Week in mobile games E62 - Apple's regulatory wins and 2025's top genres

[Music] Hello, welcome to the pocket gamer.biz podcast week in mobile games where we discuss the week's news and provide some insights. I'm Craig Chapel, head of content at pocket gamer.biz. With me as always is our news editor, Aaron Ashel. How you doing, Aaron? How's the week going?
Hello. Yes. Yeah, going well, thank you. Um, the highlight of my week really has been I'm finally getting near the end of Zenoblade Chronicles X, which did start way back in it was March I started it. So that's like 4 months.
March 2015.
Yeah. Yeah. Over 100 hours in at this point. Finally getting to the end. It's It's been a long journey.
Are you Are you excited or are you just like happy that it will be finishing? Not in a harsh way, but I feel like it's it's run its course at this point. Like I'm ready for it to be done.

Not in a harsh way, but
yeah, like it's been a fun game. It's probably my least favorite from the series to be honest, but that's still like the other ones are excellent. So, it's still it's a good game. It feels more like I'd say the others are like fantasy RPGs and this is really like a sci-fi MMO but not online but it feels like an MMO if that makes sense because there's just so much kind of side content and things constantly happening and distractions which is great but also when you just kind of want to get on with the main story it's kind of like to be able to do the next chapter requires you to have like hit a certain completion percentage in this area or whatever. So, you you kind of have to do enough side quests to continue, but you kind of choose which ones, which is an interesting
Is that is that designed I don't know how it work. Is that designed to help you level up so that you're at the appropriate level for the next
I think. So, cuz it also you have a

level requirement to start the next like story chapter and it's generally easier I think to get the XP from completing missions than just like grinding for hours. Um, it's yeah, it's been a overall an enjoyable journey.
As for me, I barely remember what's happened this week. It's been quite busy the buildup to so we're heading to China Joy next week and our own event obviously, but a couple things. So, uh, I've been enjoying the esports World Cup actually. So, as listeners, if you've been listening before will probably know, a big fan of Starcraft 2 and so I started watching those live and it was it's been it's been brilliant. Well, anyway, we'll get to the the point of this podcast, which is the business of mobile games. So, but as always, before that, some shout outs for our events, which is all about the business mobile games, right? So, Pocket Gamer Connect Summit that takes place on July 1st. If you're still able to get there and you want to come, then please uh tickets still available. Come join us. Then we'll be off to China. PGC Helsinki is

coming on October 7th to 8th. We've got PGC Akaba in Jordan November 8th and 9th. Got the mobile games awards uh in August uh August 19th. And we have just opened nominations for the top 50 mobile game makers. We do it every year. It's an editorial decision, but we do open it up so people can kind of lobby just make sure that we know what other people are that we know more about what the industry is thinking and if you want to provide any sort of extra detail that help us kind of order the entries and and decide who goes in it, then that's that's really helpful for us. So, please do consider filling out the lobbying form. We're also doing this year we're bringing back the top 30 Mina companies, Mina game makers. We'll announce that at PC Jordan and we're also doing a top 30 for the first time top 30 Southeast Asia game makers. So this could be any platforms those ones and we'll announce that we have an event I don't know if we've announced I'll just say we have an event coming in South Korea in Soul and

we'll announce it during that. Stay tuned for more details. Right, we'll jump in. So, I think the big news of this week comes in two forms, but it's all about Apple because on this podcast, I I think every other week at least, we have to mention Apple, Apple's legal regulatory problems. So the EU there was a Reuters report and I'm quite surprised but I can maybe I can see why this is happening but Reuters is saying that people with direct knowledge of the matter uh are saying that the the European Commission is going to approve green light Apple's App Store rule changes. So there will be no further fines. So, it was previously fined $500 million euros, which at the time was about $587 million uh for breaching the digital markets act and then it had about 60 days to comply. So, the previous changes it made didn't work. That was like the core technology fee which also I believe there was a

separate investigation into the core technology fee. So then now they made a bunch of changes and what they did is they made it so complex. They added I've gone through this before so I'll just go through it really quick. They're now going to charge an initial acquisition fee, a store services fee which split into two parts and the core technology commission which will from January replace the core technology fee. It's very similar. So the initial acquisition fee is a 2% charge. That's when a c a customer purchases a digital good from an app. Even if they go off app, they they you still get charged that. There's store the store services fee is split into two tiers. Uh there's 5% and 13%. And so if you start leading people away, you you then get put onto this 5% tier, which sounds great. Oh, I only have to give revenue share, but you lose certain features, which is like like think like automatic updates, use featuring marketing help. It's it's not great. And

