Where now for Mass Effect? Plus, Ken Kutaragi’s console fears and the rise of Poki

This week, a gaming icon is closing. We dive into the world of web-based video games. We try to [music] make sense of video game pricing. And Ken Kutaragi, the father of PlayStation, fears for the future of consoles.
[music]
Hello and welcome to the Game Business Show. It's a busy week for us at the Game Business. We're actually out at Comic Con this week in London doing loads of panels and interviews, including one we're releasing as an episode of the Game Business Show. Hopefully at least, assuming it's good. It's with John Romero, the creator of Doom and one of the heads of Romero Games. If you're in London on Friday, October 23rd, you can catch the interview live at Comic Con. Although I think tickets are gone, so you have to actually already got tickets if you want to see us there. Alternatively, you can just wait for us to release the full thing, assuming it's good enough. And we'll be doing loads of stuff over the show. We're doing 20 years of Wii panel. We've got Silent Hill devs. We've got the the Star Wars devs. The two Meta devs as well. That stuff's not being recorded, but the John Romero one, it's Well, also today announcing new awards. It's called the Game Business Marketing Awards. We're keeping

it nice and simple for year one. We're just looking to celebrate the campaigns doing new and innovative things that delivered impressive cut through in a competitive year for video games. Uh you can submit campaigns via our online form. There's a link in the newsletter attached with this show and on our website. And we'll be announcing our winners on the same day as the Game Awards, which of course are sort of a sister event of ours. That's on Thursday, December 10th. And these are the games that were released this year. So, if you have a campaign that started this year, but your game's out next year, that's not eligible. That's for next year if we do one next year. However, if you have a game come out this year and your campaign started in 2025 or 2024 whatever, you can include all of that. All the details are on the form and on the gamebusiness.com and all those sort of things. Um good luck for those that want to enter. And one more note from us, just a reminder the Game Business is a reader-supported publication. And we do get the occasional sponsor, which is fantastic. Um but really we're about being funded by our readers, listeners, and viewers. Now, things have slowed down a bit for us in that regard over the last couple of months. So, I'm using this moment to say, "Hey, if you're a fan of the show,

if you like the show, if you want to keep it going, do consider becoming a paid subscriber to the Game Business." We do obviously put this podcast out free, but we do have a bonus podcast and newsletter we do on a Monday called Here's the Drink. It's me giving an opinion on the news from the last week. Of course, if you're already a paid subscriber, thank you so much. It really makes all the difference. But, if you'd like to become a paid subscriber, you can find out how on the gamebusiness.com. Right. In today's episode, we're going to explore lots of different topics. In a moment, I'm going to be joined by Ronnie Halfweek, who's the business development manager at Poki. That's the browser-based games platform. It's doing incredibly well. It's a remarkable world, this sort of space. We've not really talked about it yet, and we're going to be talking about it at length in just a little while. We're also going to welcome back Cathia Curran. Cathia has launched a web app that helps people work out what they should be charging for their video games. And I thought maybe we should use this opportunity to dive into this complicated and confusing world of video game pricing, which we'll do in the second half of the show. And before I get to that though, let's talk about the shocking news that's just come out from Electronic Arts over the closure of the iconic game developer BioWare and plans

to cut jobs across its studios business. It's cutting 3% of staff, which is roughly 400 employees. It's canceling its planned Mass Effect project as part of the closure and also pausing a Sims title as well. BioWare is of course an iconic RPG developer founded in 1995 by Dr. Ray Muzyka and Dr. Greg Zeschuk. It's famous for renowned RPGs like Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, Dragon Age, and Mass Effect. EA bought the studio in 2007, but it's really suffered a turn down in form of the last sort of 10 years. 2019's Anthem, an attempt at a live service game, so became a high-profile misfire. Meanwhile, 2024's Dragon Age: The Veilguard, it had a troubled development, and although the game sort of was okay when it came out, at least according to the critics, fan reaction was poor and sales were low. It was below EA's expectations. The next Mass Effect was actually announced back in 2020, but little has heard been heard about it since outside of reassurances that it is still in development. Uh was the case actually is attempted to take on Mass Effect with a game called Exodus, which is due next year, early next year in fact. The game is made by former BioWare veterans, but

there is no Mass Effect coming now. Um in August, EA went private following the completion of its sale to a consortium of investors led by the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund. It was a $55 billion leveraged buyout, which has placed the company around $18 billion in debt. Earlier this year, EA said it would save $700 million via cuts. This is part of that. In a post on social media, the company wrote, "For more than 30 years, BioWare has been more than a studio. It's been a home for storytellers, developers, and the players who brought our worlds to life. Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, the Old Republic, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and from now, after more than three decades of shared adventures, BioWare is closing and early development on the Mass Effect project is ending. There is nothing easy about writing those words. Our focus right now is on our incredibly talented team who put their hearts into these games and supporting one another through this transition. Um what generations of BioWare built today is something to celebrate and remember. These games became so much more because you played them, debated your choices, fell in love with the characters, and made these worlds your own. From all of us at BioWare, thank

you for being the most meaningful part of our story. Um on one hand, this is a shocker. They're an icon of the business, one that has defined the RPG genre and was once one of the industry's most acclaimed game makers. But as I said, over the last decade, it's had a rough run. It's had a lot of staff departures. It's made there's been some unpopular creative decisions. The question, of course, and this is a legitimate one, was this the system result of the studio or the publisher? EA does like to chase trends sometimes. It sees something goes, "That's popular. The division is popular. Maybe we'll put BioWare on something like Anthem." And you could argue that that was, you know, an EA thing more than a BioWare thing, or at least maybe a bit of both. These things are complicated. Now, EA, like a lot of big publishers, are mostly focused on building major AAA franchises and the big brands, the ones that are delivering the big numbers for them. So that's Apex Legends. It is Battlefield. It's obviously its sports games like Madden and the EA Sports FC. It's It is The Sims, which is a big opportunity for It's got a Sims movie coming out. Although it has paused development on one Sims title called Project Loftus. It is still making action adventure games. They've got an Iron Man game coming out

