Week in Mobile Games E67 - The $55bn EA acquisition unpacked

[Music] Hello and 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 with me as ever is our news editor, Aaron Assel. How you doing Aaron? What's up?
Hello. Yeah, doing all right, thank you. Um, better than last week. Um, for any of our regulars, I was just getting over a cold. So, um, I'm I'm currently in that kind of phase where you're like, I'm going to appreciate feeling well. I'm going to really make an effort to remember like how bad I felt last week
before you take it for granted again.
Yeah. And then, yeah, within a couple of days, you stop doing that. But, um, but yeah. Yeah.
Interesting.
Yeah. So,
now you're feeling
Yeah. Now that I'm feeling a bit better. So, I I was actually in um London a couple of days ago for an Attack on Titan orchestra concert, which was very

cool. Um, and that I I bought what you can see behind me here for our YouTube viewers. It's kind of I'll try not to let it fall apart now, but yeah,
like sort of swords and the um scouts logo for any any audio listeners. So for people that haven't seen the show, those are the those are the weapons that they carry to effectively defeat the giants.
Yeah. So yeah, the concert was really good. There's a couple of hours and they kind of did it in two halves. The first half was kind of series 1 to three music and they had a big like almost cinema screen above the orchestra showing like visuals from the show. So, you kept kind of getting drawn to that and then it's like, well, I'm here to I'm here to look at the orchestra and then you kind of look back at the people playing and then slowly look back up at the screen again. Um, but yeah, the first half was sort of series one to three and then they had an

intermission and did series 4 and kind of the finale stuff afterwards because they intentionally the show kind of went in a different direction with the music at that point and and the visuals and try and make it a bit distinct. So it was good that they split split it up with the intermission rather than just chop and change at random. But no, really enjoyed it. The only downside was just as we left basically next door there was an Oasis concert that finished at the same time. So our two events combined into one massive queue trying to get back to like the underground train which wasn't ideal but um I've made it back as you can see.
Yeah, you got you got you made it. Yeah, it was a long walk.
Yeah.
Awesome. Uh, yeah. For me, I am currently, as Aaron pointed out before we started, currently it's just a white background. So, I've gone from one background to another an even worse one that I could find. I'm currently I was going to turn the camera. I was I'm currently in an Airbnb in Liverpool uh

to see family. Unfortunately, one of my family members is is very unwell at the moment. So, I'm here to kind of to help them. Hopefully I'll still be in Helsinki next week as possibly I won't be at the moment. We will see if I am there. I look forward to seeing you all at the show. If I'm not, have a have a fantastic one. Yeah, I was going to turn the camera then. I thought the person probably doesn't want me showing. They're home to the t hundreds of thousands of listeners.
It's free advertising.
It's free advertise their stuff. So yeah, I'm up here and couple things this week. a bit addicted to uh particularly last few days because I've been traveling. Uh it's is actually New York Times games people that play I I actually signed up a while back because they uh interesting that they moved one of the games called the mini which is a mini cross word. It's like easier to do than the other ones which I'm terrible at. And so with my friends cuz we're sad we go we meet up once a week and for like a couple minutes we'll play through some of these games and the

mini was like a really good one and they put that behind the pay wall. So things like strands, Wordle and Connections you can play for free without having to have have an account. The mini they actually pay it. So we we should actually look if there was a sudden pay spike in MT games because of that because I ended up subscribing because they had a deal on at the same time which is really interesting and I I can't remember how much it was right. It was like a couple of pounds like a month it works out basically which is kind of nothing in the grand scheme of things for something I quite enjoy. So, uh, I just like I caved immediately. I wasn't like, "How dare you?" Yeah. So, I've been doing a lot of that. So, I'm going to go into, uh, quickly a few shout outs and then we'll jump into apparently there was a fairly big story this week that I guess we should discuss. But, yeah, coming up next week is Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki October 7th and 8th. After that, we've got Pocket Gamer Connects Summit Korea on October 31st. PC Akaba November 8th and 9th. And in January, we'll have PTC

