Welcome to Pocket Gamer Connects Barcelona 2026 - Chris James, Steel Media.

Hola buenas dias bienvenidos a Barcelona. Or as they say in these parts bon dia i benvenguts a Barcelona. Or hello and welcome to Barcelona.
[snorts]
Um Oh, let's get back a bit. You've gone a bit far forward there with the presentation. Right, um so it's finally here um after a year of preparation, we brought together representatives from 48 nations to display their talents, treat

us to some remarkable games on the greatest stage of all. That's right. Oh PGC Barcelona 2026 is live. There we go. Um you may be aware that there's another international event happening at the moment. It's quite a few but one particular one um trying to compete for attention right now. Uh suffice to say uh PG Barcelo see Barcelona is going to be rather more welcoming to foreign visitors, I hope. And our tickets are hopefully better value and you can bring your own drinks in. So that's a little bit different to World Cup. However, we know that some of you will have half a mind on football in these weeks. So we did have a think about how we could combine PGC with uh the World Cup kind of theme. Um we had a few ideas. We initially thought we were going to replace Meet to Match with a new matchmaking system whereby you had to open packs uh in order to decide who you met. Considered that wasn't too convenient.

We had a little chat about regular hydration breaks, so we could fill with advertising and entertainment, but the hotel is already sticklers for when the coffee's going to be served, so we couldn't do that. So in the end, the only thing we decided to do is implement a simple system for triggering, for letting you know when talks about to start or finish or go over time. So you'll hear this noise. Okay, so get used to that. It's going to happen all day. It's not. We're moving on. Okay. So Sadly, we do not have Katy Perry or Alanis Morissette or Shakira here to do the opening, even though she has sort of tracks out now. We didn't even have the budget for Michael Bublé and I'm not going to break into song either, but I am going to do a quick introduction to set the scene for the next couple of days. Um In case you don't know me or know us. Um We are I'm I'm Chris James, I'm the chairman, no longer the CEO, the chairman of Steel Media, the company behind this event. We run these conferences as well as

leading media such as pocketgamer.com, pocketgamer.biz, PC Games Insider, Blockchain Gamer, PG Biz Top 50 Game Makers list, Big Indie Pictures and various other things. Um As you will know, if you were here last year or if been bored by me in a bar before, um I'm an enthusiastic Hispanophile. Um I have a family home in in Sant Cugat. I lived in Malaga, Cadiz, I spent time around Madrid, Bilbao, Canary and Balearic Islands and Gijon and Santander. Still don't speak Spanish very well, but I do love the country. I'm also a devout football fan. Here we go. The click. There we go. There we are. So with that in mind, I thought I would try and curry favor shamelessly with the crowd with a with an opening here. So any Spain fans out there? Come on. Viva Spain. There we go. Um thank you. Yeah, it's tough crowd, not football

fans. Um in the event that England don't win the tournament, which is possible, I am will be cheering cheering for Spain this year. I've talked a little bit about my family. Uh but now Still Media is part of a bigger family, uh Enthusiast Gaming family. Uh and that runs a lot of properties in the game space. We work with sports leagues like the Premier League and NFL. Uh we run uh PC games websites like Icy Veins, pretty big site, tools for hardcore gamers in League of Legends like U.GG, Sims Resource, Skins, AddictingGames, Casual Games platform, Fantasy Football Scout, and a couple of chess platforms, and many more. Now, our mission with with Enthusiast and with Still Media and here has always been to celebrate, support, and connect the games industry wherever it may be, whatever form it takes, whatever platform it's developing on, which is what we're going to try and do for the next few days. Um with PG Connects, that tour has taken us around the world. We've been to 20 different cities so far. Um we've united over 75,000 delegates over the the last

12 years of running these events, uh in over 120 from 120 countries, in over 170,000 uh organized meetings and many more casual meetings, and we think we contribute over 1.5 billion of business deals. Now, we've been doing this for quite a while now. This is actually our 20th year. Thank you very much. I know I don't look old enough, that's what you're saying, but it's 20 years of Still Media, but it seems like only yesterday we got started. So, if you if you've seen the talk before, you've seen this was the the founders of Still Media 20 years ago, not quite today, but but roughly. Uh we haven't changed a lot since then. But the devices we've been talking about and and covering have. This is what This is the mobile phone scene and the handheld console scene when we got started then. We didn't cover a uh and mainstream consoles than we do now. Um And these are some of the standout games back in in that day. Some of them from companies like Gameloft and the A here today, a few from companies that aren't around anymore. Digital Chocolate went on to kind of

