New game digest: Fortnite, Rocket League, Walking Dead, Guild Wars, Monster Hunter, more
There's also a game about cats and soup, The Division's PC launch, a new Netflix party game, indie releases and more in this week's round-up.
Scopely and Niantic on getting that seismic $3.5bn megadeal over the line
Scopely chief revenue officer Tim O’Brien and Niantic president Ed Wu chronicle the late nights and knotty technical problems they encountered on the road to that blockbuster $3.5bn acquisition.
On the podcast: Xbox’s weird ‘North Star’, Sybo and Subway Surfers, App Store emulators, Peridot, more
This week’s inside view of the mobile game business.
Emulation arrived on the App Store two years ago – 60m downloads later, what’s changed?
The developer behind new emulator Provenance is managing to cover his costs with IAPs through the App Store – but, like many others, they would love to see Apple offer more help to the developer community.
Data digest: Skillz gets $420m, PlaySimple’s $355m IPO, US and India market stats, Delta Force, more
We've also got the latest ad charts, Stillfront figures and more funding news in this week's round-up.
That rumoured Subway Surfers movie is still in the pipeline, sort of – and so are more spin-off games
CEO Mathias Gredal Nørvig says Sybo is still trying to find the right format for a big screen adaptation of ‘the most downloaded game of all time’, Subway Surfers. In the meantime, Subway Surfers City is off to a solid start and there’s another spin-off that’s quietly entered soft launch.
Xbox wants to ‘restore the core’ and grow daily active players – so is mobile part of the plan or not?
If Xbox’s new ‘North Star’ is daily active players, mobile must surely be central to what’s next. So why is it barely mentioned in new boss Asha Sharma’s manifesto?
The soft launch games you need to know about
Take a peek at the games in testing from Supercell, Playrix, Rovio, Miniclip, Moon Active, Zynga and more.
Niantic Spatial is closing its virtual pet game Peridot
Three years after launch, the ‘spatial tech’ firm is shutting down one of the mobile games left behind when Scopely bought Niantic’s bigger titles.
The Xbox mobile store isn’t dead yet
“Mobile competition still matters and we believe the future of play should be more open,” says new Microsoft Gaming boss Asha Sharma.
“What players don’t realise is that their favourite games right now were already built with AI”
Google Cloud’s games boss Jack Buser says practically every top studio is using AI to develop games more quickly, and for less. But there’s still a lot of concern around telling players about it.
Tim Cook oversaw one of gaming’s biggest platforms for 15 years but didn’t seem to notice
Will incoming Apple CEO John Ternus give a little more love to games on the App Store? Probably – it’s hard to imagine him being more dismissive of games than outgoing boss Tim Cook.
Supercell boss Ilkka Paananen’s BAFTA Fellowship is ‘for the entire mobile games industry’
He was awarded a BAFTA Fellowship on Friday in honour of his work as Supercell boss plus his contributions to the games industry as an investor, mentor and philanthropist.
Jobs digest: moves at Scopely, Rovio and Socialpoint as Duolingo hires Wild Camp and Side Quest goes public
There's also moves and promotions at Star Stable, Google, Stillfront, AppLovin, Playtika and more in our latest round-up.
James Acaster to star in new Apple Arcade game Perchang World
The British comic and cohost of the wildly popular Off Menu podcast is the narrator in a new physics puzzler from UK studio Perchang.
Candy Crush maker King on AI use, layoffs, workplace culture – and the competition
We spoke to King VP and head of live ops Eva Ryott about last summer’s layoffs, King's use of AI, questions over workplace culture plus how the Candy Crush Saga team is responding to fierce competition in the puzzle genre.
