Week in Mobile Games E56 - The Apple Games verdict

[Music] Hello and welcome to the pocket gamer.biz podcast week in mobile games where we talk about the week's news and provide some insights. Craig Chapel, head of content at pocket gamer.biz. With me today, as usual is Aaron Assel, our news editor, and we have a special guest, Darly Scowan, heads up the PGC conference agenda here at Pocket Gamer. Good to have you on the show. Thank you. Thank you for having me, Craig. Uh, it's been uh it's been a long time coming, I'd say. You've never been on the show. Yeah. Well, we've tried to keep you away, but keep me away from the madness. It's about time. Yeah. Yeah. No, you're you're deep in the madness with PGC. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. To be fair. Yeah. It's it's it's complete madness over here. One event finishes, three more take its place. Yeah. As is the life of events. And I'm sure like, you know, if there's any uh event organizers listening to this, I'm sure they'll very much know the the absolute chaos. But uh we got to

thrive in the chaos. Am I right? Yeah. Yeah. The one day you get of like, we finished it into a meeting to talk about the next one. No, we're behind on the next one. Go. Well, this is why you plan ahead, you know. But uh No, it's good. It's good. It's great to be here. Thanks. Thanks for the invite, Craig. I really appreciate it. Oh, you guys, what you guys been up to, Charlie? What's What's been going on? We we just had PGC Barcelona. Have you recovered? Yeah, so we just come back from PGC Barcelona. It was a absolutely incredible event. It was probably like our most successful launch event that we've we've done. We've had so much great feedback and everything. And yeah, I just I wish all the team were there to see it. Like I I genuinely can't understate enough like how amazing the event was and just the amount of love that we've been getting is incredible. Uh I picked up a slight cold from that. Sorry, I've only just only just recovered. I normally don't get ill, but uh it seemed to have got me this time. Conference lurky always comes with conference. Luckily, it didn't hit me too much, but uh I've just been a

little bit recovering from that. You know, doing some sports who, you know, who likes sports and all that sort of stuff, a bit golf and all that, but I've been uh been diving back into Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 now that I've had a bit of time to sort of relax and uh yeah, play some games for once. What's Kingdom CO 2 like? I've not even played the first one. Fantastic game. Fantastic. I'd say like obviously because the the second game came out this year. There's there's a lot of stuff that I worked on from the first game that is miles better. But it's just the the story, the performance, the gameplay, and everything. It just one of those games that is just like just constantly warms your heart. I'd recommend it to anyone. Five side football, golf, and you go to the gym. What's going on? Are you going to do that marathon? Uh I'll get back to you about that. All right. If you do it, I'll I'll think about it. Yeah, maybe we should organize one for our next event. All right. Uh Aaron, what have you been up to? Um yeah, my last week's really been living vicariously through YouTube

videos about the Switch 2, so I haven't got one as of yet. Um not really enough of a Mario Kart fan for it to be worth the expense right now, although I'm inevitably going to be getting it as more more games come out. But obviously as a big Nintendo fan, yeah, I can't help but just watch other people playing the Switch 2 or talking about it and talking to friends about it who also don't have it yet. A few of them are getting tempted now. They're kind of they're getting sucked into the hype. Um, before it launched, they weren't fussed and now they're more tempted than I am. It's that FOMO, right? You see other people and you're like, I'm a bit like that actually. I'm a bit like that. I've looked at it and I've gone I I don't know. Is it worth it getting it then? And then now I've seen that people have got got their hands on it. I'm like, "Oh, I could do with I could do with spending400 odd pounds on on on a console and then like £70 for the next game.£7 for the game." Yeah. I mean, I've got to get ready for Legends Z. Like, let's go. Yeah. Yeah. I might get

one at the end of the year. I've not been up to too much since since the conference. Having a bit of a rest at the weekend. But what I have been doing as an update for everyone, I know nobody cares. I've been playing more Starcraft 2 and I'm into Diamond League at long last. I know. I know. I So I I did take a little break from it and then now I've got back into it again. Probably even more so somehow. Yeah, diamonds times pretty good. I think I think that means you're okay at the game. What's the What's the tiers? Was it was like what's um Well, bear in mind, I guess not as many people play as they used to. It's still quite popular, I think, but not that popular. So, it's bronze, which barely anyone is in. Yeah. Silver, gold, plat, no. Yeah, gold, platinum, diamond, masters, and then grandm is where all the pros are. And I think in each region, if I remember right, in Grandmaster, they only have like a set 200 players at a time in that. It's not very far off that. My goodness. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Will we see you there? We'll finally get tournaments. Yeah. Yeah.

