on their platforms with like scare screens and all the core technology feed and all this other kind of nonsense yeah the epic game store players spending by PC

users on third party applications using epic payments fell by 18% year of a year to 255 million for all used to spent uh nearly 1.1 billion a rise of 15% year on year so they're actually the store really isn't making money it's just fortnite yeah that's quite scary I think yeah not good I would say in terms of their Ambitions right we've got uh One More Story uh to go through the ones we chosen I want talk a little bit about Big Fish games uh to hold new develop to hold new game development and reduce investment in its portfolio Aristocrat Leisure uh put basically effectively put big fish except for its social casino games and plarium up for sale I think last year and they sold Plum to MTG for 620 million it feels like they couldn't find a buyer for big fish because they're keeping it now but it said they

um like no specific mention of layoffs but it said that the developer will focus solely on the continued efficient and profitable operation of its live titles it added that it would also significantly reduce investment in big fish's portfolio so it's kind of like they don't want big fish that's that's how it feels that's how it feels to me they couldn't find a buyer and now I don't know it's just specul it feels like they're just going to wind it down a bit or ly what they're saying is they're scaling it back quite a lot it's a shame because big fish wats like a huge developer they were bought themselves but for $990 Million by Aristocrat in 2018 and ultimately this is what Aristocrat has done with it and and then now they're refocusing their efforts on Casino Social Casino the other things they've done they're they're basically rebranding a little bit and moving things around so they've got their pixel United reported segment which which covered all of their games they they're replacing that basic with product Madness which is Social Casino developer that they have but yeah like a

really big downfall for big fish games that for a long time was a a lot time was a big company Big G company and now not so much anymore I don't know if you have any thoughts yeah so I'm not um as familiar with them I guess I wasn't um in the the games journalism scene back in the old days of 2018 in the day um yeah but yeah as you said it sounds like yeah a bit of a shame I guess that they've not um managed to yeah kind of sell them on or um yeah if they were kind of a big a big fish before then um hopefully they will find something else worthwhile with them to do yeah obviously it's speculation on my part that I don't know you know may I'm assuming that they couldn't find a buyer but I don't know and I don't know you know what they were after for any potential sale and also maybe Big Fish isn't that attractive with Social Casino games so there's probably a lot of

factors there but um yeah never like to see that to a big company the other big story that I I really to absolutely most briefly touched upon was the unity and I just Unity financials this week uh there's there's a lot more going on but the things I want to say is that Unity Revenue fell by 25% in Q4 um and it saw declines technically saw declines in both of it uh create Solutions and grow Solutions so engine and ads business create Solutions Revenue decreased by 47% year on year to $152 million grow Solutions decline by 5% um but apparently for all these Shenanigans it could have risen by 2% but for some deals iron Source once cut and that is also not um Revenue that's actually um a strategic portfolio which I it's going to change next quarter but they they shifted things from strategic to non-strategic and they're reporting I think just stuff that they're actually focused on the future apparently Revenue

the Strategic portfolio for create solutions would have been up 4% to me it all didn't sound very good they're working on a new uh tool Vector for for UA to compete without lovein it's kind of interesting I feel like I hear this every quarter we're about we're ready now to compete with loin I heard this under the last CEO it's like well I don't know it's like a year later I don't know 9 months later it's still the same story and last thing I want to say is I feel like Unity is just not getting it at the moment like doesn't understand I know it's big public company and it does have other customers that aren't games but games is like its biggest business and when it was talking about new custo big new customers it's got notably it didn't mention games companies perhaps they don't have any big newb games companies to brag about but then they measured like Toyota and other companies it's like I feel like the messaging should really be brought back to games cuz those are the people that they've hurt the most that is their Core Business and with without them they won't have a business so I'm sure it's

great to be thinking of non gaming still but I really personally what do I know but uh I I would be like scale that scale that talk down you know maybe investors probably wouldn't like that and also to sum up how wrong I am about being like down about what they said when I looked earlier their share price was up by like 16% so people are obviously very happy and I'd note that losses were down quite considerably but yeah we'll see how they fair in future I think yeah everyone wants Unity to be well and successful because it's so influential right that's uh that's a good note to end on something positive yeah so thanks very much Aaron for for being on the show this week always great to have you yeah thank you yeah I think it's been a packed one this week lot packed one but we try to condense it yeah and thank you everyone who's tuned in and listened as as Aon said at the start we're back for the second week running after my Hiatus and we'll be back again next week and hopefully many weeks and months to come

so yeah all I can say is have a great weekend hope you tune in next week we'll see you soon goodbye