become a lot of the fans become super successful and quite well. Um For reference, this is back in 2005. Uh Here's what our local landmark looked like in 2005. It's It's obviously finished now. And this is what our site looked like at launch. It's not quite as pretty as it is today and familiar, but there is less scaffolding. Um now I know this feels a bit like an old man indulging a bit of wishful nostalgia, which if you've seen me before you'll say yes, that is my main routine, but there is genuinely an important point with all this. Um So, I think it's really important right now especially to understand where we've come from. When we started out with Pocket Gamer um 20 years ago, mobile games were in their infancy. It was hard to make games. It was hard to get them onto platforms and it was very hard to get people to download them. We actually had to make these magazines you can see on the on the right-hand side here, which to try and encourage people in shops to download games. That's That's quite an interesting discovery platform. And even though we had kind of huge franchises and the games industry was it was a big industry then. It's like 31

billion back in that in that day. Um it's a fraction of the size it is it is today and it was very much dominated by uh consoles like PlayStation 2, DS, Xbox, PSP. Um At the time we started though, right back then I remember very clearly there were lots of uh Ooh. Clicky. There There was a There were a lot of people were very gloomy about the games market, particularly the mobile market. The people thought they wouldn't didn't know they'd survive. They thought they might go out of business or really struggling, couldn't see a future. Even the console space were a little bit oh god, is Xbox going to be a thing really? Are we going to What's the next What's the next wave of consoles be like? But fast forward to today and and it seems like we're kind of professional doomsayers. Um We've got like actual people whose job seems to be largely going onto social media, these expert commentators and consultants to tell us how bad everything is and why we might as well give up and go home. Um, and to be fair to them, there's been plenty of turbulence uh and some sizable setbacks for us to face over the last few years. And I am very, very aware that there's also been very real uh job losses and

studio closures. That I do not take that lightly. It has been uh difficult for for some people. However, and I don't Yes, and hopefully most people will join us again in the industry. However, we do need to remember that the industry has accelerated at an incredible speed over these last 20 years and continues to grow at quite a lick. This is something that even Matthew Ball uh can't in his report can't ignore. It's a very good report if you get to see one, uh definitely check it out. It's It's free to download. He was relatively churlish about some areas of the market, although um Oh. Click. He became a little bit less churlish when he took the job at Xbox. Um, so he's now a bit more positive again, so that's good. Um, Matt's numbers, uh as most of our numbers are, backed up by Newzoo's forecast, which as we all know, predicted around a 200 billion market last year. However, even that incredible number is not necessarily the full picture. These numbers Newzoo's data does not include console hardware sales and does not include advertising. So, this is a This

is data from a BCG gaming report, which is more bullish, which paints it as a white 260 billion uh or above last year. And I'm not convinced that's actually still the full amount. Um, the growth of Sorry. Click. Which one am I clicking? There. Oh, there you go. Um, twice once. The growth of um D2 direct DTC web store sales uh makes it hard to see uh the the latest accurate numbers for AIAPs. And advert- mobile advertising is also a bit of a uh imperfect uh beast in terms of data monitoring. Um, just this last uh week Poki and Biz unveiled this uh the amount of bookings going straight through DTC has been ramping uh rapidly. So, that's straight through web shops, not through App Store or Google Play. It's straight from a a web-based web shop shop. SciPlay said it represents 27% of their sales. Huge Games suggested 41% of their sales in this first quarter. Stillfront 44% and Playtika

put a figure of 1.2 billion for the annual run rate from D2C. Now, that growth has been extraordinary. Here's a nice chart from Matthew Ball shows it. So, it's hardly surprising there's a a number of of companies, many of which are here, uh vying to help developers make the most of this. And if you aren't already working on a DTC solution, certainly if you're mobile, you really should be doing. But, it's not just about that. If you add to this Here we go. The um the growth of alternate App Stores um and and a few other uh factors, you get this kind of distribution revolution. It Apple and Google are no longer the only games in town. New App Stores are getting traction. Obviously, in the PC space, Steam is still doing dominant, but there are people constantly trying to get new uh distribution uh mechanics. And we'll be covering uh that as well in today in some of the talks. Okay. Uh a a a similar or a related um a related kind of factor is something I call games everywhere, where literally everything is becoming a games platform. Uh you've got Discord, you got WeChat,