I'll finally get a tournament ready and then the game will just like go on. stop being well, it's kind of stop being supported. Yeah, you'll get to you'll get to top 200 or wherever it is, but no, no one's playing it. Yeah. As long as the best actually no, I was going to say as long as the best players don't play anymore, then I stand a chance. But then no one will watch Esports World Cup Starcraft 2 finals coming, right? Anyway, on to on to more important matters. Um, first a shout out for our events. So, PGC Summit in Shanghai, July 30th. Pocket Game can't get this in order. Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki October 7th to 8th. PGC Bangkok October 15th a week later. That's got to be fun. Charlie, are you going to start what we just spoke about in terms of like the the madness? Yeah, that that one will be quite a quick turnar around. We'll start preparing that on the night. Yeah. Yeah. We'll be having a few of the long drinks talking about how how can we how can we make Bangkok a good event? Flying straight from Helsinki. And then uh we

got PGC Akaba which is our PGC Jordan event. So we've moved it to Akaba this year from Aman uh 8th November 8th and 9th. And then of course we have the mobile games awards coming during Gamescom week. So we got that. Uh lobbying is now open. So please do send your nominations for the awards. Uh I'll put a link in the description. Uh it's a key part of putting together the lists of the finalists and and then that goes to the judging panel. Then we announce the winners at the show. Right, that's all the event stuff out of the way and the and the latest progress in my Starcraft 2 esports journey. So, first we're going to talk about is some takeaways and and we talked a little bit about the event, but PGC Barcelona. So, as you're saying, Charlie, we think it went really well. That's lots of great feedback. Yeah, like loads of amazing feedback. The outpour on like social media like on LinkedIn has just been incredible. like the amount of people just saying how amazing the event was, how much an event like that was needed. Not to toot our own horn too much, but

you know, we've got to celebrate the successes. local um developers, publishers, everyone was just so happy with the event and our international attendees as well were just blown away by the scene really like it just really felt like a like proper event in a in a sense that there's this there's something really strong here and uh yeah, we're already looking at it coming back again next year. Yeah, I think um I guess one of my takeaways from the show is that I know people have been talking about Barcelona as a kind of a hub, a growing hub for a while now and we've and you've heard studios going there. You had kind of Bandai Namco setting up their Barcelona studio. They wanted to do a bit like Supercell and other companies going there, but it wasn't really until build the buildup to the show and during it, I realized actually just how big the scene is there. So I mean obviously you have like a social point but the fact that you've got I keep I'm gonna forget now but F plus Scopley Kings there you got Sans there as I mentioned already Bandai Namco and

Scopley is like their biggest hub in the world in Barcelona which is fascinating and it's kind of almost like in some ways like the lynch pin of everything that they do. So obviously they have other teams around the world that that do that but they have like marketing there. I think they have I'm going to screw this something out. They have like their back end like one of their backend platform developments there. They support other games. There's there's a lot going on there and a huge hub and then obviously one of their co-founders is from Spain. Yeah. Like it it just shows like uh when you've got these massive massive global companies looking at certain regions, there has to be a reason like why you know they're setting up there, right? Like you said, Scoply is there it's it's even bigger than like their other offices around the world. I was speaking with I was speaking with Talia from Scopely and she said like I think that's the it's their biggest office is actually in Barcelona. So it just it just really shows like the the like the amazing talent there as well. You on the first day of the event had

the chat with Nester on stage. You know they were talking about um how how their the sort of like local talent is shaping the um the sort of future of Scopely and I found that really interesting. do you want to like sort of like give a sort of insight to what what you spoke about on that because I was there but obviously I'll let you I'll let you have have that moment where you know you can share what you guys spoke about. I suddenly got to remember what we what we spoke about. Yeah. Uh it was it was great. Yeah. it kind of what I said like just kind of why they set up there and a lot of it is kind of the Spanish roots of of one of the co-founders was one of the ideas behind that and that they they've acquired a bunch of studios over time I haven't got in front of me I was going to have to remember Omnidrome I think was one SN games was another local acquisition and there was another I found it Genjoy was another so they've actually made a lot of acquisitions all in that country all in Spain and and and and in Barcelona and they actually employ over a thousand people there. So

when I say it's big, it's not like even like oh there's a few hundred there. It's a thousand is pretty major. Um so that's interesting. And then actually I think uh you know I think Scopley takes fairly well at least what they're saying on stage. But I did ask like you know does that mean you're kind of responsible in a way a little bit for the dev scene there like in in terms of you have to support it in some ways? People might be hearing me say this and be like, well, they don't have to do anything like that, but surely you want to support the scene that you have a major investment in. And so, yeah, they do. He was talking about like um kind of training people as well like from the audiovisisual industry locally there, but he said there's a lot of talent there anyway. They actually have pretty good education system uh in Barcelona and Spain. and and not just necessarily NESA, but one of the we we we spoke to a few uh people in the industry and one of the sort of criticisms I guess or