London January 19th, 20th, the big one. Also, uh, we got the top 50 coming next week as well. That's all set to go. So, that'll be announced at Pocket Gamer Connect Helsinki. So, please, if you want to see it all live or discuss a certain week's news that we're going to mention in a minute, then yeah, definitely head to that show. So, onto the news. The big story of the week and it was teased. There was a report the week before. I think it came out after we recorded last week's podcast, the report that EA was set for a buyout to go private and as of Monday it was official. EA So is going to be acquired for $55 billion. So that will be the second largest ever games deal behind Activision Blizzard and it's going to be bought by an investor consortium that's comprises of Saudi Arabia's public investment fund, Silver Lake and Affinity Partners in an allcash deal. So, Silverlake and Affinity Partners are US firms. Silverlake is a private equity

firm as is Infinity Partners. Affinity Partners, interestingly, I can go into in a bit, but has strong ties to Saudi Arabia as well. So, this is really, it would appear this is really a Saudi Arabia driven acquisition. And I saw I believe it was Eric Press from Gossma Consulting, Deep Structural Fund. He before when it was just a report before it was officially announced he his opinion was that this is kind of the silver lake is like the US face of the deal but it's also worth noting that because of Affinity Partners is involved they're also very much a US face because who is that run by Jared Kushner which is Donald Trump's son-in-law married to his daughter Trump and so is this going to there going to be any issues with regulatory hurdles very extremely unlikely where Donald Trump is president.
Um I would be curious even if he wasn't president whether there would be a particular issue because it is a foreign power acquiring a major US company in a

in a major uh deal. So the consortium will purchase 100% of EA uh with PIFF rolling over its so PIF already owned 9.9% of EA and that'll just roll over into this. EA shareholders will receive $210 per share uh which is set to represent a 25% premium. The the acquisition will be made up of an equity investment of approximately $36 billion and $20 billion of debt financing $18 billion of which is expected to be funded at close. Wilson is expected to remain as CEO and the company will continue to be headquartered in Redwood City, California of which I thought was interesting that they would have to say that you know when it's like if you have to say it I mean I'd be shocked if it ever moved but naturally from this deal there will be I would imagine there will be an office that now opens in in Saudi Arabia and I my prediction is that they will move um Saudi sorry they'll move EA under the Savvy Games Group banner. uh at some point in the future here or long

term cuz that's so Savvy Games Group is obviously the their games the games firm that has helped me out Aaron $ 38 billion to spend on games or had and then they've spent that on Scopely five $4.9 billion which actually turns out to be a pretty good deal because that was just before I think Monopoly co launched that's obviously done game busters and then Scopley itself bought Niantic Savy's also got uh interest in esports the ESL Face it group which merged together. Overall that cost about $1.5 billion to host the esports world cup. Um so like massive massive deal is expected to close Q1 of the 2027 financial year subject say subject to regulatory approval. I don't think that'll be an issue. Um so I guess a few things about it. One of my theories is I mean I I guess it was bought because it's kind of a if you've got all that money and you're Saudi Arabia's public investment fund and you're trying to

divers diversify your economy but also you're expanding into games maybe people have kind of speculated it's also a cultural thing so it's like a soft power. I guess EA is kind of a massive massive console publisher. Makes sense, right? And actually EA makes sense from I think quite a few multiple points that Saudi Arabia has been investing heavily in and that is obviously EA Sports, which a number of people in the industry have been saying that's probably the main reason to get acquired. So if you think of EA, I don't why I don't know why my brain struggles when it's not called FIFA anymore. I know it's FC mobile
sports
FC sports
EFC sports thing. It's ridiculous. I just can't handle the name change. Uh anyway, so that's like a major IP, right? That would also actually quite naturally fit into I don't know how it would but it naturally fit into like their esports initiatives. So maybe we'll see even further investments into that. So they made the leagues, you got the World Cup, and then also don't