um The New York Times, LinkedIn. You've got web platforms like Poki and Crazy Games, Addicting Games uh that are offering different revenue. Hey, small five-round gaming is getting better all the time. And you've got cloud game service like Samsung uh on smart TVs. Xbox Game Pass is obviously cross-platform, and they're looking at doing more with that. TikTok Minis, YouTube Playables, there's so many different places you can play games now. Here you go. And there's a few big figures like the WeChat mini games number. It's it's a bit old now, but it's just huge, the amount of money going through that. Um okay. Click click. Sorry, my clicker's Which I put it up? Higher? Lower? There we go. And there's some examples there. TikTok has just re-launched this this this minis thing, which is something you should look into if you're a mobile dev or PC dev even. YouTube playables have just added Gemini, so making it easier for regular people to make games. Obviously, Netflix as well is is making games like the new FIFA game playable just via your TV via your Netflix subscription. Okay. There we go. Um all of which means

um that uh games is the games industry, whatever whatever data you follow, the games industry is is clearly and has been for a while the biggest entertainment business in the world. Um our IP and technology not only inspire other industries but actively cross over. So, everyone wants a piece of of games at the moment. Um other industries are using our tech, um whether it's in producing TV or film, uh whether it's creating great content on on YouTube and and the halo around that is huge. There's around 50 billion minutes in the last 12 months on YouTube alone related to gaming and and 15.6 billion hours on Twitch. Uh so, there's this whole ecosystem around that. Um if you the crossover between music and games seems particularly strong as well at the moment with there's multiple live concerts at the moment for games like uh Stardew Valley, Club Skur, Resident Evil, Sonic. You've got artists, big artists like Lana Del Rey and and uh and Korn making tracks for games like the Bon Game and and and Diablo. And Wu-Tang Clan and Deadmau5

are making their own games in the games companies. So, there's a big crossover there as well as all these kind of concerts in in game, which have gone over from Fortnite and Roblox games like Peak. Um and then I I was sorry, I skipped ahead. And then on the on the screen, the biggest stars are lining up to appear in films and TV shows based on our IP. Sonic 3 was one of the biggest uh in the series of the was the biggest in the series Sonic movie series last year with almost 500 million. Minecraft power passed that to 960 million dollars box office and then Super Mario Brothers Galaxy pipped that with 1 billion. Still short of the 1.3 billion the previous film had made but it's huge box office numbers. And coming up we've got another Resident Evil movie, we've got Street Fighter movie, we've got Rovio's Angry Birds volume three, Sonic 4, The Legend of Zelda. There's TV shows for God of War and Far Cry alongside more Witcher, Last of Us and Fallout. Margot Robbie's production company's working on a Sims game. There's about 50 projects at the moment. It's just so much stuff in that transmedia space where where music, film

and TV are are using game IP, which is great for us cuz it feeds back into people playing games. Um and another sector there's also big crossover with the mobile apps industry. On one hand you the the the the the apps revenues for the first time uh with the data we have out outpaced games last year. Now that seems like a bit of a challenge and it is um but apps is obviously very broad. Games is games, apps is hundreds of different things. Um but on the other uh it it it kind of provides inspiration and we we run a a uh we run a track over for our summit in in London about apps about the apps business and we had people like Duolingo come in and it was really interesting to see their strategies uh compared to the games industry. Um so there's a lot to learn there. We've got a track later on the apps X games track I think is tomorrow which should be quite interesting to hear how some apps uh players are bringing in users. Okay. Um and of course one of the biggest segments in the app space uh and a huge factor in everything in our lives right now is AI.

Now this too represents challenges uh but also opportunity um and the players generally still seem pretty you know uh unhappy about AI in games but for game developers AI is now table stakes. There are there are platforms and tools for every part of the game development process and if you're not using them you're kind of going to be behind the curve. It doesn't mean you have to fire your designers. It doesn't mean you have to fire anybody. Just but it means you've to to help iterate faster, to ideate. These there's some There's tools for for everyone. And we've got two tracks really about how you practically use AI tools coming up here as well. Um uh not sort of not directly related, but kind of sort of will be fueled increasingly by AI as well, is a UGC sector, which is absolutely exploding. This is kind of a whole new games business in itself. Um And prime with with Roblox, Epic, and and various other platforms. Obviously,