there's a bunch of other features that you you lose out on. And then the the uh the core technology fee charges a 5% ch. All in all, I think you're looking at about I'm not really going to math. You looking at about 20% or less. I guess on the one hand, I can see why if we don't know this for sure yet. the EU hasn't come out and said what it decision is if it's going to find Apple further or accept the changes and then we'll see what Epic does or or other companies do. Maybe they'll cry for AL etc. But I guess Apple is basically saying, well, okay, it's less now, but it's not cracked open like you would kind of expect, I think, from the digital digital markets act. Just in time for this, we'll be publishing an analysis that kind of goes deeper. So, thank you to Fura Digital that have kind of gone into what all those terms mean. It does feel like I think if Trump didn't win the election, then I think the EU will be going a lot harder at Apple. It's also surprising just in the context of that US judge decision and I know these

kind of go down different two different routes but that in the US because Apple has acted as a judge sitcom really in bad faith took the monopolistic option all the time. It hasn't really done anything different really with the EU in some in some regards. Although it's different because in the Epic Games versus Apple court case, they then got contemporaneous documents which found certain things that Apple executives were saying even in code words about that case. So it's different. It's also not. But yeah, like in the US it's cracked open, but the EU appears to be and it was reported before that the fine that they got already was less than anticipated because they're worried about what the Trump administration will do a retaliation. Obviously in the background there's all this tariffs going on and America's always been not very happy when its tech darlings are as it would put it picked on. Yeah, I think that's a really big surprise. And then very quickly, so I I don't know why the UK is taking so long on this. The UK is so far behind digital markets act. So we have our own

competition of markets authority here and there was talk about it in in January. There's been investigations going on for really years and it then said we we are proposing to consider that Apple and Google might meet strategic market status which is basically like big gatekeepers that maybe need some regulation to help open up those ecosystems. The markets acted this like last last year. So this proposal, a decision will be made by October and then potential actions kind of moved in really into 2026. So it's going to be a long time before there's actually any regulation and then obviously through that you probably get appeals etc etc and and then you have to see what Apple actually does and in this case Google to actually comply. It's it's just going to take ages and Epic Epic's absolutely fuming on both of these accounts. So for the EU, Tim Sweeney was out and said, "If the report is true, there have been total capitulation from the European Commission to Apple's brazen junk fees and Epic released statements slamming

the UK just really for its slowness. It said the UK competition regulator is choosing not to prioritize opening the mobile ecosystem to alternative app stores this year in the road map for Apple and Google. called it a missed opportunity and said it it won't be basically bringing the Epic Game Store or Fortnite to the UK this year. As always, it's going to rumble rumble and we don't really know in the US things might revert back once once Apple's appeal has kind of gone through.
Yeah. Well, firstly, as you said, it's just sort of amusing how far behind we seem to be on the whole issue in the UK. And it was uh yeah, like Epic statement about it. you could like feel the stroppiness coming through which um yeah I found that kind of amusing not necessarily in a good way but just quite you know it's like why are we quite so far behind on that um but yeah as you say the other stuff it definitely does feel like yeah the situation in America might be quite different um you know if

as you say if the elections had gone the other way I do think the EU probably would have been like um quite a lot harsher feels like maybe they're tiptoeing after those weeks or months of constant tariffs shifting back and forth and all the uncertainty that they maybe just don't really want to push any buttons and risk stuff going a little bit all over the place again. So it is interesting like how kind of broader world politics does you know play a role in these kinds of things. Yeah. So, first up from me today, I've just um put out today as of recording this quite a big like genre analysis of the first half of 2025. So, I took a look at all the genres as they're listed on at Magic. 16 genres I believe and basically compared how each has performed over the first half of this year in

relation to each other and also compared to how they performed last year. Uh and the article kind of goes into this on a global basis and in the US. Some some genres do very well in Asia, for example, but might be um kind of less representative of the kind of developers who are maybe more likely to read our site or be listening to this podcast. So we looked at the US as well. So some of the kind of standouts from it were strategy is the biggest genre so far this year. So between January and June, strategy games as a whole generated $10.6 billion between Google Play and the App Store. None of this accounts for like web shop stuff, but um yeah, based on kind of inapp purchases then strategy overtook RPGs. So RPGs were down in second whereas they were in first for the first six months of 2024. They were down at about $9.3 billion. It was about 11% fall from last year whereas strategy