forget that Saudi Arabia has actually been investing very heavily in football. Anyway, so Saudi Arabia owns Newcastle United FC. PIFF does, which is a top British football club. Um they're like one of I don't I'm trying to think one of the top five or 10, I can't remember where they finished in the league last season. They're very very club invest a lot of money in that club. And also very famously they have their own Saudi Arabia football league where they've been splashing the cash to bring in football stars from around the world. One of those is Cristiano Ronaldo who plays in the league amongst quite quite many few others and some top managers have gone there as well. Steven Gerard was or is still I think was a manager of one of the clubs amongst other big names and so I kind of wonder those all actually seem to tie quite well together. Right. So you you could I I could easily imagine I don't know if they do it already to be honest, but I could easily imagine that there'll be more emphasis on Saudi Arabia league in

in sports FC. Um and then I guess what does it mean for everyone at EA? There was a statement which was a letter to staff that EA released from CEO Andrew Wilson. He said the company's values will remain unchanged following the acquisition. which I kind of I'll be honest, I kind of scoffed at because regardless of what you think of whoever b bought it and how much influence Saudis will really have, just simply going from a public company to a private company is surely going to change your your culture and your values because you're not chasing the quarterly earnings. You're not thinking, oh, we need to release this now to appease investors or we need to announce that we're doing all this AI stuff so investors are happy and keep the share price up, etc. then have to do all that now. But the the concern is it's the largest leverage buyout in like history. So, there's a lot of money to pay back and it's kind of I think Nicholas Lovevel said it's kind of a bit of a gamble on that the games market is

mature and that EA is stable enough to kind of return that investment over time so it won't decline and maybe maybe it's also a bit of an investment on is there actually a growth opportunity at least somewhat in the future for EA whether that's Battlefield 6 or growing their current brands. Good luck to the teams that are there. I I hope it does mean that because now you've got a sovereign wealth fund backing you that I guess I won't go to the politics of it all. But I I do write about that a bit in in one of our articles on the site about who the new owners are because obviously there's there's I guess the nice way to put it is there's a lot of controversies right around Saudi Arabia's kind of human rights record and other incidences. And then I guess the other question which Aaron I think you can go you can go into some detail here then I'll add uh the other question is what are certain parts of the business not going to be viable in the future? Does the company get broken up a little bit? So is it going to be focused on sports? Is it going to be focused on everything because they have very talented teams

and Saudi Arabia's pith wants all of that to do whatever with or they'll just kind of as people keep putting right size it so layoffs and closures. um what does it all mean for their mobile business? So I guess to get a some color of the state of it, Aaron, you you a data.
Yeah. So um I kind of looked at EA's mobile business from two angles. Um partly from looking at AppMagic estimates of kind of individual games and then also looking back through financial reports over the past five years just to give a bit of an idea of kind of where things are headed. So starting with the kind of app magic bits, games like Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes, Golf Clash and FC Mobile um have kind of bit are the biggest in EA's mobile portfolio. They've launched more than 50 games on mobile over the last like decade. And then if you include like Glue Mobile, which they acquired a few years ago, that number kind of rockets up into the hundreds of games. But yeah, those three I mentioned are

the biggest. They've all made at least a billion according to AppMagic estimates. That's from the Play Store and App Store. Currently, FC Mobile looks like it's the top performer of the three. It made like 15 million in August, whereas like Golf Clash made 8 million and Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes was 7.3. Uh that that's kind of in line with what EA said in its financial reports. They they've kind of highlighted FC Mobile quite a lot lately just that it's doing well. Although they don't really break down kind of how much individual mobile games make. They just they sometimes point out where something's doing particularly well. So like they recently said that FC Mobile exceeded expectations in the previous fiscal year and had like a 20% rise in daily active users. So you get kind of some insight.
They previously they previously called it like the blueprint for business I think. And yeah, so going a bit more into kind of the broader mobile financials kind of

from their official numbers then. So most recently, you know, in um in the 2025 fiscal year, which wrapped up in March this year, mobile generated 1.1 billion for EA in um in net revenue equated to 15% of overall net revenue for the year. Um which is up over five years. So looking back at financial year 21, mobile made about 718 million um and that was just shy of 13% of of overall net revenue. Um so it has increased um you know quite considerably over that time although it has peaked and is kind of on its way back down again to the the 1.1 billion in the past year. So yeah, in like financial year 22, mobile was at 1.1 billion and 15% of net revenue. So the same as this year, but in 2020, well, financial year 2023, it went up to

