Why Warframe (and Other AAA Shooters) Struggle on Mobile

I want to bring one example here and I think because basically what I took away from this is that the Destiny was made for executives cuz they looked at all the numbers and like hey we want a piece of this fat pie and maybe for the Chinese audience which is it's not resonating Destiny mobile I mean or whatever it's called. And then I kind of looked at you, Phil, you said a couple of times Warframe in the last episode and I wanted to doublecl Warframe because in my opinion, Warframe is a perfect example that kind of shuts the book on this [ __ ] And Warframe, for those who don't know, it's a sci-fi looter shooter, kind of like the first big looter shooter that was released 2013. So that's almost a year before Destiny. And we don't know how much Warframe makes, but Epic's core documents estimate that Warframe on Steam had $150 million revenue in 2019, making it a fourth most profitable third party game on the platform. We know that

Tencent acquired Digital Extremes, which is developer and the publisher of Warframe in December 2020. And the game is also available on all the consoles and switch, which probably lands it in total of like 200 $250 million a year game. So based on this data, of course, they made the mobile version and it seems like this game was sent out to die. I remember there was a whole pre-registration campaign. I actually signed up early. It was, you know, downloaded automatically on my device. And it's weird like I went to the the background of the story. So it was co-developed with Finnish game studio called Nitro Games. Um, and they made the mobile version.
Auto auto fire
a copy of Auto Fire. Like no offense to Nitro Games. It's actually even a public company with like 13 people. 20 25 for maybe 50. Anyways, they're great folks through and through, but I have no idea how they had like they they shouldn't have any business developing a billion dollar franchise on such a small studio. So, it felt like the whole Warframe

mobile was a deliberate self-sabotage or something like I don't know. So basically my point here is you have a great free-to-play PC console game, it get ported. The numbers are horrific. Nobody goes inside to understand what it is. But kind of summarize like, hey, we shouldn't do this anymore. So all these projects that are coming out, they're basically just not getting any marketing because they're showing Warframe and like look, Warframe hit the wall. We shouldn't be doing anything. I need to revise something that I said because this is actually a great example of this, right? because I know for a fact that I said back in the day that this was a good idea for a lot of these publishers to outsource their mobile game development to Chinese developers and I still believe that like that is a good shot on goal for them because someone like Ubisoft, someone like Bungie, someone like Blizzard cannot make a successful free-to-play title on the marketplace. Period. End of sentence. Right? And so I agree with that. Right? This was the right shot on goal. What I'm trying to tell you is that these guys made the right shot on

goal. They made an amazing game. They have really deep monetization design, but the shooter is not working. Like this is game is not working in the marketplace. Like besides these core group of people that bought the game initially who are monetizing reasonably well, you know, initially anyway. So, but this doesn't broaden it out. UA costs are all through the roof and stuff, whatever. So, maybe I shouldn't have brought in a 16Z light speeded on this one, but because but nonetheless, yeah, Warframe is a great example. Like, this was the wrong way. This is not a strategy that I would have recommended is to fi find some small developer to build out a mobile shooter like this.
Well, hold on. What about the switch skew though? Why would they do a switch skew? Why was this a part of the strategy? Like it the the corruption runs deeper
than just doing a mobile skew. Like how in God's hor it's horrific.
It's horrific. It's it's just like a cursorary glance of like, hey, maybe a hard rated emish hardcore sci-fi RPG doesn't match with the Switch audience.

Like,
yeah. No, that makes no sense either, right? I mean, Warframe is a great game, by the way. I I don't I don't want to discount that one. This is not mice nuts. This is an amazing accomplishment of what these guys have done with this franchise. This is like one of the OG free-to-play games that crushed it on PC and to I think much lesser degree on console. And the one thing before we we wrap on that is CPIs and UA is in an extremely different place than when COD Mobile launched in 2019. That was, you know, preIDFA. It's much more expensive now. It's harder to find these people. So, I do think that there is a broader, you know, kind of market around how difficult it is to promote. And there, and by the way, there's like all of these shooters out there. And so, something is going on in the mobile shooter market that just isn't allowing those to find success. And I think they're still competing with the VR games that we talked about last time. All right, I know that we want to skip the section, but Phil, come on. Like, you took out the point where you said that Minecraft had a 25% increase

in daily active users.
Oh, that wasn't a supporting point for you. That was
How is that supporting point?
Because what we're talking about when we talk about these lifts is the area under the curve, the marginal uplift from where they previously were to where they are now. And so all you've shown me is that for one of the most successful movie franch franchises of all time and right now we're looking at mobile and console dauus from sensor tower which has the video game insights data it was a very small bump in these things and so multiply that by arpow and that has a very small uplift in revenue and that is for the greatest most highest upcase Minecraft you got this little little dinky bump. So dude,
my point no, my point on franchises is you are not looking at the franchise. You have to look at all boats rising. It is everything about the franchise. Yes, you're going to see some increase in games, but you're also going to see hundreds of millions of dollars in toy sales, softline sales, all of the other.