Roblox is the main uh player here and the majority of the space takes up. And Matthew brought a couple of slides I'm going to speed through, but you can just see the scale of the growth of Roblox uh as a platform there. And to see how big it is, that's the attention time of Roblox versus Netflix is the red line. That is incredible. Um and and here's So, this just shows how big Roblox is compared to other kind of platforms in terms of uh hours of engagement spent. It's just an absolute behemoth. Obviously, Roblox is not one game. It's It's lots of games. But even individual games, ooh click. Oh god, back again. Uh sorry. Even individual games, you can see the red lines here are individual uh Roblox titles. The biggest ones are fighting their way against any uh big IP right now. So, UGC is it's a it's a big opportunity. There's There's also they've paid out 1.5 billion dollars of developer payments uh in the last year alone. And as you can see, that number is also kind of ramping. So, there's a

very real opportunity there. Um and of course, there's a World Cup theme as well. There's a big FIFA have gone big in in Roblox with their own game. Um And this this kind of brings me to uh one of my favorite slides I always like to show in talks about the games industry, which just shows how good we are at adopting different techs and plat- tech and platforms and how we've managed to grow over the years. We've maintained certain things like the arcade have got smaller and smaller, but PC console continue to grow. Handheld came and kind of went a bit. Mobile took off. VR's there. You know, if you add Roblox will appear in the later version of this and and be its own thing, I I I suspect. Um And and I think the thing is to to to to borrow God, to borrow a you know, uh famous advertising quote, we just need to think a bit different. The opportunities are there in the industry. We just need to think a little bit about how we take advantage of them. Um So one, you know, talking about negatives and positives, we had this this this there's a kind of narrative about the AAA business is is dead. I don't think

that's true, but there have been a number of high-profile failures. And if you look at where people have lost jobs and studios have closed down, AAA has been disproportionately part of that cuz they hire a lot of people. Um and it's been you know, uh there's uh Concord, Suicide Squad, Skull and Bones. Uh didn't do well. Call of Duty Black Ops didn't do quite as well as they thought it would. There's there's been a number of of of of underperformers in 2025. Obviously, the big one is coming this year from GTA. But on the flip side, smaller indie projects have absolutely been smashing it. Um these games that were a bit more agile, uh focused, a bit more quirky, shorter experience, games like Expedition 33, Silksong, Balatro, Shed One, Pete Megabucks, and and even arguably Arc Raiders as a smaller project have done incredibly well. Uh another area where we need to maybe think differently is uh investment. Um VC investment has has moved elsewhere uh and is very hard uh to get right now. Although it is still there. You can see from that number that the number of of money going into M&A

uh and investment is still high. Last year was a record for M&A, a bit of consolidation industry. Um and there's some the big transactions. And Q1 has continued that crazy level uh of of activity. Um uh the amount of the volume of of investments early on from from VC companies private placements is a lot lower. It's about half what it was um 3 years ago. However, the volume is still 785 million has been invested in Q1. And this is all from a Drake Star study. If if you if you're looking to raise money, there is money out. There's been several new funds launched. There's several funds with lots of money in them still. There's a big indie fund launched recently with 100 million. This is a really good resource. It It tells you who's investing where and it's a really good way to kind of target. So, there's a few useful who's spending the money. I won't go into detail on that. Okay. Skip, sorry. Oh. Um but the the thing really is to think about alternatives cuz that VC money has moved a lot of it. It's moved to AI and other and and other things right now. But there are other ways uh of making money. There's UA funding,

project funding, uh new types of other other deals. There's a lot more government money kind of washing around in different places, particularly in Turkey for instance at the moment. But there are funds and grants in various places. Sorry. You can You can have the slides afterwards. So, um an another thing, a very small thing which was mentioned by Matthew Ball a couple of times, an area of opportunities is outsourcing and external development. That has grown every year since uh since COVID um and continues to grow as as people a bit more hesitant about taking on staff look to outsource. So, there's opportunities there. If your studio can do that, then good times for you. And there's interesting graph about what's being used. I'm going to whip through now, sorry. Um and of course that the the the flip side of of those people losing their jobs is there's a huge talent pool to draw from. And we've got a career zone here and some talks and everything in the main expo. Um and I know there's a few companies at least Appodeal and Gameloft are hiring. Uh and there's Games uh Factory Talents will help you if you're looking for job or looking to hire. Right. There's other reasons to be

cheerful as well. Uh I won't go into them. You can see them on the screen. Grand Theft Auto delay still still till November, we hope. But there's still a window there for for games to try not compete against that. Um and one final quick from Matthew Ball I wanted to to share which I think is really interesting is is how he sees the games industry. It's not one industry, it's a series of different sectors and industries that are growing at different speeds. Um and this is really good to think about with your strategy, to think about this, which parts of the market growing now, where should you be focusing? Um part of that is um geographic is geographical of course and and there are some markets which are growing very slowly. Um and you can see that at the moment uh China for instance in Asia is growing kind of crazy fast. The the Middle East is is is growing rapidly. There are different markets where you can, you know, distribute your games and make money. Sorry, this is ooh skipping through. So, sorry. There's uh and you can see here some data about about the growth in the Middle East and the and the the growth of of Vietnam. Turkey's obviously super hot at the moment as well, certainly from a development perspective.