1.3 billion or 17% of overall uh revenue and that was kind of off the back of the acquisitions of um Blue Mobile and Playmic um in the 2022 financial year. But yeah, since since kind of 2024, it's been falling back down again. Last year was the the second year of decline. So, it's still above where it was during the pandemic, but um is slowly going back down. And obviously EA's also shut down quite a lot of mobile games like EA Sports, FC Empires, and EA Sports, UFC Mobile 2, Kim Kardashian, Hollywood. There's a Lord of the Rings game. So, um, I guess overall, you know, the 15ish% net revenue mark, it's not like it's irrelevant. It's not like it's 2 or 3%, but I think it's quite clear that that, you know, that isn't why they've been acquired then for their mobile stuff. I think it's fair to say.
I So, so my thought is that I'm not

saying anything new here, but like EA's EA's acquisition of Glue, which is why their mobile revenue went up, right, is is complete disaster. So they spent and then they bought Playmic Golf Clash. It still does well. I think that's declined over time, but it's still, you know, a money maker rate. But like the Glue Mobile one, you just look at it and think what what have you got left? There's design, home, and cover fashion still out. I think pretty much everything else. They had a successful MLB franchise, which is sports. The perfect, sorry to use the words, the perfect synergy, as they would say. That just doesn't happen anymore. Like absolute train wreck of acquisition. And my I think in moving forward if if I was to look at why did these big publishers get into mobile because it was kind of hinging hedging a bit of a bet on they should expand across all platforms even if they didn't actually in reality need to do that and also appeasing investors a bit I I would

say like that's kind of why Nintendo got into it because the Wii U was a failure. They wanted to appease investors who kept saying you got to do this, you got to do this. They just had a total fail at console. Switch comes out and then they don't really care about mobile anymore. We'll get into that in a bit. Surprise launch after five, six years or something. I I think with EA in the future, I think there will be much much less emphasis on on doing mobile, at least within EA's core business as has been acquired. So, I mean, I guess I worry a bit about what that means to the mobile teams there. If I I mean what do I know, right? But my my prediction would be that the successful games the teams could keep running those. That would be EA Sports FC mobile, Star Wars Galaxy Heroes, Golf Clash, and then outside of probably those maybe Design Home spine. Outside of those, I think they won't really worry about it. So, they'll probably start closing stuff. And I think any other mobile development, why not why wouldn't like

maybe Scopi can take a look at what do do they want any of any of these parts of that business bring that under the Scopely brand and then you could tap into any of EA's IPs uh if they wanted to and then that's kind of the path forward I think for EA and mobile and I I think it just be Scopely. Obviously Scopely is under the Savvy brand which is under the PIFF brand. EA is not currently under Savvy brand, but why wouldn't they just put all those parts together? So, I think that's where that goes. So, yeah, huge deal. Very important for the games industry what happens here cuz ultimately that's thousands of people. It's one of the biggest names in gaming and we don't want to see it fail really. You know, that's it's a massive massive piece of the industry. So, wish everyone the best of luck there. I hope it all goes well. Right. So, what else have you got?
Yes. So, Genchin Impact has just celebrated its fifth anniversary on September 28th. Uh, so yeah, five years already since um since that came out and

obviously very quickly became a massive game. So, kind of just in time for the fifth anniversary, they released version 6.0, which has kind of introduced new characters and a new setting. Um, it's the seventh major region for the game called like Nod Cry. So that's kind of going to be the main location for the next year of the game. I guess the developers talked a little bit about it cuz I watched some of their they kind of did a YouTube video going into it talking about the design philosophy for this new area and it was quite interesting. It seems like it's kind of aiming to fill in some of the gaps where they have designed previous things through the years and then they kind of still have all their design documents but realized over time I guess from span from fan speculation and things that the players don't actually kind of know everything that they um have kind of designed um because it's it didn't end up in the game even though it was kind of there in references while they were designing things. So apparently um this