and a Star Wars title to come. But it's going to focus on fewer of those going forward to make sure they sort of deliver in what is actually a very competitive and quite costly space, even though the the turns aren't normally that high. It's also going to support Skate, which is its live service sports game that released last year. Although it's doing that with a smaller team. They want to focus in on keeping players cuz a lot of people players are churning out of that game. Obviously, this leaves a lot of famous EA franchises on the cutting room floor, a situation that's impacting a number of AAA studios. You know, Mass Effect isn't being made. Dragon Age isn't being made. Command & Conquer isn't being made. These games They're just not frankly big enough for a company like EA. However, we've seen a rising number of independent studios pitch big companies on say, "Hey, what if we made that IP? Maybe what if we developed a title based on that game?" Some larger studios are even willing to put money behind these projects, actually co-fund them. I'd be interested to see if EA might consider, for example, an independently made Mass Effect game that's co-financed by an independent studio. Maybe an independent studio set up by some of the people um that are leaving BioWare. Ultimately,

look, staff cuts are always tough. When things don't work out, it's often a number of factors in play. It won't be the fault of every It will be the fault of a multitude of things. And sometimes the fault of nobody at all. The market sometimes just works against you. But although this news may have come as an initial shock, when you look at what EA is shifting away from and towards, it's not really that shocking. It's actually It makes a lot of sense from a business point of view, even if it does hurt to fans of games like like Mass Effect and Dragon Age and stuff like that. You know, when you look at the market conditions and the area in which EA are currently enjoying most success, it makes sense what they're doing. They do need to cut costs, and titles like Mass Effect don't kind of fit with that. And we'll obviously keep on the eye on the development there. And good luck to the folks seeking new opportunities. It's certainly a tough time, and and obviously I hate to report on it, and later on when I do the news round up, there's even more layoffs going on. It's just never-ending, it really is. Moving on, um before we welcome our guest today, I wanted to relay a chat I had last week with a video game legend, Ken Kutaragi, the father of PlayStation. So,

I went to Game Republic's New Horizons event in Middlesbrough, and I had the privilege of talking to Kutaragi live on stage. Now, Ken is a Japanese man, and he was speaking in English, and it was a little hard to follow. So, we are at the [clears throat] moment going through the process of trying to do the subtitles, and so you can if you watch it on YouTube, or watch it on our videos, you can sort of follow along with what he's actually saying. Um how we do that with the podcast is a good question, and we're going to work that out as well. We're taking a bit of time on it, so you know, bear with us. But, I did want to share one of the things he said, cuz I asked Ken what he thought about the future of game consoles, particularly given the precarious nature they're in right now, you know, numbers are falling, player numbers are falling, um prices are rising. It's It's a It's a difficult spot for PlayStation and Xbox in particular. And this is what he said to me. "When we released PlayStation 2, we would get asked, 'What's next?' At the time, I'd say, 'Merging into the network.' That was my answer. When I released PS1, I'd get asked, 'What would be the next PlayStation?' I replied the same thing, 'Everything merging into the network.' And right now, AI is merging

into the network. But currently, the machines are super expensive. It's not a healthy situation. One of the intentions behind why the PlayStation 4 architecture changed from console-based to PC-based was to make it easier to create for the platform. It worked. But right now, PC is so expensive. It's the price of a car. It's not healthy. Why do we continue to seek on this direction? Google Gemini and many AI platforms do not run edge-side, but server-side, network-side. Those could be evolving to allow for much more elegant things. The age may be coming where we don't need any console. It's a very real danger." He predicts there will be a lightweight system in the future that may not be a console, may not even be a smartphone in which we play our games. Now, he also stressed that he There's not an official comment from Sony Interactive Entertainment. He doesn't work for Sony anymore. Now, of course, Ken has been doing a lot of work in AI lately and he's been working for AI companies and its potential impact upon the world has been something he's been talking about a lot, particularly in Japan. So, he's bound to feel this way. I will have

the full interview with Ken where he reminisces on the creation of PS1, PS2, and PS3 in the coming weeks and as well as talking about the future of the video game business. Now, one area of the video game business that I haven't really covered at all is the rise of web-based video games. This is a truly fascinating area. Um the video game platform Poki, which is entirely web-based, has grown from 10 million monthly users in 2020 to over 100 million monthly users today. Another web-based platform, Crazy Games, now boasts over 50 million monthly active users. This is a fascinating and rapidly growing area of the business. And these web-based games are not the ones you might remember from the Flash era. They actually look pretty impressive. They're probably about games from about 15 years ago, I'd say, console games. So, where is this growth coming from? Is it Is it games tapping into that TikTok generation who want quick, easily accessible things to play? And if it is that, is it actually a valuable and viable business for people? Can companies and developers actually make money building web-based games? To answer these questions, I managed to chat with Romy Halfweek, who is the business development manager at Poki in

the Netherlands. And I learned a lot from this and I'm sure you will, too. So, here it is. Check out my chat with Romy. Hi Romy, welcome to the show.
Thank you.
I actually had people message me going, "You need to have Poki on the show cuz
Yeah, but you could have said no, so
No, well, [laughter] I was I was like, "Browser-based games? Is that Is that Is that Is it still a thing?" Oh, it Yeah, very much is. Don't worry, it's gone from like 10 million monthly players to 100 million monthly players in like 5 years.
Yeah, yeah, that's right. So, 2020 was 10 million and 2025 was 100 million. Yes, so really big number to wrap my head around sometimes.
Yeah, I well, I I know this is might be an obvious question to any to a lot of people listening, but it isn't to me. What how what's caused that?
So, I don't know for sure, right? We have our own speculations. I hope it's because we're doing a good job, of course. Also, Poki has been around since 2014. Uh but we've recently seen a lot of growth in in player numbers and a lot of traction and interest as well. So,

that's also why we're very happy to talk about it and there seem to be a lot of people with questions that want to know more and know if it's something for them or something that they could explore. So, yeah, I'm happy to talk about that. And the growth I just mentioned that was specifically on poki.com. So, that's our our website where we where we release all the games. It's kind of like a like a storefront, I guess, but it's all free games cuz it's all ad-based. And so, there we saw that growth going from 10 million players monthly to 100 million players monthly. But obviously, that's not just Poki though the web ecosystem. So, it's not just Poki. There's also other players, other companies, there are other websites and they also seen quite some growth. So, it seems like the web industry sector as a whole is growing, which is nice.
You got theories, but you don't necessarily know why.
Right, yes. Well, I think the main theory or like we do a lot of user interviews, so we it's not just theories, we also get this confirmation, but we don't do like large-scale quantitative interviews. We mostly have these qualitative interviews with a like a focus group. Um and it seems like there's a lot of mobile game store mobile Play Store

fatigue. Um just really hard to find anything new. Discoverability is difficult and a lot of ads that are very in your face.
Mhm.
Of course, we are also ad-based games and I don't think anybody really loves ads, right? Like we are also not like, "Wow, ads are amazing." But it is paying for these games and thanks to the ads we have the games, so we do appreciate them, but we are also very careful with them. So, we don't do pre-roll ads for example. So, there's no 2-minute playable ads before you can actually play the actual game that you wanted to play or anything like that. They are very uh, they're way less frequent and way, way shorter. So, it's a bit less aggressive in that way. So, we think that's also why more players are are looking at the web as a way to play games just for a short while just to have some fun without having to waste a lot of time watching ads or playing
Yeah.
playable ads that they weren't that interested in.