was up um 20 plus%. It was one of the uh kind of fastest growing genres of the uh the period or year on year. Then puzzle also overtook casino uh for third place. So quite a lot of moving around in the in the top bracket. So the puzzle genre made uh just shy of $7 billion. Interestingly, so the three biggest puzzle games globally were Royal Match, Candy Crush, and Garden Scapes. And between them, they made up nearly a third of all puzzle revenue globally. So yeah, also because of that, like all three of those games out earned Hong Kong Star Rail, which was the top earning RPG. So even though RPGs made more overall, the genre's best game made less than the top three puzzle games, which I think sort of goes to show that spending in RPGs is a lot more diverse, whereas puzzle seems a little bit more

not quite monopolized, but um more so than RPGs then kind of there's a graph people can look at in the article to see like the full rankings of where everything ended up. But it's also noteworthy, I think, that um Game Collections, although they're kind of low down on the total revenue list, they top the chart for percentage change year-over-year. So, they'd grown by 138% globally. Um, and in the US, they grew by about 13%. Um, so it, yeah, clearly the US isn't driving that change. Arcade also saw quite a big increase. That was 35% globally um and 53% nearly in the US. So they're obviously a much bigger contributor to that change overall. I mean I find this kind of stuff interesting. That's why I um wanted to write about it really. Yeah, it was interesting to see that strategy has come out on top. RPGs kind

of dominated for a long time. $9.3 billion is still a lot of money for a genre, but um it's just I guess it goes to show that we are kind of still in changing times. Nothing stays on top forever.
A couple interesting things. Yeah. Like as you've concluded there like and I remember hearing about it in sets terror report in a set ter last year that like strategy was taking over RPG and RPG was on the down and I didn't really quite believe it but it does seem to be happening. two I guess two things that I thought are interesting just as wider context to this. So I wonder how much and I've I've spoken about this before about kind of market intelligence estimates and how they impact the how they can be impacted by web stores which you alluded to is it's but just how much are the is this kind of trends analysis which is great uh it's really great piece how much does a how much does web store revenue so all that being out of the stores so you don't see any of that

data how much does that affect the trends that we see. So, there are some genres that would be more are a better fit or a better fit for a web shop um than others. You might you might not have like a really successful web shop necessarily and say you're match free and maybe it's better for a Forex strategy game just as I guess as an example if if I'm wrong please uh please yell at me, email me. Um,
I'm sure I've covered something along those lines, isn't it, in a report before that like the more games do tend to do better with
and we we've seen in financials before, but in particular this quarter now that the US kind of, as I said, crack open it, uh, DC revenue is growing quite dramatically, I would say, amongst public companies. And so like we if we see the puzzle genre going up or going down, does that is that true? Is is is really

interesting to me. So I guess you could say that they're directionally accurate. Um but again is something that market intelligence firms are really going to have to look into over the next year. Like oh sorry they're already doing it but take action on over the next year. And then the other thing was that so strategy doing so well. It's interesting that I know we've we've had this a lot in the past with RPG because RPG was the top genre and then RPG mechanics made their way into other genres even like match free rate and now it's happened again with with strategy. So the biggest titles that you mentioned, but particularly Last War, Last War is built upon sort of that hyper casual action scheme with the gate mechanics and you moving left and right to uh kind of double double whatever your units, add units, add new weaponry, or you can lose it. Um, and then you had then you had the

actual 4X strategy gameplay built on top on top of that or or the other way around, but if you know what I mean. So yeah, it's really I don't know. Those are the two things that really I I I find quite interesting that some of that is kind of in the background, but well worth checking out the uh the genre report. It's really it's really good. So elsewhere we interviewed on the podcast actually with Peggy. So thank you to Peggy uh Nazara Technologies CEO and joint MD Nitish Bitter. I spoke with him a few times over the years. It's always interesting to catch up. So Nazara is a big games company uh in India that was the first one to go public and it's now worth about $1.5 billion. Um but they have a big ambition to uh that he wants to be worth he wants it to be worth $10 billion right you can say anything you know I want to be worth a