new region kind of part of the idea is for it to bring all the different factions together from the previous years of the game and um I guess answer some questions and um bring some kind of loose threads together. So I guess that that's probably quite interesting for people who are like invested in the law and then kind of get getting into the the financials of uh of the game. So over these 5 years, App Magic estimates suggest Genchin Impacts made at least 6.4 billion uh between the App Store and the Play Store. Uh which obviously, you know, a lot of money, you know, it's bound to be a lot more than that when you include like alternative app stores and other platforms like PC and console. Um and um verse al has the web shop as well. I think probably increasingly like the spending's kind of moving there I would say in a kind of in a broader sense don't know for Genchin Impact specifically. So that kind of makes

looking at the annual um revenue um bit of an asterisk on it because we don't know kind of the web shop value but according to spending on the app store and the play store at least year five you've far and away has been the worst year for the game so far. Um it was pretty much bang on half a billion which is still it's crazy that that is its worst year. Kind of year 1 and two it was you know on its way up towards like 2 billion. It's kind of declined every year since it's come out and year four was the first time it fell below 1 billion and then now it's at like 500 million. So it is definitely I guess losing steam at this point but again we don't know. you know, maybe it did outperform year four if you include all the web shop stuff or it, you know, and this is only mobile as well, so there could be other, you know, people moving to other platforms more, but at the same time, still a massive game. I think I think we covered on the podcast recently um I'd done kind of a

genre based beta dive on the first half of this year
and like Genchin Impact was still up with Star Rail as like the two biggest RPGs this year on mobile still. So although although the revenue is kind of slipping still, it is still a massive title that clearly they're still investing in in the same way because they've you know done their usual annual update to people engaged in this new place for the next year.
Um it's I guess it's important to know that yeah revenue has fallen and it's declined to still very very successful game. They obviously released Hong Kong Star Rail very similar now they got seven zero so some of that cannibalized some of that revenue. So there's a decline there. There's still millions of people to play it. The community seem very active. I'm curious what the investment is that they put into the game now. So the rumor was it cost 100 million to make and $200 million a year to run? This was a few years ago. That was the rumor. And do they still do that? Do they still invest $200 million

a year? Did they decrease that investment or did that actually investment have to go up? So like it would still be profitable. I'm not questioning that. Uh but just curious how much they they still clearly put in an intense amount of updates uh to run that. I heard that a year or two ago cuz it was like a developer and investor was telling me that worked at Chinese companies and they were just like there's no way companies could compete with it because you just got the money amount of developers etc. You just can't compete. Not to say obviously developers anywhere in the world can't be successful they can. It was just their opinion. thought was interesting.
I mean, I guess it still wouldn't be out there successful for years to come. Anyway, and they've announced their new game, which is very different. It's more like a It was more like it looked more like a cozy game, wasn't it? Like farm.
Yeah. Like I think it's a a life sim. They said like planet.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A life sim. So, so yeah, really interesting direction. M

and yeah obviously I guess hard to kind of quantify the impact potential impact it's going to have had going forward just on a kind of brand scale for Hoyverse. Obviously Hong Kong Star Rail was massive record-breaking when it launched in like downloads and stuff which probably wouldn't have happened without Genchin Impact and then
that's a very good point actually. So yeah, that now they have this kind of engaged community that's probably very willing to try their new releases and helps them pick up hype amongst consumers and for what for what it's worth, right, amongst media as well that will now be interested in kind of everything that they do. So uh other news we're going to go through these last few fairly quickly, but I I wanted to cover Xbox Game Pass. So uh the news there is that they've announced a 50% price increase to the subscription. Xbox Game Pass Ultimate will now cost £29.99 or or £23. That is up from $20 or £15.