criticism but think that like Spain could be doing better is that there's not that much communication between all the regions to kind of come together and then if they came together one they could obviously support each other kind of like you see in Finland and then obviously that actually makes it a lot easier if you want to I guess word lobby or something government to kind of get policies that benefit your industry or at least get your your challenges across. Yeah. And the sort of some of the groups as well. So like we were working with um you know the likes of Baron and Partners AV who are like the sort of the Spanish games industry association. There was like a dev who I'm I'm pretty sure Craig you guys worked with on with them on our on the Spanish games industry report. Yeah. We should download the comments. Yeah. Download in the comments. Yeah. But you know plug that get in. But like yeah, it like really showed like like speaking to each of these groups individually. Patience pro hesitation is probably the wrong word for it or something. Um it it felt much like a yeah, we might we're

going to have to sort of like check it out, see how it runs the first year, which is, you know, fine and all that because you don't want to put all your eggs in one basket, especially for the first event. Uh yeah, it was a bit like um you know, trying to motivate people to come to the event. It's a hard it's a like you know events and all that sort of stuff is like a hard sell but like we did see that like when it comes to people outside of like Barcelona um it was sort of hard to you know not convince them it was just it was just trying to reach out to them and making sure that they they are aware that it's happening but uh I feel like that from from the success of the event this time like I think that sort of like word of mouth and it's provided that sort of FOMO. So all in all what I'm saying is like yeah I I I I get that sort of point where Spain uh the the one of the criticisms of Spain is looking at you know different regions you know not having that sort of communication across and hopefully um that that could get better over the years. We'll we'll have to see. But um yeah, I do agree with that point. Actually, I guess I get a slightly different event for us because

all respect to a lot of the other events like Barcelona, you get really nice and sunny. There's a beach. You go. It certainly certainly helps, doesn't it? London's a nice trip because London has everything other than a beach. Then uh actually has like a really Am I thinking right there? Somewhere in London that's like a really It's near It's near Hounds. I think I know where the one that you're thinking of. Beach. Yeah, that that beach within London. Yeah, I've been there actually. It's um it's interesting. I interesting is a word I would describe. So, do you have any other takeaways from the show, Charlie? Yeah, like anything you learned again like talking like about the local the local scene. Um one thing that we saw at the event was the quality of indie developers that were that were at the event uh from the big indie pitch side and our own expo area. So, at PGC, for anyone that's sort of unfamiliar with the event, we have an expo area dedicated to indie developers, and we also run a pitching competition. It's called the Very Big Indie Pitch. Now,

Jupiter Hadley is our um sort of I'd say queen of the the big indie pitch basically the best way to describe her. and she on stage when she was about to announce the winners mentioned that the the the quality of games and pitches that were at the event. Not yeah not just the games the actual pitches themselves because that is a massive factor when um when you want to bring your game to markets how you sell that game to to publishers and other folks as well and to media and all that sort of stuff. So she mentioned that that the quality was absolutely outstanding. there was like one vote or like actually one of the editions I think it was the PC console edition or I'm not too sure but there was a um there was uh like a tie for the winner and what they had to do was get everyone together all the judges again and revote based on those two winners because that the the quality was just that insane and of course the expo area itself was just rammed the

entire way through. So again, it goes back to that um what we just talked about about the talent that that's available in Spain um is truly outstanding. I'd say that's probably my biggest takeaway from from the event. I um so I I I wrote a few I'll go through them quickly as always. I always say that and then I spent 20 minutes talking. One of my So I went through the takeaway of like how surprised I was about how big the scene is there. I think like but from that is also you know how many how many massive games come specifically from like Barcelona specifically really and wider Spain obviously we've had social point that's been very successful with their games then they got bought for $250 million by take 2. So yeah, huge success. So I'm not saying there are none. I think there's one game and I've really forgotten the name of it. It won a few awards at the big festival at Gamescom. So that there are out there, but you've got like Bando Nam Kai has been there for quite a few years and and they've only just kind of soft launched

their game. Matchbound Legends, we'll see how that does. And then I think some of the others I believe in. And Bubble Witch Saga is the Spain King game. I think it's done. All right. Um, but I'm curious kind of over the next few years what what else new comes out of the region. I think that's going to be pretty big. But publishers are already setting up there. So publish seem pretty happy with what's going on. My other quick takeaway. So direct consumer. I say this for every single event as a takeaway. But that was a massive thing, especially this time with the Epic Games versus Apple ruling that cracked open the app store. And obviously Exola and App Charge were there. They both had a party at the Soho house. So, they're kind of uh you really doubling down once again on just their presence at these events. But that's how big the story is, right? That that investment is worth it. I was speaking with Chris Meredith um from Exola and he he was saying that this week they were off to Get Games Forum Hamburg. It's load like and then you go on their website where it says