billion dollars how do I get there can I get there is it realistic so that is obviously to me that's obviously like a PR marketing sort of statement helps appease investors because there's ambition there right and then there's growth I believe the market cap has or the share price sorry I believe the share price has like doubled over the past year. So, they're doing pretty well, but that is that is from a big M&A spree. So, last year I remember doing a story that was like, "Oh, we've got like a is it 100 million 200 million war chest and they've spent more than that. They've raised more. They're spending loads like some of the key acquisitions they spent over 100 million 117 million investing in poker bars, big poker game. But, uh in the UK they've expanded here. They've they've acquired Fusebox Games previously that does the Love Island narrative games. Uh they've also acquired Curve which is a PC and console company. So they do a lot of different

kinds of things. They they do kids games, mobile games, cross genres, PC console. They have media sites. They at least were doing esports competitive gaming. Um, so one of their investments is Nodwing Gaming, which they had a majority staking, but that's kind of spinning off a little bit. So Nazara, I believe, will retain a stake in that. Um, but they're going to raise some capital and and do their own thing, I believe, or at least um Nazara will have less say, I think, in what they do. So we yeah we had an interesting interview and he said the aim is to keep the acquisitions that they make fairly autonomous. I say it is worth noting that seemingly they do put IPS into into its studios. So I think Big Boss Big Brother have gone to Fusebox which already had success as I said with Love Island. So is that Nazara kind of putting that onto

fuse block is kind of what it sounded like a little bit. They also had this thing called Nazara with friends which they which this said it's like a platform. So but I think what he meant is that all these acquisitions they can actually all the teams now within the company they can actually tap the expertise of other of other studios other subsidiaries to help them say with user acquisition or AI or something. So they kind of bring it together a bit but they treat them I think he said fairly autonomously so fairly independently. He had an interesting quote about M&A which quite like too he said I've always had a belief that one of the biggest failures in M&A is caused by overestimating synergies at the time of the acquisition and overpaying for that which overpay for those synergies which may never materialize and I hate the word synergies but and also because you've kind of visualized so many synergies right from day one of the acquisition you start pushing the management of the acquired company just to focus on that

and deliver on that which defocuses them from their core business in itself. So he said our approach has been quite the opposite where while we may look at those synergies at a holistic high level, we actually buy a company for its core capabilities and its core business. And he was saying, you know, it's just important really it's just important that they're they're profitable or they have a good path to that. That's its main focus. So the company is always trying to be profitable, not just acquire everything for a growth at all costs mindset. But it is acquiring. Let's be real. that is acquiring for for that growth. He said he wasn't worried about investment in so many different companies and and different parts. He said that could actually help it in a challenging market. So, uh it's kind of a bit more resilient in his in his kind of words that so with quite a difficult market at the moment. if they're in if they got their fingers in kind of different pies, there might be some parts that are okay and other parts that are not and it helps the overall overall business at least what

he was he was claiming. Um, but I think now with the sort of spinning off of Nodwing Gaming, maybe their focus is that since this interview actually tightening a little bit uh on core gaming globally. Um, it's I think there'll be more deals to come. It's really interesting that it's an Indian company that has been able to raise so much invest so much globally. I think it's and as Nish said it's kind of attracted more interest into that market which has always been high potential. We had a chat about that in the interview for at least the last decade. It's like India is about to be like about to grow really going to be really huge. It's going to be loads of money there and it's never really happened except for PUBG and Free Fire which to an extent shown that you can make money there. But the amount of downloads, the amount of revenue is is is extremely low, extremely low for revenue. Yeah, I again it's another thing we we'll see how

Nazara kind of acts on this in future but it's a really interesting interview um on their strategy and what it means to kind of the wider India market where it seems to be attracting more interest. So yeah, we'll see how it pays off. Aaron, what else have you got?
Yeah, so my other story this week um is right up my alley. We got um a second Pokemon presents of the year uh which is there
much like Apple was every other week in intervening weeks it's uh it's Pokémon.
Yeah. And this week they've converged. Yeah. So we we're pretty much guaranteed as Pokémon fans a present every February which is the franchise's anniversary. But bonus presentations like these aren't always certain. So it's a nice treat to get one this week. Um, and they really crammed a lot into it as well. There were announcements for all of Pokémon's ever growing list of mobile games. So, they teased like upcoming content for Pokémon Go, Masters, Unite,