And then also the audience on web has been pretty young always. Like when I was playing web games as a child, I did that a lot. I played a lot of flash games. And we see that that that age group is still very similar. It's not just that age group, but it's a very large part of the audience on web. So, really the preteens age group kind of like the same players that you can expect playing Minecraft and playing Roblox. And they're very used to to short-form content. And you can almost kind of say that web games are the short-form content of video games in a way. Um, and this is just like a way that they interact with media that's very familiar to them. So, it's really about discoverability, just quick jumping in and out. You know how you're scrolling on TikTok and you're just
Yeah.
you scroll, scroll, scroll, then you pause cuz it looks kind of interesting and you watch it for a bit. Maybe you don't even finish the reel, you scroll to the next one, you watch the full reel. The players interact kind of the same way with web games where they are just

like hopping very quickly through 20 the games or so and maybe out of those 20 they play a couple for a few minutes and they play one for 10 minutes. So, the way they interact with them, it's very similar to these other media that that they are familiar with. And we think that's also why we have seen a a of growth cuz it's just like we're meeting their expectations.
So they're opposite to live service games really that try to keep people for months and years and engagement and retention and and your I mean I guess your platform does that, but your uh
Yes.
your individual games are more the opposite to that. So okay then in that case, how viable is it as a sort of platform for game developers? Like from a business point of view, how viable is it if that's the way people play?
I think it's really depen- depends on the developer and what their needs are and their expectations are and what they want to make also. It is for sure viable for for a group of developers. We have like [snorts] uh multiple developers that have

just make games for Poki full-time and that makes them a living or much better even than a living in some cases. So yes, it's for sure viable, but it's also a specific audience that you want to make a like you want you need to want to make a game for that audience, I think. It's not as simple as being like, "Oh, I already have a game that did quite well on Steam. Let's just port it and see how it does." Then it won't work. I can almost guarantee it because you know, the same way you don't put a mobile game that was mobile-first on Steam just like that without any changes. That's not what the audience is expecting on that platform. Um and the the same for Poki players. They want to make they want to play games that make sense for them and for what they are looking for in that moment. So if you really want to have success on web, you also need to be like ready to to make a web game that is specifically for players on the web and that is like uh aligned with what they're looking for in that moment when they want to play a game. Uh but then it can be very viable. Uh

and usually what we see is that you you build it up over the years. Like um I would not go all in on web games uh as a as a solo dev or as a small team from the start. I would start maybe one day a week you can try it out, make some games, try out some different things, see how it works, see how you like it, and release one or two or three games, and like build a steady passive income stream from those. And then scale up. So, I would see it as a slower approach, and also at the start it's usually more of a secondary income stream than like your main source of income. Of course, there's always the the exceptions, right? Like just as on Steam, just as on mobile or any other store, there's always the viral hits that have overnight success. That also happens, but like if you want to build a sustainable business, you shouldn't bet on becoming an overnight hit
[laughter]
ever.
Yeah, usually that's not that's not a business strategy.
No, that's not a business strategy. So, it's also not on web, so it's similar in that way. But yeah, but the income is smaller. I don't want to add that before we continue. So, you know, you you will

earn a lot less money from a web game than from a game on Steam or game on mobile that has equal success in terms of like amount of plays or players or sales, but the scope is also like a lot a lot a lot smaller than what you would do for any of those platforms. You know, if you you should be able to make a web game in a month.
Yeah, I'm going to interested to know what it is that people are going, "Oh, I'm not sure about this." Is it that Is it the monetization element that's all put to people off?
Yeah, for sure. I think so. And that's fair, right? I mean, there's people that don't want to do ads games, so then don't do it if you if you're really against that. That that's that's also also valid, I think. There's some platforms that offer in-app purchases as well on web. Uh we don't really do it yet because we just don't think it's the right time. Like we we have we have done some research, but it doesn't seem to be that that viable, but I can see that it might become a bigger thing, and we are looking into it, but right now it's not a not a model we offer, but there are other platforms that do. So, if if that's like a very important part of going to the web for you, you can still

do it, but then not on Poki. You can look in look into other platforms like Crazy Games, I think offers it. I don't think YouTube Playables does, but I don't know, look it up, I guess. Um so, there is that, and then also it's really short form it's really short games, right? So if you want to make a game that has very in in-depth story with lots of narrative and a lot of character building or that is very puzzling with a lot of explanation and onboarding needed then don't make it for the web because that's not the kind of game that the audience wants to play in that moment. If they want to play a game like that they go to another platform.
Now monetization model, how resilient is it during times when maybe the ad market might be dipping or is that is does that affect things in a substantial way?
Yeah, yeah, of course we see also the the highs and lows and we also have noticed that it has become a bit more difficult in the last uh year or two or so compared to before with getting good ad rates but that is like part of what we offer to developers, right? That they don't have to worry too much about that. We have a

big team that is purely doing ad sales trying to get the best possible deals in and we also have a lot of like these direct ad sales. I'm not on the ad team so I don't know the specific specific details but for example, let's say Nintendo might come to us and be like uh we have this new booster pack coming out for Pokémon cards. Can we do ads for it on poki.com and we we sell those ad spaces directly to to companies like companies like this. So that gives you better ad rates than if you would just use like I don't know the Google ad stack or the Yahoo ad stack or something like that. We use those too. It's like a uh an ad basket, right? You don't but multiple baskets. That's the point. But yeah, we we we work very hard to try to get the the best ad rates possible for for our developers.
What's discoverability like in this space? Is it as challenging as it is everywhere else?
Um, depends where you go. I would say it's a little less challenging