like all the events absolute mega list of like all the events that they're attending. It just like Yeah. Like you say slapping down on like Yeah. throw it. Here we are. Here we are. We're here. But no, that's you know, it's really great for them. It's working. They're, you know, they doing some really interesting things. Chris Chris I had a really good chat with Chris Meredith actually about um what they're sort of looking at um you know because he's been working with Nick Paul from Yuki about some really interesting things coming up and um sort of the opportunities that the UK government can you know take advantage of because you know well they've got loads of other things to sort out of course but uh uh but you know yeah they're trying to they're trying to really shove the opportunities of of what's been going on in the industry in in their faces and some other takeaways. So, obviously AI is pretty big topic there. I think we had two tracks on that. But one of the best talks basically is this guy, this guy from the AI guys, no less. It's a co-CE and CTO Ken Noland and he

recreated the original XCOM from scratch using AI tools. So, I will have that video up soon. If you didn't see it, put an article on the site about it, but it's just an actual practical look at can you use these tools to make a game, right? there's all the hype about it, but can you actually do it? And he's like done it. And he said it was kind of really eye opening. Well, sorry. He said I thought it was really eye opening. Uh was possible. He was basically like it's not ready. AI tools, they're not going to come and replace all your jobs, right? It's just like that that amount of hype is not real. However, I guess like but then he caveats that somewhat and says like he still made this game and engine in 3 months and so it actually helped him a lot. But his point was you need that expert to steer it properly and to check everything otherwise you you can't just leave it to do something and then that's it. So then there's the question then like rather than like oh is AI going to take our jobs and all that sort of stuff. It's like what new things are possible that

may not have been from AI. I saw that from Yokim. He posted something on on LinkedIn and it says there's a lot of questions about like the ethical side of things and jobs. Um but like no one's asking like what like how can a like what can you create with it? What are what new possibilities and new opportunities there are? And it seems like that you know maybe some of those questions yeah need to be directed towards that. I think like AI is it's overhyped 100%. especially by some of these executives at these massive technology companies like OpenAI way overhyped. But there are there are very clearly already practical use cases like Ken Island just showed there and obviously in like ad creatives in marketing like this but it seems like quite a lot of companies are basically doing that already. I think we're further away than you know people think about like AI replacing literally everything. Like you said you need that expert to steer steer the ship really. Yeah, about my point was is just like

yeah sure but you know will it have the web free problem of the blockchain problem of like cool you have it you can use it but why I guess is kind of your point like what does it if it's not doing anything you what's the point in some ways but then is is that necessarily like its biggest thing like its biggest thing is surely quote unquote efficiencies in kind of development or any part of your job and it's like a real useful tool to help you or maybe replace you which obviously as you said the more worrying part But I think it it is already showing some practical use cases just how much further it can go is the big question. Um I said I was going to go through this quickly and then there's a really interesting talk from my games about uh China. So obviously we're going Shanghai July 30th. It was really interesting step by-step guide and some of the things are kind of obvious things you already know. He said it could have taken up I think to like 2 years before like to get your game from like start to launch there. Now it's like 9 to I think it was 9 to 12 months which is still a very long time. Um and some of the funny

things you said of like the criteria right is a character can't have a scar a visible scar on their face and they can't have red eyes. So you got watch out for that. I discussed a bit about web games. So I did a panel there. I'm still like so crazy games had some interesting numbers for their platform. They said they had 40 million monthly active users, more than 300 million monthly game players and 3,000 developers on board. And I was really just trying to ask like is I was quite excited about it like say six months ago year ago and then now I'm back now I'm at the point where it's like okay is this a thing developers want. Is this kind of like the VR thing of like we really want this but no one wants but no one wants it like consumers they obviously countered that as to why like it's accessible. You could share links on social and just instantly access them as as some examples. But like on mobile, which is your main device if you're out and about, it's just like I don't know like downloading an app, it's it's you don't even think about it. It's so quick. So I don't know how it replaces

that. What what a centralized platform for that looks like cuz it can't just be a publisher just put some leaks out. You have to have somewhere where that people go so they could find it for starters or you could direct people to and then they use it. It's quite I think discovery is a bit of an issue there. And then uh lastly we had tips for launching a game studio. So we had Mesa CEO North Grace talk to panelists. We had Super Banana Cocoon and Breach Studios talking about kind of funding VC if you want to go the angel investor route if you're only working on one game and then some other kind of useful tips. I'll put a link into the in the description not the comments as I said earlier in the description to the article. But yeah, anyway, we spoke ages about that, but it was a really good event and uh there's a lot to take away from it and yeah, we'll be back next year. Okay, Aaron, you've been sitting there patiently cuz you weren't at the show. Yeah, but you did been a little bit quiet. You did man the fort uh with Paige and Lisa on the site. So, what news have you got? Yeah. So, um