Is that monthly?
Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, that's a month. That should be clear. There's not a year. You have to pay that a month now. Premium, which is formally standard. Uh that's that is now $15 a month or £11 a month. It was previously $12 or10 a month. And then there's essential which is $9 or £7 a month. I can't even remember what one I subscribed to, but I'll tell you I'll tell you now that uh this is kind of how Wart's pricing has become in the industry for quite a few reasons. $22.99 a month is too much. It's way too much money. I'm going to have to cancel it. That's like a year. That's quite a few games for the full price, right? The offer. I've criticized subscriptions in the past. I guess that's can now kind of been proved true in a way, but like the technically the offer is really amazing. You could play all these games or even just a few games that over a year it will cost you less. So I have a few Age

of Empires that I play Friends. I'll just put I've got that Silk Song etc. Some of these games aren't even full price anymore, right? They're not like £70 each. Some of them are a lot less. I think the value is completely gone for a game pass. Why? Why would I spend? So, what is that a year? $360 a year. No, no, thank you. Actually, I don't I'm not spend That's ridiculous. I just I guess you could argue it's a bit ridiculous before in a way, but uh it was really good value. I think it's very much a recognition. Got I've gone through this uh when they were Xbox mass Xbox layoffs before and and just how that strategy has completely failed. So, unfortunately, like the Phil Spencer era, I think they recovered their I was going to say they recovered their reputation. I guess not because they've been laying everyone off. I I think it will just go down as that the move towards sorry the move towards subscription and play anywhere which is their latest gambit. It's is it's just all gone wrong. The wheels have

completely fallen off. They've had they they can't achieve scale which is the whole point of subscription. And then you gradually raise the price. That's how Netflix did it or Spotify. Well, that's how they do it even. And then they could add in ads once once at scale to then kind of fuel even further growth. You're never going to get ads in games. This is just just I said it earlier about EA's actually mobile uh glue mobile, but like similarly this is clearly total disaster. Like it's not worked. And now what happens? They they stuck with Game Pass, but they're going to have to I I guess the move is going back to to what I was kind of alluding to, which is there's been a lot of price distortion because of Xbox, because of subscription services. And so now I'll look at I think 70 tremendous amount for a game to buy, but now I look at a 5060 pound game think that's really expensive. Not to say isn't is always expensive for people, but like it gets

distorted because then you see your subscription. I can kind of get it kind of like in your mind. I can kind of get it for nothing. Or like Steam sales were a big one for price distortion. Oh, I'll just wait for a Steam sale. They've been training you like that for years and now actually Xbox is like actually we need to get people to pay full price for this stuff so we can make money and run and have these studios operate without having to lay lay people off and shut them down. Like that's just the reality that they've come to. especially after you spend and it's total failure because you've obviously spent all this money to get Call of Duty on the on the subscription service and that didn't work. So, they've been forced to up the price by 50%. It's not like, oh, we're raising the price by inflation, we're raising it by 5%, 10%. 50% insane. I guess to be kind, what you do get is uh so there's now you get Fortnite Crew, which is like various kind of Fortnite worlds and you get extra V-Bucks in in Fortnite and you get the Ubisoft Plus Classics Collection in some ways. That's like it's kind of still crazy. It's still good value, but I I just when you

just look at your account and the money going out and up, it's I don't think it's viable for a lot of fans. There will obviously be a hardcore audience that still does this and they'll get value out of it. But I don't know what direction Microsoft goes in in the future. I think Play Anywhere will destroy his hardware business. Um cuz you just don't need to get an Xbox. Why would you get an Xbox? If you could play If you could play anywhere, there's no point. Especially if crossplayer will be an issue between the consoles in the future. So I don't know where Xbox goes from here. I think it's a very bad place. Obviously, I wish him all the best. Hopefully I guess there'll be a change in leadership at some point. um Roberto wor but they need they need to just change what they're doing and I don't know how they do that. So Aaron final story what you got?
Yes the last one from me um is a bit of a followup for our regular listeners about Fire Emblem Shadows which came out last week Shadow Drop Nintendo's first game since 2019 on mobile. So, we kind of got some early app magic estimates on

iOS at least. Uh, the game's hardly done anything really in its first week. It's not really been a flashy comeback for Nintendo on the platform. Yeah, suggest that uh on the app store, Fire Emblem Shadows has made just $90,000, which yeah, compared to like Fire Emblem Heroes, which is a very different game, but obviously it's the same IP, Heroes made $8.2 million in its first week on iOS in 2017. So, Shadows has done like just over 1% of what Heroes did. Uh, and even in the past week, obviously. So, Heroes is like an 8-year-old game and it it made um 437,000 on iOS in the same time that Shadows has made 90,000. And that, you know, that should be the hyped up kind of launch week where it does really well, you would hope. So clearly uh well you know I I think I said last