specifically on Poki because we we are a curated platform so we release one game a day at most. Um uh so at most 365 a year, a little less cuz we don't work every day. Um and that means that every game at least has a few days of visibility on the homepage to be picked up by the algorithm. But after that, um it's really up to to the players how much they like it, what they do. If the players really like it and they keep playing it, then we have our own algorithm that picks it up and uh and keeps pushing it to other players. Or sometimes an a game can really find finds its niche within the Poki ecosystem and it's just marketed towards those players and that is uh still very uh can still be very successful as well. Um but there is at least like it's pretty easy to get a million players. Like out of the the 2,000 or so games we have on the platform, it's a little less. I think it's between 1,500 and 1,900 at any given time cuz they we also take games

away after like agreements are done or games want to go elsewhere. You know, um we curate it. So, um out of those, I think over a thousand got over a million gameplays last year.
Wow. Meta has just announced its its AI, you know, making putting a thing in a game. Google's about to do the same thing. Is these AI-made games, is that something that's ch-
It's challenging, right? I think it's challenging for everybody in the industry right now. How to deal with it, what to do with it. How deal with the insane amount of pitches coming in every day now.
Mhm. Oh, wow.
It's not been easy.
[laughter]
I'm not going to lie.
Oh, no.
And [snorts] we are actively like thinking about what we want to do with it, how we want to how we want to approach this. Um uh but it's definitely a new kind of era. Yeah, there's a difference, right? There is like like your kids that are making games today AI that you can also you can also argue almost that that is user-generated content.
Yeah.

And I think there's always going to be a place for UGC. UGC is fun. It It makes game play a game longer. You can make more levels. You can share with your friends. It's nice. You very rarely see UGC that becomes its own full game or experience.
Yeah, maybe I think this. I don't know. I'm full of testing it. Um is that with these AI platforms that are emerging that allow people to make games. To me it's like the YouTube implication. You know, it's it's a way for people to express themselves and stuff. But it's like no one's watching a PewDiePie let's play on a cinema. But it's a definitely an industry and it's definitely having an impact on attention and it's significant. But it's it's it's it's different. But at the same time I'm aware that a lot of these platforms are just going to be swamped with people's projects, people's personal projects, people things people are doing for fun. I'm not going to you know, I could use the word slop or rubbish. But it it's not necessarily that. It's just what people are doing. You know, it's just a way of expressing themselves, right? But I guess cuz you've got this curated approach, you kind of avoid you

can you can avoid that maybe.
Yeah. Um there's a middle ground, I guess. It's not black and white. It's not all AI games are bad and all non-AI games are good. There's a lot of non-AI human-made games that are utterly rubbish.
[laughter]
Unfortunately. And there's also some AI games that are actually kind of fun. Uh there is something there. So yeah, we are curated. So that means that for every game we sign, we don't sign another game kind of, right? Cuz there's more way more games that we get sent in than that we can actually release. So if we do decide to sign a game that we expect is largely made with AI, like
[laughter]
you can never say for sure, but you can kind of say.
It sounds like it comes down to whether the game's any good or not.
Yeah, exactly. Like it it really look at like is the game any good? Is there an original core idea and is it like is AI like used to explore that and to basically make just a very quick kind of polished prototype to explore that idea and is there potential for

this to become like an actual um more like can it grow into something more human-made, something more of an IP or is it just a copy of a copy? Because then we are not so interested even if it has really good stats. Like yes, obviously your Rocket League AI clone is going to have really good stats if you test play test it early because it's Rocket League and it's a proven game concept and people know it. So yeah, it's going to have good stats but like then it's not interesting for us, right? Because that's that's not not an original and not an original idea idea or an original game and we can like and we one we don't want to release games like that but even if we would want it then why would we share revenue over it? Yeah. [laughter] And not just prompt it ourselves if it's just something that is not that has no original thoughts behind it. So that's kind of how we see it now but this is an evolving topic that we are continually continuously talking about because things change so so fast but basically yes, we we do sometimes

sign games that are heavily AI assisted but then we always put requirements in the contract to like change it so that there is like an original visual style and that you have like unique looking UI elements um we also want to see more of a road map from the developer on what they plan to like add or what they plan to to change or like how are they going to move it forward? Because yes, like you said it's more of a it's not so retention focused as mobile games where it's really about keeping the player in for as long as possible in terms of like day after day after day. We more so look at keeping players in for as long as possible in session zero but we do like players to come back. So retention is somewhat important. It's just not as important of a metric but ideally they come back every now and then. Like we just need some games on Poki that are a reason for players to come back to then discover new games because they're like oh, I want to play this game again. Let's go to Poki." Then they play that game and then they play two or three newer games. So, it is important to us to also have those games that keep players,

you know, like remind them of, "Right, I can also play games on Poki and I want to continue this game."
You said to me at the start you have lots of people have lots of questions about Poki.
[clears throat]
or web in general, I think.
And what are those questions?
Uh I think most frequent question, obviously, is how much money can you make on Poki? And I understand that you ask that question. It's just really Yeah, you can make a million euros a year or you can make 10 euros a year. Like
Yeah, yeah.
It is very It's very difficult to answer that. It's like, "How many money can you make on Steam?" Like, yeah.
Same.
I don't know. Do you Do [laughter] you have a good game?
Yeah.
You can make money, for sure. I do I can answer that, right? I can say, "Well, like for the the top top top performers on Poki, like the very best games, they can earn up to a million a year." So, then they know that's kind of like the upper range if they're interested in that, which is more so interesting for really big IP companies. But I would say for those there is even a higher limit, honestly, cuz of the just the like the organic traffic that they can generate has also a lot of

value to us. So, for those I would say with existing really big IP games, just contact me.
[laughter]
Uh and then we can look into it. And then for for a lot of devs like that are just that just have a successful game, but you say it's not a viral hit, it's not a breakout hit, but it's a pretty successful game, it's anywhere, honestly, from like 1,000 to 15,000 a month.
Mhm.
But that can be pretty good, especially if you consider the scope. Because sometimes people kind of lose sight of that, but we're talking about really small games. They should You should not take you that long to develop. They should not have a huge investment up front. Uh you don't need to pitch us your your 500K or million million-dollar investment needed for the prototype game. That's That's not web games. We're talking about games that should cost you like 10k or so to develop. So, if you then earn a couple of thousand a month for multiple years, it's an easy win, honestly.
Yeah.
And then, of course, there's a whole whole slew of like long-term games, long-tail games that are maybe not that