I'm going to bring things back to the Switch 2 for a minute. Um because we've had some uh sort of early figures on it. So, Nintendo put out a statement saying that in its first four days, the Switch 2 has surpassed 3.5 million unit sales globally, and this makes it Nintendo's fastest selling piece of hardware ever. Yeah, obviously the Switch 2 came out on the 5th of June um and has ushered in the new Nintendo generation. Obviously, we've had eight years just over of Nintendo Switch, which launched on the 3rd of March 2017. And although we don't have kind of a 4-day comparison there, um Nintendo conveniently obviously had their end of year financials that March. So, we know that between the 3rd of March and the 31st, the original Switch had sold just over 2.7 million. Um, so roughly, yeah, like 2.7 million in a

month for the Switch One and 3.5 million in 4 days for the Switch 2. So, obviously quite a lot faster. So, yeah, this means the Switch 2 has already outsold its predecessors first 29 days by 28%. and um obviously still has the better part of a month to go before we get a an accurate comparison there. Presuming Nintendo gives us more updates on the official numbers. But yes, obviously you been a huge success for them already in that regard. Um compared to like the Wii U which obviously was a was the flop that predated the Switch. The Wii U it was roughly like 13 million units it sold in its lifetime. So, the Switch has already made like a quarter of its sales roughly in like four days, which yeah, is a bit crazy. Really shows that, you know, Nintendo is back really if if they weren't already from Switch getting like 150 million lifetime sales, which is

also quite crazy. Yeah. I guess you never know how it's going to do. There's all the hype around Switch 2 and its potential and and then it's interesting. They've got like the big bigger publishers on board now, which used to be a struggle for Nintendo. I'm sure it'll still be a system that mainly sells just it first party stuff, which is obviously fine for Nintendo. They could they could sell 150 million of their own console and just their own games. Amazing. And they don't have they don't have as big a problem with like say an Xbox or trying to get actually games out on the system at certain times as it has been over the last generation. I know they've obviously made major acquisitions to rectify that. Yeah, like getting companies online from soft was amazing. And so I think this is going to be it already looks like it's going to be a really good generation and I think we were saying earlier but like they've really sorted out their there's no shortage of like units right seemingly I know it's like sold out a lot of places but they've been able to shift a lot so there's not been that big production issues and I think there was pro there

was worry right with the tariff situation which is who knows what's going on with it at the moment that could still affect it ultimately long term but it doesn't seem everything seems to be going pretty well and uh I guess we'll see a lot more a lot more sales from that. Yeah, I guess it's um at the same time maybe a counterpoint the original Switch there were kind of supply issues at launch. So obviously if there weren't if it was as accessible as the Switch 2 is so far then I guess it would have done better at at launch cuz I know originally for the first few weeks or something like Breath of the Wild like the Switch version was out selling the Switch like it had over 100% attachment rate because people were just buying it but they couldn't get the Switch yet. So Charlie I guess thoughts on that but you you've also got another story very similar to handheld. Yeah. Like it's interesting cuz um you you mentioned about it's probably for the going to be mainly for their first party titles um compared to like third parties of course like you know other studios

and publishers more accustomed to you know PC console publishing and then of course you know Xbox revealed the uh the ROG Ally um the ROG Xbox ally to give it full name and the the X version. And you know, you might not be able to fit that in your pocket, but uh uh but uh you know, it's it's curious like to see like, you know, Nintendo have stayed the course when it's come to to handheld, of course, with the Switch, but now Xbox and you know, if rumors are to be uh believed, PlayStation was sort of going back to sort of like handheld handheld model and it's sort of again linking back to the BBC and it's this um I saw a session um from Dia from Xbox. I won't go into too much on it, but their their whole ethos at the moment is um especially on the uh the ID Xbox side of things. It's just sort of like gaming everywhere, gaming from, you know, on your handheld on a bus or something like that, you know, rather than just, you know, sitting at home on the on the the