That is my point that there is an uplift. It might not be like the magical I'm launching a game uplift that you would want to see.
There's a reason that when I go to Disney, I pay like 40 bucks for the Spider-Man Mickey Mouse ears versus the $30 normal Mickey Mouse ears. Like there is a reason for that I grab the Oreos rather than like the Dunkaroos. Like don't me wrong, you are right on a fundamental level. I just again this line item is small and it's disappointing that this is the best we can milk out of this.
They tried. They had a whole live op strategy around this too. That's usually the criticism. and it's a live service with really active players base. So, it's like this should be one of those like really good case studies as to the uptick, right? Like versus someone that comes out with a game every like six years or something and then it has no bearing whatsoever, right?
Completely agree. I think Fallout Shelter is interesting. Remember, of all the things we've looked at, Fallout Shelter had the biggest spike because remember freeto play has uncapped spend, right? So, now it's like you got to counter that as a part of your strategy. I think a better study of this would be

like uplift in Marvel games. I think would be curious across the entire mobile ecosystem to kind of look at the GDP impact.
I wonder if that's even like a little bit less because there's so much Marvel stuff going on and the way that they do promote each and every you know character. I mean Marvel has struggled a little bit lately. The same is true for Star Wars. All of those games add those characters in. I just think it's like diminished over time because there's so much of it. Anyway, let's get to the next topic. Newu has a new free games report that's out. It's called Global Games Market Report 2025. They have a free edition. If you go to their website, you sign up, you get it. So, this includes global forecast through 2028. So, they do a a typical outlook that Phil loves to yell at them because actually they do a lot of reforcasting and corrections throughout the year now, which I think is great that they do that. So there's platform insights, a preview of the first special focus topic, modernizing release windows, datadriven launch insights, release

timing, early access, best practices, and how attribution unfolds after launch. So that is what is in the report. Okay, so now you want to get to a bunch of the charts. So we're at 188.8 billion in revenue. So that's up 3.4% year-onear from a player standpoint. The number of players worldwide is up 4.4%. Console is actually leading this growth. It's up five and a half percent fueled by none other than the Switch. Uh there have been a few great releases as well. We can imagine once GTA 6 comes out that's going to also bolster that. PC revenue is up 2 and a.5%. This is from growth in China and Japan outpacing Western markets. Phil, you love to talk about this, how China and Japan are just, you know, really driving a lot of those Steam and PC numbers. Mobile is slowing in the Asia pack region, although it's still the biggest segment. 100 little over 100 billion, up about

3%. Payers, so this is always interesting. Payers was up 5% to 1.6 billion. This is growing faster than total players, though the average spend per payer is slightly declining. So, you know, Cres, you always talk about looking at Roblox, looking at other platforms, and keeping an eye on payers. So, that's an interesting trend. The last one is that Gen Alpha is reshaping PC gaming, making up a larger share of the platform's player base. So, this one is interesting. Offline after Ethan was on a couple weeks ago, we were talking about like this trend that Gen A and Gen Z are hanging out on Steam on Friday nights. they're picking a new game for five bucks. They play together and then it's kind of like a this disposable instead of going to a movie, you know, we're going to play a game and then every week we're going to play a different game. And so I thought that that trend was kind of highlighting here in this data point and it might be something for devs to keep an eye on is

like how do you market and attract players that you know have this share of time use case. So kind of interesting. Thanks Nuzu for sending us all the info. Mishka. Oh, sorry. Nuzu that just said that Gen Z is no longer paying for games. Like it's [ __ ]
AR. No, that was Scon.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, that was Scon. Okay. Okay.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. That's this thing makes more sense. Sana makes no [ __ ] sense. Just to be clear,
that point just to not to defend to clarify was primarily a comparison like April 24 to April 25 showing that decline.
I renew my objection to that nonsensical analysis. Don't you just miss when New Zoo would do those cloud gaming updates and esports? That's ancient. It's so much more fun.
No, they're hitting a lot of interesting topics.
Yeah, I know. I know. And and regarding that, Nuzu will be on the podcast next Monday and it's in the full version. So, if you have any questions for New Zoo,

join the Deconstructor Fund Slack channel. If you're there, just just post any questions you would like to ask about the industry, the market, and I will ask them maybe in the podcast.
My first question, why didn't you adjust for inflation? This is zero growth.
I'm adding it. This is
Oh my god, it's like real growth.
2 and 12% that's inflation and consoles fake news.
Switch doesn't matter for anyone except Nintendo shareholders.
This is true.
And they would say, well, there are also exchange rate issues that were bringing something down. That's always the exchange.
I'm just throwing buzzwords into
All right. [Music]