successful, but do well enough. Like my own games, for example, I had three games on Poki before I worked for Poki. Um like they make a couple of hundred euros a month, which is not a lot, but also I only worked for 2 months on them and they still pay me for my vacations years later. So, I'm not I'm not complaining.
Yeah, yeah.
But it's not my full-time job. It's my like side hustle, so then it's nice.
Yeah. My boss used to say when we back in the old days I did magazines and um they they launched iPad magazines. And I said to him once, "Do you make any money from those iPad magazines?" And he went, "Eh, it pays for the milk." I quite like that.
[laughter]
But yeah, for a lot of devs it's that, I guess. It pays for the groceries or whatever. I wish By the way, groceries in the Netherlands are super expensive.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, okay.
But yeah, but also for some it easily pays for their living and they can grow their studio on it. Like we have some studios that like most people on Poki are solo devs or maybe two or three people. Um but there is also some like actual studios that have like uh five to 10, even 15 people working on Poki games. It also depends on your region, of course. Like if

you're in Sweden, that's going to be more difficult than when you are based in in Turkey.
Mhm. Well, I'm conscious of the time and um we have taken up plenty of it and I'm thinking I've got a good overview here. But where would you like to see Poki or maybe browser-based gaming in general in I don't know, like [clears throat] 5 years? Where do you Where do you see it heading?
Yeah, I I personally really hope that we are going to see the player growth continue and also um reach different more different audiences. They're already kind of there, but I feel like there is not really a good home base for them on the web, like
Really?
like like for for, you know, female 30 plus, let's go.
[laughter]
I think there is so much more opportunities there uh and there is so many really cool web games that people kind of overlook. I've started this series on LinkedIn where I post like my favorite web games every couple of days. I'm on game nine now, I think. And I got a lot of like good reactions from that from people like, "Oh, I actually didn't realize this is such a good game. I had so much fun with this." I'm like, "Yeah, there is a lot of these games out there that people are just not playing and they don't they don't see."

So, I hope that more people will come to the web and start playing some of these just really nice web games and that we can we can all be be more online. Cuz I really think that there is something about like the we didn't really talk about this, but like the strongest reason why I am a very much a web games advocate is because they are so accessible. They are very very small, which is also technically challenging. So, if you are considering developing for web, please do check out the like the guides we have on it at developer .poki.com and there's like dev guides on optimization and engines and stuff, which is all very valid valid information if you're going to make a web game whether it's for Poki or anywhere else. But in any case, because they are so small, um they just you you load them basically instantly. Like within a few seconds, you load the game and you can play the game and try out the game. And that's just a really nice way of of discov- discovering games and exploring games and seeing what you like. I think there's a lot of power in that.
Yeah.
Like it's much nicer than downloading an app.
Also, I think these games perhaps people listening to this who maybe aren't

familiar with web games is that they're they're they're more advanced I think people I know they used to talk about them being small and stuff. I think they perhaps they're the ones got an image of what flash games used to be and that and that kind of stuff.
Now, it's much bigger than that.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. There's also a a question I get a lot or that's conversation that comes up a lot. Like, "Oh, will web games ever be as good as console games?" Like, yes, obviously the answer is yes, but console games are also continuously getting better and PC games as well. [laughter] Yes, right now web games are as good as console games as they were 20 years ago, you know? But they are as good as console games were back then, I guess. But there is always there they're never going to catch up, right? Cuz technology is always evolving, but it doesn't mean that web games are staying still. They're also evolving.
Yeah. Um Rommy, thank you so much for your time.
Thank you, too.
And um I really enjoyed learning about this.
Yeah, very welcome. Thank you for having me.
Thank you to Rommy there. Certainly a promising new direction for video game industry, or at least an alternative location for smaller developers to perhaps build a business or earn some money on the side. I'm not quite sure it's ready for top-end games just yet. I know a lot of people are talking about

AI and whether that can sort of allow big games to work in browsers. You've already got Ken Kutaragi. Maybe he was hinting at that in the quote earlier. But, I'm not quite sure the business model's there to sort of back that up. We'll certainly see what happens. Now, for our second topic today, we're going to be talking about video game pricing. Uh this was stemmed from me being a little bit surprised by the price of Star Wars Galactic Ace. I was expecting it to be more than it was. I was also surprised by the fact that Nintendo went lower on the price of Star Fox. Um that might just be my age that thinks that, as we'll come on to in a moment. Now, we've had pricing come up a few times on the show, but we've not really focused on it specifically. We've not had a full-on conversation about it. Um it does seem more confusing than as ever. What what do you set your price of a game at? And whether you're AAA developer or an indie developer, it seems to be quite a minefield. Now, Cassia Curran, video game analyst and expert and investor, came on the show earlier this year to talk about VR. And after that coming on the show, she actually launched a tool where you can put in your game or list your competitors' games, and it will help you work out what you might want to do with the price of your video game. So, I

thought Cassia might be able to shed some light onto this enormously complicated subject. Maybe. So, here it is. Here's my chat with Cassia. Hello Cassia. Welcome to the show.
Hello. Hi.
You've got like a um is it like a tool that people put in details and
Pretty much.
to spit out a price? I've not actually tried it. I was tempted to. [laughter]
Yeah, I mean, basically uh earlier this year, I was really just trying to check out what could be done with AI coding tools primarily because they've gotten really good roughly 10 months ago. Um and I said like let's do a project and see how far we can push it. And I said like what do we what would be actually been useful? And I had the idea of yeah, especially a pricing tool. What I did is I downloaded 2 million uh Steam reviews for like pretty much all the non-slop games slop shovelware games out there uh on Steam. And then I applied the model to it which means that uh it could figure out whether reviews thought a

game was underpriced or whether it was overpriced. And yeah, it turns out like if uh there's not much talk about your game uh whether it's too overpriced or whether it's really good value, um then it's probably good priced as well priced.
Lack lack of comments is means you got it right.
of comments means that people know one is kind of at the expected amount and like, yeah. If everyone's praising your game for being really, you know, good value, you've probably left quite a lot of revenue on the table. But then if a lot of people complain that it's it's not worth the money, yeah, then yeah, you probably should have made it cheaper.
Mhm. I was fascinated by how confusing this has become because it's obviously I get it's already confusing for independent developers that make smaller games, but obviously I'm a bit of a Nintendo fan, right? So and in 2011, Nintendo released Star Fox 64 remake of that for the 3DS and it was priced at £40 $40. And then that same year, coincidentally, they did Ocarina of Time 3D which is £40 or $40. It's the exact same price between the two. This year, they've done the exact

same thing for Switch too. They've got remakes of the same two games, but the Star Fox remake is £42 or $50 and the Ocarina of Time is £50 or $60. So they've they've changed the prices there. Um Nintendo's all over the place. This is obviously this is a 15 years ago, right? So it's completely what upsets me a great deal. Um um so things have changed a lot, but then you got things like Mario Kart World is $80, but basically no other game Nintendo's put out since then is $80. They've done a few Switch 2 editions that come out at that price. Not Donkey Kong, not Pokémon Pokkén Tournament, none of that stuff. So, that's just Nintendo, that's obviously a big company, and even they've gone into this variable pricing strategy. Doesn't [clears throat] seem to make there doesn't seem to be a coherent sense. I mean, I understand why Star Fox is cheaper than Ocarina of Time, it's a short game, right? I can get why it would go down that route. It's it's an excellent game, but it you can smash through it in a few hours. So, I can sort of see where it's come from, but that wasn't the case 15 years ago. People were like, we'll charge the same.
Yeah.
So, that's complicated. I bought I had