home console boot up the TV, which I imagine like most people would be doing anyway because that's just comfy and all that sort of stuff. But uh yeah, I guess like Aaron, have you seen much on like the Xbox side, like the Xbox handheld side of things, do you think that that could be in like quite an interesting battle between like the Switch, especially for those third party titles? Yeah, I'd imagine maybe if people that are more interested in the third party stuff, I guess just having what's probably going to be more powerful hardware from the Xbox side probably is going to be more alluring. But then you do miss out on Nintendo's whole first party catalog. Obviously, you get Xbox's stuff in exchange, but I've not been following it that closely. But I have a few friends that have been and that have been sort of talking to me about it, and they they've been saying that um they're not particularly interested in it at the moment, and that maybe it will be more a competitor for like Steam rather than Nintendo. Nintendo just seems to be its

own thing these days. Could could there be a I don't know how this would ever work, but I people were sort of I've I've seen a few comments saying like, you know, bringing even Steam to to the uh the the ROG Ally, of course. I think the other sort of like handheld consoles that are not related to PlayStation and Xbox. I you can get those distribution services, right? You can get you can get Steam and they mentioned it in the show. You can get Steam and and others on the new Xbox hardware. So then that like that shows like you know Xbox is not it's becoming more of like a what's the word PC? Yeah. Yeah. Essentially like the more cloud you know cloud gaming and gaming from everywhere a gaming anywhere type type platform rather than you know just stick it on the one store. like if if they if you can get Steam, you could probably get like the Epic Game Store and all the other stores, right? It's interesting. It's like I'm going to take a look at it when Yeah, cuz I think the Steam Deck um I'm

not sure if these are the latest numbers, but I think it's about 4 million units it sold. So, obviously that is, you know, the Switch 2 has almost beaten it in like 4 days. So, I'm not throwing any hate at the Steam Deck, but yeah, it it'll be interesting to see. I wonder if like Nintendo has just captured the people that are interested in handhelds really and whether anyone else can, you know, claim them away. I feel like they've captured that, but also just people that like Nintendo games. You can't get them anywhere else. We'll have to see um PlayStation version whenever they announce that. Yeah. Yeah, they've already done like a little like some versions of that, but for the PSP was ahead of its time. Oh, their actual handhelds. Yeah, their actual handhelds. Yeah. I uh the the the thing some of the things about their new Xbox's new announcement though. So there's already been an ally console out for a while. See that's why I wanted to bring it up cuz it's like if there's already them consoles out there like what makes it I guess what makes it Xbox? It's a bit

different. So, it has the handles and then it has an Xbox button and but like I think it's it makes sense because it is a to make it if you make it more official and say this is this is like the Xbox console then I I think in theory that could lead to kind of more sales cuz people kind of maybe there's a trust aspect and also it can be marketed properly by Microsoft. I think the name is still stupid. Just call it the Xbox handheld. It just be done with it like calling it the ROG ally. people looking at like what is that? I don't understand what any of these words mean. Right? I I don't understand what those words mean. I don't I don't know if like talking to Xbox, you know, the ones that have named it Xbox Series S or Xbox, you know. All right. But at least but that makes more sense. Like that's much more easy to understand than even that's not great, but that's much easier to understand than here's the rogue ally from Asus that's part of Xbox. It's just

like what am I buying? Am I buying an like I think people still look at it like the general consumer. It's just like what am I am I getting an official Xbox handhel if you just released it and said here's the Xbox Series H. M Xbox series had and it's just like okay that's like official market. I feel like I feel like that's I I've kind of split in some ways. I think that's going to be an issue. The other thing about play anywhere that makes me laugh. So I was talking to someone that's a steam dick and then they were like well getting game pass on a on a Linux so basically a steam OS is a nightmare but then you you can bring Steam now to your Xbox handheld. So I was just like play anywhere but on Microsoft's terms is is how I is how I interpreted that. And you know obviously they want to be on sale on a PlayStation because PlayStation outs sells them dramatically. But that's another thing. But I'll say again I I still don't think they really care for mobile. They still haven't released their store. What's that all about? What's going on with that? Maybe they're maybe they're now waiting for an appeal. I I never believe. How long's that been

now? Like that's been Well, I mean drop it off for a while. Yeah. How long it's been a year, right? Yeah. Well, surely more. Yeah. At least. Yeah. Anyway, I I could I've ran another show before, but yeah, in general, it's it's kind of cool. I don't think they'll I guess it's not really a Switch competitor. It's a Steam OS competitor. If they sell I guess if they sell a couple million, maybe it's worth it, right? We're getting off of time on this, but there's a few things I want to cover. So, the big thing, obviously, the past week is WWDC and the Apple announcements. So, of course, Apple came on stage, said, "We're really sorry. 10% uh revenue share, and yeah, we're going to end the case with Epic." I don't They didn't say any of this. Sorry. And so, they completely ignored uh the DMA, the case, obviously, cuz they're still not going. So, I guess you can't really talk about it legally, but they've really just got to get their head out the sand and just see what's happening. I mean I mean it could all that could come back at me if they succeed in their appeal but they couldn't even get a stay on the injunction during the appeal which it