Um and and China, yeah, China is is is huge. It is the biggest games market now. Um it may be something to fear, but it's also something to learn from and and there's some details here about some of the areas which there that like the mini games uh do you see the stuff in e-sports? This is a a partly AI created slides, so don't read too much into it. Right, keep going. Uh if you're interested in China, we have got a summit in China uh in Shanghai alongside China Joy next month. So, I recommend going at least once to China to see what's going on there cuz it's the biggest games market in the world, lots of opportunity. But, you don't have to go all the way oops to uh to China to see a growing market right here uh in Spain and and in Barcelona, there's been uh there's a there's a buoyant market. We've got a report which you can see on our stand and and in a reception looking into the space, but that's showing that the Spanish games market is worth 1.56 billion euros in 2026 uh and is projected uh to increase uh further this year and also to increase the workforce.

There's a predicted 7% increase in employees uh with almost 12,000 people expected to be involved in the industry, over 800 studios, 260 of which right here in Barcelona. And it's not hard to see why. There's a really buoyant framework of of big international businesses, smaller local kind of startups, good academic institutions, great associations, many of which will be represented here today. So, grab hold of them. Ultimately, all of that goes into thinking why I think right now is the best [snorts] time to be in the games industry and particularly here in Spain. Now, um hopefully this will spark some thought. Before I go on, I am a little bit late, but I'm going to keep this very quick. I've got to do a bit of bit of housekeeping. Um so, just let you know, there's 16 theme tracks. You can go on the website and you can see what's on where. There's this this track room one here, track room two over there. Um it's also integrated in in MeetToMatch. We have over 100 professional speakers sharing their insights, some really good speakers, good good quality these big

studios. Uh and as I say, there's a there's a schedule online. Um it's also integrated in the MeetToMatch platform and you can put your your talks into you want to see in with alongside your meetings and block those off. If you haven't been to MeetToMatch, please do. It's the main business center of our event and and even if you don't want to make meetings, it's good to just say no thank you to people who have asked of them. Uh and there's 520 attending companies and organizations so far to work with. There's an expo here, obviously, be to to behind you there. Uh there's two track rooms. The the layout's pretty simple. We do also have a a downstairs area uh outside of uh reception for uh for some food and for uh coffee. You can buy coffee there anytime if you can't find any else. Um and this map is available on the site. There are fringe events going on. We have the Connect Speed Match starting shortly, the Big Indie Pitch today for mobile, Big Indie Pitch tomorrow for PC console, and Audience Choice Awards. So, if If do uh do go into see the Indies in the Indie area and uh take a form and vote for your

favorite. Tonight, the networking continues at the party. Um so, that is at uh sorry, Letana. Uh it is technically from 6:00, but we are aware there's a football match that starts at 6:00. So, we can open our doors uh slightly earlier. Oops, sorry. Slightly earlier at 5:45 if you want to go over there. We've got a side room with big screens. You can go and get a beer or drink any drink you want and watch the football. It will also be shown on the big screen here, the the crazily big screen, but it might be quite crowded. Um nearly there. Okay, sorry. This clicker. Uh if you need any help, reception's there. There's a really good online resource of FAQs, and our emails are mon- manned constantly. So, if you have a problem, mailing it might even be the quickest way. Sorry. And yes, if you want to share your thoughts about the conference or just get in a row with someone online, then you can use @PGConnects on your favorite social media network. Uh you know the Wi-Fi. It should be in the badge. But, it's there in case you haven't. I need to say a very quick thanks to our sponsors and I'm done. So, can we put

our hands together, please, and say a big thank you to our diamond sponsor, Xsolla?
[applause]
Our gold sponsors, uh Epic Games Store, Scopeley, FastSpring, Everybody Monopoly Go, and Raptor PR. Uh silver sponsors, Snapchat, Gameloft. We also have bronze sponsors. Don't get names of bronze sponsors, but you can see them. Um and uh track sponsors. We have uh great associate sponsors uh and some Indie Showcase sponsors uh sponsors there. And of course, our amazing media partners to make this all happen. And also, uh I want to say say hello to the uh Steel Media crew who worked really hard to put this all together. So, uh this they're working really hard at bar here, but they do uh up all hours making this happen. So, hope give them some some props if you see them. There you go.
[applause]
I am now 5 minutes over as I predicted it would be. Even And finally, if you enjoy what you're seeing here, we have got a whole World Cup tour going on. So, we are we have six more conferences, possibly seven, happening this year all around the world. So, do join us at one

of those.
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