Star Wars Galactic Racer on recently, and I bought that game. I looked at it and it's a Star Wars game, big IP, and I was going to buy it. So, I went on Amazon, and the first thing that popped up is the game for £65. And I thought, AAA Star Wars racing game, yeah, okay. And I bought it. And then it came and it was actually the deluxe edition and all the fancy bits, and I was like, oh, did I buy the did they send me the wrong thing? No, I bought the deluxe edition. The actual price of the game was was £50, £45. It was actually a lot less. And I was surprised by that cuz I expected it to be more. And then I asked them on the show I said, you know, why was it priced that that? And he said, we want as many people to try and get into the game as we possibly can, the other day. And that felt like a right value proposition for achieving that aim. We've got an incredible amount of scope and quality in the experience is terrific value for money. But the bit that caught me, I think the word there is it felt like the right value proposition. It does seem like we're in the realm of what is does it feel like a good price as opposed to is there like a there's an algorithm that can help tell you whether it is or isn't?

I wish I was I spent a lot of time actually trying to figure out whether there was an algorithm, and there really there's not there's actually not enough data.
Mhm.
And I think a major problem recently as well is that there's all these different factors pushing both ways. Like there's some factors that are pushing games maybe to be more expensive, and some game factors that push in games to be priced cheaper. And it's a bit like which do you lean into? It depends a lot upon your game. So, I think definitely for any multiplayer game, really depending upon multiplayer, you really need to be super thoughtful about price because you need that in that network effect to happen. You need to be low enough that a lot of people come into a game at the same time and there's people to play with.
Mhm.
If you price too high so that only like core gamers or core fans buy initially, then they won't have enough people to play and it would die a quick death. So,
Yeah.
um but then if it's like a single player, um more like a simulation game

or strategy game, you can afford to price higher.
Yeah.
With Galactic Racer, it's case you've got the IP attached which generally kind of just getting a license for that would be expensive and of course it pushes up higher in terms of cost, so.
Yeah, I I was really I thought it was low. I think this says something about me.
Yeah.
But then obviously you compare it to something like Forza Horizon 6, I guess it isn't as big a game.
No, it's not. Yeah, there's like an expectation for a high-priced game that is going to be like many hours, many, many, many hours of gameplay and that's often with like open world RPGs. So, if you have something which is a bit more round-based, which I think Galactic Racer is, um I think there was even like some suggestions that it should be more like around the $40 sort of price because similar games that way are $40.
This goes to show how um um how it can vary by person. I [clears throat] remember the first part of Race Against the Machine was a full-priced release. You know, Newzoo put some stats out. Apparently games

that cost more than $50 still represent nearly 80% of the total premium revenues on console, but lower-priced titles are increasingly popular. Um the $30 price band is the fastest-growing tier across PC, PlayStation, and Xbox. But 2026 games priced below $30 generated more than $5 million in revenue last year, which is up from 17 in 2024. So, the middle tier and the lower tier seem to be where a lot of the growth is. Um Uh at least that Newzoo stats. Um earlier this year. But I don't again, I don't know if this tells you very much. Um the um We We had Lyrical Games on recently, and they were actually used this show to announce the price point for Val Amortis, which is an RPG that's just come out. They gave huge answers as to why they went for $40. And actually, one of their biggest concerns was they didn't want the perception from fans thinking because it's $40, it's somehow it's an action RPG, it's somehow it's a lesser product. And they were really concerned about this, and it reminded me of them in 2020 when um all the big AAA

games on PlayStation, Xbox went up to $70. And one company that waited a bit longer was Capcom, they put out Resident Evil Village. I think they put it out at at at at $60. And the Capcom marketing guy I was speaking to at the time was really worried about that, cuz he didn't want people to think the game was somehow lesser than the other games in its field. So, it's a minefield.
Oh, it totally is. Yeah, so in terms of pieces, you're just really trying to anchor the uh the price to the value, the quality
Mhm.
of the game. And yeah, sometimes players think lower uh price means lower quality. And a lot of studios these days and publishers are often pricing their games maybe a bit higher, but then doing like quite aggressive discounts. So, you kind of have to best of both worlds
Yeah.
in that case. Or what's really common these days is having that, you know, multiple tiers of like standard edition or deluxe edition.
What GTA has just done, yeah. Oh, but that's what I was going to ask about that, because one of the things that Nintendo never do

is discount, because they like games to keep their value. But are we not Is that still a model in people coming at a sort of, you know, obviously it doesn't work for multiplayer games as you quite as you already pointed out, cuz you do need people to come in on day one. But on a sort of more on other titles, is it okay to go go on a high price knowing that you can be in a Steam sale in a few months and and and bring that down again? Does that risk devaluing the premium price or it makes people wary of that initial price point?
Well, I think what it has done is that now there's a whole cohort of gamers with that call those us patient gamers who wait around for all of the sales.
Mhm.
They kind of expect that the game will go on sale quite significantly in a month.
Yeah.
We definitely have noticed that generally players look at like the percentage decrease, like percentage discount, rather than the absolute value. So, they care about whether the game is like 50% off rather than whether it's like you know like $10 off or something like that. So, yeah. It's just generally from