Cafe Remix, Sleep, and Trading Card Game Pocket. Weirdly in Pocket's case, you know, the trailers going on. They've shown all the other ones of things coming up in the next weeks or even already out, they showed a new card pack for Pokémon Pocket, and so far we've got a new kind of set of cards towards the end of every month. So, it's like, you know, they're showing us the new cards. Here's probably what's going to come out next week or something. And then at the end of that little section on Pokemon Pocket, they said it these cards that they showed are coming out in late September, which was really a curveball. It's like, you know, we should be getting a new pack next week. Why is this on hold until September? So then had a mild panic that are they just not doing anything until September? Like that totally breaks the the trend they've set since last October. Um and we would have then been going like 3 months without anything new. But just to add to the weirdness, so now today, as of us recording this, the 24th of July,

they have now released a trailer for the new pack coming next week, which they didn't bother to put in the presentation two days ago.
That most people Yeah. more people would have seen.
Yeah, exactly. So really bizarre. I mean, they could have shown both if they wanted to. I'm sure no one would have stopped them. But yeah, it just it made it seem like there's nothing new coming till September, you say to the to like the bigger audience and then, you know, if you went out your way today to look for a a trailer, you'll see that there is new stuff coming next week. So that that was a bizarre decision on their part. They also in this presentation revealed and Shadow Drop Pokémon Friends, which is a new puzzle game, uh, which seems to be comprised of various types of puzzle mini games. Like there's one where it's like an ice slider. So you're trying to get a Pokémon, you know, around an icy local. And then there's like an isometric one where you have to try and get them up to the top where a flag is. There's one where

basically there's arrows aiming at various balloons. So you have to kind of predict the trajectory and choose the balloons that aren't going to pop. And then there's another one with like tiles that you have to like connect all the tiles together. various like it seems more kind of child oriented puzzle games. Um they did show an adult man playing it at one point but the actual game play looked more uh kind of an introductory puzzle game rather than a kind of hardcore kind of thing. But it's it's launched with something like 1,200 levels to complete already. So, you know, there's a lot to to get through. And they've also there's already like a paid DLC effectively to get more content as well. You know, I don't think this is going to be the new Pokémon Go or Pocket revenue-wise, but, you know, they're obviously hoping to make a bit of money from it and get, you know, have people enjoy the base puzzles enough to want to pay for more. So, I guess we'll see how that does. Unless um

You're not calling this one.
No, not not this time. I feel like like calling it Pokémon Friends kind of doesn't help the reach the more mature market either. For me at least. Not that there's anything wrong with the word friends, but it just it makes it feel more childish to me.
You just want them to call it Pokémon match. Make a match free game
basically or Pokémon puzzles. Yeah, it's
Pokemon Blast. That's what I want.
But um anyway, so yeah, that was um I guess arguably the highlight from the mobile side. We also got more information on champions, which they revealed back in February, uh, which that does look quite exciting, particularly for people who are into the competitive scene.
It's cool that the Pokémon Company actually takes mobile as a serious platform
and they've had massive successes with well basic or licensing basically
um, and working with DNA. So, and obviously 90 and uh it's almost like surely Nintendo should look at this and

be like, "Oh, it can work. we can bring like your treasured IP and it I it doesn't it doesn't devalue Pokemon on Switch
because that's doing amazingly well and they're making more games than ever really which in a way could dilute overall
but they're also some of the best selling in the series on the Switch
right and it's not um anyway it people don't look at the mobile games like gh it's mobile and think oh I don't want to buy the console So, I don't know. Nintendo doesn't need to do this at all, right? But they they the last game that they probably released was I think of their own was Mario Kart Tour's obviously Pitman Bloom with Niantic, but it's been a long time and they only had one hit and that was the only one that they actually took seriously. And also, Fire Emblem from Heroes did not um turn fans off of the
sort of the Mothership series, right?

So, I I just I feel like Nintendo could learn from this and actually be like, "Okay, maybe we could we can find partners to to use our IP successfully in a way that doesn't diminish the franchise." Anyway, we'll end it there. So, thank you very much everyone for listening. Thank you Aaron as always for being on the show and we'll see you all again next week. Have a great weekend. We'll see you we'll see you soon. Goodbye.