week I don't see this becoming the next Heroes and now I certainly don't think it's going to. Um it's just it's a very different kind of direction and monetization approach. At the moment it's basically all down to whether you want to buy the season pass or not to get one of the legacy characters called Lynn. And kind of Shadow's gimmick is that characters all have um kind of a a beast form that they cuz it's a bit it's like an Among Us style game where you so it's real time instead of turnbased which the main series and Heroes is turnbased and um yeah in Shadows you basically play around where everyone's on the same side but someone's secretly like evil and then you have to like vote on who you think it is and then they get kind of exposed in the second round and turn into like a a beast form basically. So like Lynn turns into a a centaur. So half human, half horse, but so basically if you want to play as Lynn, you need to buy the season pass or otherwise you can

basically do everything for free at the minute. Whereas like Heroes out the gate, you know, it was a ga had legacy characters from across the whole franchise. It was just it makes sense why it's so different at the moment.
I want to make it a hattick of stories where I say the word disaster. I mean I guess there's kind of it but like if I look so there is Google Play now only been running for a few days which to me suggests that uh which I think you say in the story maybe it's like it was so low
they didn't really get p they didn't generate estimates you have to be pretty low
to not make any estimates there's some other market intelligence nonsense that you people might have heard on the show before Kings etc etc I won't go to all that now There's also other reasons why might show, but but I think in this case it generally is like it just didn't do anything. So now it showed up since 29th and it's made net revenue like nearly 10k. Uh and then I I'm just trying to

figure out I'm trying to figure out what what's happening. Is it did they just throw it out? They made it and they decided let's just put it out.
Yeah. Like
to die. So that's why so it wasn't just shadow dropping as an exciting thing. they just put it out
try and like make their money back or even if
I mean they'll never make the money back wherever they put in.
I wouldn't be surprised if just making if they keep adding like slowly add legacy characters to Shadows just so that they have an excuse to make their new versions in Heroes and then make the money from those designs there which is I don't think that's a great strategy but as I say at least at the moment
it's it's not doing anything now.
Oh yeah. Where's it going to be
really? And the revenue on iOS is as by the way is tanked right the estimates for net I know we were talking gross but for net I can't figure it out off the fly but it's 15k it was peak and last one was one and a half thousand in a day and so I mean it's possible they haven't

really even bother turning on like the UA but then you know you made the decision to release it globally wouldn't you just start that straight away and from the downloads it has generated maybe there maybe they have been doing UA is still tanked but but from the dollars they have made the revenue is still pretty small at the moment and declining which is not what you want. So I I I feel like the DNA obviously had a massive success with uh Pokemon TC Pocket like amazing amazing amazing success. Fire Heroes like you said was big success for Nintendo. This this doesn't look like the one I don't think current performance drastically changes. It doesn't seem like it has like a lot
Yeah. like it feels like it just needs a total monetization overhaul really. It's like as you say the spending's kind of fallen off a cliff. But I guess if like day one you were like, "Yeah, I I'll buy the Lynn season parts." Well, like those players have done that now and there's

nothing else to buy. So
it it does it is just like they had a really good thing going with Far and Room Heroes specifically because as you were saying they they actually leaned into the monetization of the mobile game but did it did it in such a way that I think fans and new players are like they enjoyed it right it works for that experience is a good game people willing to pay and all those lessons they've learned just unlearned them release this it's it's totally possible that for some reason they they've just decided go ahead launch it, test it a bit, and then they'll open up the UA with some changes, and they think it will do really well. At the moment, there is no evidence to suggest that this will happen. It's only been a week, but you you want a stronger launch than this for sure. Right, that brings us to the end of the week of mobile games. Thank you very much, Aaron, being on the show as always.
Yeah, thank you. Good to be good to be here. It's two weeks in a row, I think, now.
Two weeks in a row. I know it's crazy crazy times. Thank you everyone for tuning in and listening. Hopefully, I'll see you in Helsinki. If not, I'll see

you see you soon and we'll be back on the show next week. So, have a great weekend. See you soon.