a psychological perspective, it's a good idea to price it relatively high and then
Yeah.
like yes, put on sale on
You can go lower, you can't go higher.
Yeah. Um well, it just gives you that room to you know discount a lot if you need to or you want to.
Mhm.
You also you have to bear in mind similar games, the price of them. So, for example, I think Hollow Knight Silksong very famous is a $20 and it's like a really good title that gives you know 30-30 hours of gameplay hours in development for 7 years and all that sort of thing. So, yeah, if you've got a similar sort of roguelike, then you need to be thinking about like is it good pricing more than Silksong? That's
Yeah.
tricky,
Yeah.
right? And then you've got games like Out Raiders, Helldivers, which I think were $40. So, if they're similar games to those, are you going to price them more than like you have to be able to you know give a good reason for players if you're fair pricing.
In that Valerium Otis thing, one of the

reasons I went $40, by the way, is because of GTA 6. They were a new IP coming out uh, in the shadow of GTA 6, alongside other big branded licensed games. And they felt Oh, not licensed games, so big branded sequels and stuff like that, like Control and Silent Hill. And they felt they had to go 40 to compete in that sort of sort of space. And then they pointed this out, I did I was going to point it out to them. Blood of the Dorm Walker, which is another RPG, okay, came out earlier in in in the in the window. Came out at 70.
[laughter]
And it was I'm not saying they're the same games, but they're in sort of similarish genres, and they're both, you know, in they were new IP coming out in this sort of competitive window. And obviously it worked for Blood of the Dorm Walker.
Mhm.
But it's about that feeling, because you go to Blood of the Dorm Walker and it's made by former developers of The Witcher. So it has a certain cachet to it already. So this is from The Witcher devs. It's not It's a smaller game. It's not a smaller game, but it doesn't It doesn't have the scale of CD Projekt, but that's what they're looking at, and that's what they want people to think

about their game. And so when they went at the you go at that price point, you're in the you're you're at that conversation you end up being part of, which I guess is what they wanted. And that's what I mean when you sort of Yeah, you know, you know, you sort of it feels like the right price. I mean, my feeling is there's no exact science, but if you're I guess that's not very helpful if you're an independent developer, and you're going, "Right, what should I set my game price at?" If anyone asks you that, if I did I did I People do ask you that. What do you What do you What do you What do you suggest?
I really uh Yeah, it depends on the game. Um, if it's a game which is really like unique or unusual in some way, it's so hard. It's so hard to to give it the right price, and it is really like guess. Uh, but then then if it's more in an established genre, um, like actually where I was saying, you're like, "Oh, well, you know, Sekiro was this price, so, you know, that's your anchor kind of thing." And then the pricing tool just, you know, does your research for you, and it sure as hell shows you, like, you know, what

Oh, nice.
your other similar titles are priced and all the medium ones and then like how do they still cluster?
Yeah. Just Silk Song cuz I was going to ask if there's like a hard ceiling on indie game pricing or can smaller titles push into that that sort of 30 to 50 threshold that New Zealand was talking about or even 20 to 30 threshold. But I guess games like Hollow Knight is that made that really difficult?
Really the Hollow Knight one kind of annoyed me. I was a bit like guys like please price it higher so you know just that the 2499 would made like a big difference to a lot of studios you know that has similar games and then it's it's a bit that was annoying. Yeah that I would say that there's actually quite a lot of downward pricing pressure. As actually with friends lot these days like the peak developers have some very interesting things to say about that price which is $8 which is basically $5 is what they said.
Yeah yeah yeah it's [laughter] which he basically when when he when he said it I was like you said it on Stephen show. I

was like oh Stephen knew that. I was like yep that you're that's exactly true.
[laughter]
If it's $9 it's basically $10 but if it's $8 yeah it's $5.
[laughter]
It's like I don't know. Yeah.
So yeah those kind of big you know those really popular games that pop off you have similar games that then you kind of like sort of stuck at the same price point at best. And also I'm just seeing with like AI coding tools like I think costs are lowering for for the developers that want to use those and they're coming faster to the market when there's the we already had a bit of had a oversupply of games and now it's kind of hypercharged.
Yeah.
So like how do you compete? How do you stand out? How do you make any money?
Yeah. Very challenging.
Yes we are looking into a future where there's even more competition and standing out and being noticed. And price I guess is one of the few things people actually have control over when it comes to the publishing. Like you can you can choose your release window, but ultimately you're you know, you could

release your game um think I won't release it alongside GTA or I'll release it another time and then something something like I don't know Watch Dogs happens or or something comes out of the blue and does extremely well. You can almost never predict it. There's always something to compete with you. And whereas at least with price you've you know where you're you're sitting you're sitting at. I'm always going to think about time cuz I mentioned Star Fox at the beginning. And of course that's a game that is short. It has a lot of replayability on it. It's got multiplayer bits in it. But I think Nintendo Nintendo probably went less on that price because it's not a very big game. My feeling on this and this is something Simon Carless actually said to me is he says, you know, for players it's the idea that it they could play it for a long time is what they want to know rather than whether or not they would or not. It doesn't they don't need to know that the story cost 100 hours. They just want to know that they could if they wanted to play it for that amount of time.
Yeah, players definitely expect spend about one to three dollars per hour
Right.
of gameplay. And this makes it really interesting as to what kind of

games are there for like really economical to make. So for example, like roguelikes
Mhm.
and because there's lots of replayability but you they don't take so long to build. They're great because they can you know, people can sink hundreds of hours into them um theoretically.
Mhm.
And you could have a reasonable team. This is why you've seen a bit of drop off of say like really polished uh platformers but or puzzle games because they cost a lot to make and then you don't end up with that many hours of gameplay. You know, the players can't see the content and it's finished. Yeah, they're then you end up with like really quite high like dollar per hour um ratio and yeah, it's just not attractive to a lot of players.
Oh, wow.
Even if it's more fun so far. But yeah.
That's a shame.
Yeah, it really is a shame.
I'm of an age if you tell me the game is short, I'm more likely to buy it.
I know.
Do Do investors and publishers, when they're in sort of the early stages of

like funding a project, does pricing come into the conversation then? I get the impression it doesn't, but or maybe it does.
Um often studios will have their own idea about how much um a game will cost and they'll put it in the pitch deck. And it kind of can tell you a lot as to what they think of their production quality.
Now I see.
But ultimately it is the publisher who decides uh in the vast majority of cases or is like in negotiation or all all those things.
Well, it certainly seems like a very complicated situation, but you seem to be you're assisting if you look at games comparable games in the set that cuz people will compare it.
Yeah.
And the other piece of advice seemed to be that if your game isn't a multiplayer game, you can go higher cuz you can always come down if it proves too high. Um yeah. Um there are these moments in the game and but even like Steam sales, the amount of games
Yeah.
being shown in these things is just
Yeah.
It's just madness.
that's [clears throat] also like maybe it's like that tactic is no longer that useful.