doesn't look good and plus the judge has already had a right scathing assessment of their anti-competitive behavior doesn't look good for their modify but what did they actually announce so they announced Apple games which is I thought it was just a really at least what they did on the keynote they did some other announcements after but Apple games they give it a couple minutes it's a really lackluster announcement That's what I thought to be honest like at least on the face of it. So you get leaderboards, you can do challenges with friends so you could kind of compete for top scores which is kind of cool. Maybe that gets in a little bit on the likes of skills but there's no money involved. So curious kind of how that shakes out. You got social features like play together. You know a lot of these things that actually other consoles that have already they're now finally catching up on even though you can use like some of this like a Discord or something, right? But maybe for the general consumer maybe that works and maybe it kind of becomes sort of a central place for discovery. But I think I I feel like the issue is unless

it's um so unless it's no longer on the app store and you have to go through Apple games, everyone already thinks automatically, okay, I'm going to go to the app store, get my games, and then I'm just going to look at my phone and wherever I've put that folder, I'll go there to access the app at that. How much incentive is there to actually use and how how can you break that habit to use Apple games? It feels like it's come very late. Um I'm curious. They might develop it further and so we'll we'll actually see their full plan maybe later but at the moment for me I thought it was pretty lame and then they had some other announcements. So which is hilarious because these are the basically the Apple games features. So there was rumor that game center was center was going to close be replaced. That's not really happening. It's got new features which is challenges, activities, multiplayer activities, uh you know, invite friends, etc. There's a game overlay, uh so you can adjust settings, connect with friends, see the latest inapp events, uh which is

actually pretty good. That's actually pretty good idea. And then there's some other things like uh some analytics and and I think some there's some UA UA changes that made some enhancements to the ad attribution kit that include configurable attribution information which provides developers and advertising networks greater flexibility. Apparently we're creating advertising campaigns for apps and games all using privacy preserving attribution methods whether that's true. So there are some other announcements that could be interesting. I wasn't that enamored. We spoke to some industry experts. Bill Luton said, "As I understand it, it's a revamped game center with a little bit of the app store rolled in. So far, I don't see any new features. This is Apple trying to claw back control over distribution and discovery, but in classic Apple style, not understanding games. I don't think players care much about their friend scores or achievements in 2025. I do agree with that. Uh, it's a shrinkingly small number of people. Very few mobile players competitive against their friends. Uh, they're locked into either solo or stranger play, so that's not a draw. They also don't care about discovery. That's a developer rather

than player problem. So I don't think this will have a significant impact. Evelyn Herrera, she said, "Apple games will be a great opportunity for indie game devs to win more exposure. Non-gaming apps occupy more than 85% of the apps iOS app store. So imagine all that space opening up to showcase games only." She said she's also confident that Apple will find new ways to reward great products as with out saw featuring, but now having more space for creativity on how they do it since they'll only focus on games. I do think that that is a good point because featuring doesn't really exist anymore, but does Apple want really featuring to exist when they're trying to sell Apple search ads as well? It's kind of by design. And also my my main point for me is just like you not can you not just do this within the app store? I don't know. you have an app, you have a games page, so why not just do it? Why, I don't know, why not just improve that? And then last thing, she added because we also asked about people's opinions on Apple Games and and what other things they'd like to see. Sort of said

recommendations would be great. Now, recommendations are based on category ranking, keyword ranking, or similar products to the product page users see, but there's no real personalization based on your play time and actual usage of different apps and games. There's a lot of opinions. We're going to get the article out before this podcast goes out. So check that out on the site. Any thoughts about Apple in general, Charlie, especially follow of the week show. My only quick comment is I felt your hype die via the group chat from like Monday morning to evening. I was like, yeah, I was like the team, right? We're going to do all this stuff. We're going to cover the event. We're going to do a special podcast. We're going to reach out to industry experts. It's going to write an opinion piece. Was all plaids. I'm getting ready. And then I watched it and I was like, "Okay, it was two minute section on nothing." I was like I I kind of agree with Will Loot. It's like it just felt like it was kind of the same stuff or just stuff that you catch on up from like a decade ago. Like you've got to got to move faster than that, you know? Like it just doesn't