Yeah.
I think it's if you are going towards more artistically meaningful games, you will be able to command a higher price um is my sense.
Also maybe the type of audiences cuz I think for the fact that you know, I think if you're targeting maybe a nostalgic audience, an older gamer, they've probably got more disposable income. They won't even think twice about the price of things um unless you know, the people my age were buying ridiculously priced versions of the Commodore 64 because you know, they've got they're older, they've got disposable income and they you know, they've got
100% there's a definitely generational divide. I mean, I think the Roblox generation uh just really needs to free games, free multiplayer games. That's like what they And they're the ones buying Peak which is cheap and will make a community very cheap. So Yeah. And then of course the older generation is shrinking.
[laughter]
I'll argue that in games it's getting bigger. They have less time. I think that's the problem. So, they've they've got far more Well, maybe at one point when we get to the retired gamers, maybe things will

change. But, but you know, people in their 30s and 40s, they might have families, they might you know, they've got busy careers and that kind of stuff. They have less time to sit around and play a game. And therefore, though they might still want to do it.
good point, actually. Yeah, so I think like the sort of upper age of like committed hardcore gamers is like what? 50s, 60s now, and so they're sort of starting to go into retirement, maybe. We haven't really hit the retirement age period of, you know,
No. And what will that do to things? I don't know. It's something we had There's a There's a chap who did a talk at a conference an epic conference I went to recently, and that was his big thing. Like, there's we've got that moment is coming.
So,
[laughter]
let's get ready.
It's all get ready for [clears throat] suddenly loads of people with lots of time and and money. And that's that's the dream. There's There's no There's no middle ground for them. But, what will they want to play? Do they want to play games they play when they were younger? Do they want to play new things?

That's a That's a future That's That's a 20 2035 2040 edition of the Game Business Show. And Cassie, I've taken up too much of your time. Is there anything else that I on terms of the pricing that comes up when you when people come and ask you stuff?
I mean, I think it's just a really really big complicated topic because there's so many different areas of the games market, and just so much depends on what your game is and what are the similar games and how they've been priced. So, it's it's very complicated topic that you could probably talk on for a very long time. Um
And still not reach a conclusion.
Yes, exactly.
Right. Well, good luck to everybody. That is probably not as helpful as
You should know, not helpful at all.
Use Cassie's writing tool to maybe start the conversation and see where it goes from there. Um, thank you guys so much. Um, um, and yeah, thank you for joining us.
Oh, it's my pleasure. Right, so that's it for our conversation today. Thank you to Romy and Cassie for joining us. All that's left for me to do is run through the news. Um, one news story that's happening in Europe is Pegi

has started increasing the age ratings of games that feature loot boxes. So, if you have a game with a loot box, it has to be rated Pegi 16 in Europe. That includes EA Sports FC, includes Pokémon Go, the updates to age ratings are happening now and continuing until the end of October. GDC, tough times over at GDC, I think. It's shifted to a four-day format for its 2027 edition. It used to be five days. Now taking place Monday through Thursday, March 1st to March 4th. The goal is to deliver a higher quality, more focused, and valuable experience. That's what the organizers said. It is still trying to find its feet. It did re-sort of boot itself this year as the festival of gaming. I thought it was pretty good event, but it's got a lot of challenges including, of course, the challenges facing the Californian games industry. Now, Liquid Swords, um, they're a game developer that made a game called Sansum. CEO Christopher, uh, Sunberg came on our show earlier this year to talk about sort of the challenging launch it had for that game. It was got It was a bit of a buggy experience, but unfortunately, Liquid Swords has filed for bankruptcy. Sunberg said on LinkedIn the studio struggled due to bad business decisions and tough market conditions. Uh, the bad news continues as well.

Some of this is bad news, some of it is just news. Um, Wizards of the Coast is refusing to grant voluntary recognition to a union drive by its Dungeons and Dragons and studio X team staff will instead vote on joining in a secret ballot election overseen by the National Labor Relations Board. Ubisoft has proposed closing Finnish studio Finnish studio RedLynx, famous for the Trials series, affecting 52 employees. It's also cutting 70 roles at Skull and Bones developer Ubisoft Singapore. I talked about that last week. Meanwhile, it's running a voluntary redundancy scheme in Germany aimed at reducing head count by 100 people across its Düsseldorf, Berlin, and Mainz studios. Sticking with cuts, developer Funcom is restructuring and cutting staff to focus on live service support for Conan Exiles and Dune: Awakening. Meanwhile, CEO Rui Casais will step down at the end of the year. Funcom, of course, was acquired by Tencent in 2020. And there's also unspecified job cuts also happening at German studio Fish Labs and scum developer Gamepires. Elsewhere, Melbourne-based developer House House will not release its co-op title Big Walk on Xbox. It's citing alignment with the Palestinian-led

boycott, divestment, sanctions campaign, the BDS campaign, um which of course has called for a boycott of Microsoft. Amazon has rolled out its uh its ability for people to access Luna games via Prime Video on Fire TV to more locations. They did this in the UK and US in July. We did a big interview about it. It's now coming to Canada, France, Italy, and Spain. Where's now? You can get that now. Um and eight more European countries will follow next month, uh namely Austria, Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, and Sweden. US retail giant Best Buy has launched Best Buy Gamers, um which is a uh a gaming hub that will feature reviews, features, and videos alongside trailers, polls, sweepstakes, pre-orders, all sorts of things. How to find a store event. The content is provided by IGN, and the first event will be the midnight launch for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake. And finally, PR platform PressEngine has announced a new event called The Pre-Show, which is a new physical event taking place in London that will debut games due for release over the next 12 months. The event focuses on hands-on discovery over digital game reveals.

That's it for today's episode of The Game Business Show. Thank you for sticking through for us. As I say, if you want to make sure you don't miss an episode of our show, you can subscribe to us at the gamebusiness.com. You can also become a paid subscriber, which genuinely means the world to us. If you want to become a paid subscriber, that'd be amazing. Next week, we've got an interview with Meta, particularly their Horizons uh team around their new prompt-based gaming stuff that they're talking about. It's It's It's a good chat, that one. It's It's not a long episode, but it'll be out on Tuesday. And yeah, we've got a lot coming in next week. We're hopefully I'm still waiting on some information I can dive into what's going on in the world of video game piracy. But, that's it for me today. Until next time. Thank you for tuning in.