work. Felt like we just time travel back to like Yeah. 10 like you said 10 years ago, right? I mean, how long have Xbox doing achievements for? Goodness me. 20 years. Yeah. Like god way before. Like what a joke and and like the friends thing it's like well maybe there was the general consumer rights not everyone has discord but also discord does exist so it's good to have so so late to the party and I think that just says a lot about how they haven't really made any effort to support game developers for years but like the past decade whilst games has grown into the biggest revenue generator on the app store for Apple and they take all this money they take that 30% fee for these these days doing absolutely nothing and this is all they could muster. I think it's I think it's really bad. Uh and and they need to kind of get their act together and just make a make a proper store. Even forgetting the 30% fee, just make a proper store that actually gets people the games that

they want. Maybe this is the start of that, but it's only this right. Anyway, ran over. So, what else we got? We'll try to go through these last fairly quickly, but Aaron, you've got State of Unreal, another event. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, it was Epic's event last week and yeah, they showed off quite a lot of stuff like some Witcher 4 footage and Fortnite updates, but I'll I'll keep focused on mobile. So the Epic Games Store, um the general manager, Steve Allison, went on stage and said that on mobile, the store has reached 40 million downloads and that they hope to grow it to 70 million this year. This is despite the company previously saying it had a target of 100 million installs. In fairness, I don't know if that was for this year. I think it's like by the end of last year. Maybe it's this year. All right. That's even worse. Might be this year, but they're still quite far behind. Right. And basically, um, yeah, Steve Allison talked about the the two major additions as he that are planned for the remainder of this year to, I guess, bolster the mobile version of the

Epic Game Store. Firstly, they're launching web shops next month, which will apparently be available to all developers, and those that use it will keep 100% of their net revenue on first 1 million per game and per year. And then after that, Epic will take a 12% revenue share. And then the other thing that they're doing is introducing self-publishing tools. This Q4 is the goal apparently. So then that'll allow like all developers to distribute their games on the game store. Those were the main things really for the store, but I also thought I'd quickly mention, so Tim Sweeney came out at the end of the like live presentation, dropped a few like spicy comments, um I would say. So he basically said that revenue is shifting away from quote useless gatekeepers and middlemen and basically said that revenue is starting to actually go to the people that um building games such as Epic. And um yeah, he basically sort

of celebrated the um industry opening up a bit and of you know the change is happening. Obviously this follows all the Apple versus Epic stuff. And yeah, he said that they're going to continue to fight for Fortnite and for other developers freedom until all apps are free worldwide. So yeah, just thought that was quite some noteworthy comments. It's a good Yeah, it's a good campaign. I mean, we said before, but like it's just amazing to think that about five years later, he actually got what he wanted. Probably took a lot longer than he ever anticipated. A lot more money. Was 100 million at least uh on this kind of but in the end it was arguably worth it, right? I I had a few thoughts in terms of their store on mobile because that because of the judge's case. Does it I wonder if there's kind of less value in alternative app stores now because if you can just people all use the app store or or

Google Play. Getting them to download something else like the Epic Game Store is very challenging as Epic has found out. Albeit they've mostly had scare screens in their way. If you look at that 40 million maybe it's quite impressive but like because because now if that ruling sticks in the US and if it kind of gets expanded in Europe because of the DMA and elsewhere in the world like developers only need to have their game downloaded on through the app store and then they could just link away for 5% fee. So you don't even want to you don't even want Epics's 12%. Right? That's too much arguably unless Epic's doing a lot to to kind of promote your game. But anyway, I wonder if that kind of affects that whole market in some way. um less value there. And then the other thing is it's just like I guess 40 million downloads like whatever it is, it's good for Epic because I always try and view them now as just like the Fortnite company, right? So they're not I don't know how terri seriously they take it. And I know they've invested a lot and had like free games for example PC for a long time quote unquote trying

to compete with Steam. But really what they've done an amazing job of is they've just got all the users to go onto their own store and spend money there so they don't give away any revenue share. And now that it's back on the app store, it made over a billion dollars through the app store Fortnite before it was kind of removed because of Epic's own fault. Let's not forget now it's like all if if you get like 10 million of those playing Fortnite on mobile through the road store and just keeping all that money like it's really good. So like doesn't really matter if you don't get loads of other games kind of releasing on the Epic Game Store. They've kind of done a really difficult job of getting everyone through their own funnel I guess. Going to end the show right there. Thank you very much Charlie for joining the show. Hope you had a good time. Yeah had a great time. Thank you so much for inviting me. You know happy to come on again sometime soon in a year's time or whatever time. PGC Barcelona 2026 was great. Yeah. No. Yeah, we'd love to have you back and thank you Aaron as always being on the show. Yeah, it's good to be here. Talk some Nintendo again. It's got to be

Nintendo, Pokemon, Monster Hunter, one of the one of the trifecta, right? Thank you everyone for listening. We hope you enjoyed the show. Have a good weekend. We'll see you again next week. Goodbye. Bye. Bye.