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claw game handjob posted:In a move that absolutely nobody could see coming after their initial acquisition spree, the Embracer Group is about to begin chopping off heads to become "...a leaner, stronger, more focused and self-sufficient company". Sometimes I think these people are just addicted to laying off employees and when they run out of expendable employees they just buy up companies to acquire more of them.
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Jun 13, 2023 10:22
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AG3 posted:Sometimes I think these people are just addicted to laying off employees and when they run out of expendable employees they just buy up companies to acquire more of them. Embracer announced a few months back a multi-billion dollar development deal fell through, so I dont think they wanted to do this per se.
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Jun 13, 2023 10:31
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I'm really curious who that deal was with because the only realistic theory I've heard is it was Amazon making a deal for Luna stuff, since Embracer and Amazon have that weird deal with Tomb Raider and Amazon probably would've wanted Lord of the Rings games on Luna before Gollum came out. This was super inevitable though, they used a pile of Saudi money to get in on the acquisition rush and it seems that only after spending all that money that they've realised the properties they've bought are not that huge and fundamentally they're still the artist formerly known as THQ.
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Jun 13, 2023 11:03
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I'm hoping this isn't gonna hurt their smaller studios/publishers. Coffee Stain has been knocking it out of the park.
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Jun 13, 2023 11:14
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njsykora posted:I'm really curious who that deal was with because the only realistic theory I've heard is it was Amazon making a deal for Luna stuff, since Embracer and Amazon have that weird deal with Tomb Raider and Amazon probably would've wanted Lord of the Rings games on Luna before Gollum came out. This was super inevitable though, they used a pile of Saudi money to get in on the acquisition rush and it seems that only after spending all that money that they've realised the properties they've bought are not that huge and fundamentally they're still the artist formerly known as THQ. The other rumour was it was with Microsoft for development support, but who knows.
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Jun 13, 2023 11:37
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The open letter says that selling off studios is one option they're considering. It also says they (currently) have 17,000 employees. According to various internet sources, approximate headcounts at other game companies (that may be entirely wrong): Ubisoft: 20,600 Activision-Blizzard: 17,000 Xbox Game Studios: 16,400 EA: 12,900 Sony Interactive Entertainment: 11,000 Take Two: 8,900 Nintendo: 7,100 Sega: 3,400 Capcom: 3,200 Konami Digital Entertainment: 1,800
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Jun 13, 2023 20:26
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Barudak posted:Embracer announced a few months back a multi-billion dollar development deal fell through, so I dont think they wanted to do this per se. still this was inevitable given their buying spree over the last years, most likely just earlier with the deal falling through but absolutely to be expected
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Jun 13, 2023 21:28
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You mean I have to pay back all those cheap pandemic loans whose interest shot up exponentially? Bwaaaah? Fire everyone! Dumbasses lmao.
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Jun 13, 2023 21:40
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ErrEff posted:Konami Digital Entertainment: 1,800 Didn't realise it took that many people to build pachinko machines
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Jun 14, 2023 05:12
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Barudak posted:Embracer announced a few months back a multi-billion dollar development deal fell through, so I dont think they wanted to do this per se. It's great seeing such great industry leadership basically pull the business equivalent of 'betting it all on black'. Gambling that much poo poo on a single business deal? Jesus christ. Whats frustrating is that they'll still make out like bandits while all the studios they've acquired will be consumed for this poo poo.
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Jun 14, 2023 05:35
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https://twitter.com/gamedevdotcom/status/1669013074253344769
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Jun 14, 2023 18:35
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Oh good gaming industry news for once.
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Jun 15, 2023 05:23
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sucks for unity. I think like over 70% of their revenue is tied to mobile ad space
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Jun 15, 2023 09:26
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haldolium posted:sucks for unity. I think like over 70% of their revenue is tied to mobile ad space Directly. A significant chunk of engine sales is tied to ad performance for their customers as well.
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Jun 15, 2023 13:24
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Any particular reason why that might be? I wonder if the novelty for phone game hell is finally wearing off and people are actually educating themselves and their kids about the glorified crane games they all are.
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Jun 15, 2023 14:58
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Any particular reason why that might be? I wonder if the novelty for phone game hell is finally wearing off and people are actually educating themselves and their kids about the glorified crane games they all are. My guess would be likely that hardware uptake has had an effect. Year on year smartphone shipments were down 22-23 pretty significantly which is either the market actually finally having been saturated or simply people looking at current economic conditions and tightening their belts. This would have a pretty obvious knock on to game sales, you're less likely to pick up a new phone game when you're already conscious about budgets and also still running your older phone with all your old stuff anyway.
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Jun 15, 2023 15:01
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I suspect younger generations are a little more savvy with IAP. Parents have let their kids go wild on phones and tablets - they learn from a young age that you just gotta click to get past the pop-ups. People 30+ are probably the largest market for IAP.
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Jun 15, 2023 15:12
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Fruits of the sea posted:I suspect younger generations are a little more savvy with IAP. Parents have let their kids go wild on phones and tablets - they learn from a young age that you just gotta click to get past the pop-ups. I don't think this is quite true, but also in the last few years I've noticed prepaid credit cards become much more common among kids. So it could be as simple as kids suddenly having to use their own money to buy them and not having access to the infinite money glitch that is yelling at your parents until they buy you the gems to shut you up. If it's related to ads though I wonder if Apple's Ask Not To Track stuff is related.
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Jun 15, 2023 15:18
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If they're comparing it to the previous year, then it's just post-covid drop. 2020 and 2021 were insanely good for mobile games as people didn't have anything else to do.
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Jun 15, 2023 15:19
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That's interesting! Might be a regional thing? Don't think I've seen any kids with their own cards in my area.Bucnasti posted:If they're comparing it to the previous year, then it's just post-covid drop. 2020 and 2021 were insanely good for mobile games as people didn't have anything else to do. This is a really good point. Lots of industries have reported a major drop in revenue when it's actually just going back to pre-pandemic levels.
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Jun 15, 2023 15:20
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Fruits of the sea posted:That's interesting! Might be a regional thing? Don't think I've seen any kids with their own cards in my area. It might be a British thing, banks here have always gone hard on children's accounts, and prepaid cards filled by the parents (and the UK's labour laws making it legal to hire 13 year olds) feel like the next logical extension of that.
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Jun 15, 2023 15:25
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Could also be some economic stress to account for less purchases
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Jun 15, 2023 15:40
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Bucnasti posted:If they're comparing it to the previous year, then it's just post-covid drop. 2020 and 2021 were insanely good for mobile games as people didn't have anything else to do. This would be my guess. I'm betting we're going to continue to see post-COVID shocks at individual companies and entire industries through the 18 months - although the most severe ones are probably behind us, future ones will continue to be more niche like this.
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Jun 15, 2023 15:47
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a lot of big mobile games like genshin and star rail have PC and console ports so it might also just be that players aren't necessarily playing them on phones anymore. If your game is high-end enough presentation wise to justify it then a PC port is ideal because it means google or apple isn't taking a cut of purchases.
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Jun 15, 2023 15:48
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Shinjobi posted:Could also be some economic stress to account for less purchases This I've seen also applied to general falls in new game sales, games are £70 and no-one has any loving money.
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Jun 15, 2023 15:51
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Any particular reason why that might be? I wonder if the novelty for phone game hell is finally wearing off and people are actually educating themselves and their kids about the glorified crane games they all are. My bet is is both that and 'leading indicator for the economy.' https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/ea-says-ai-regulation-and-unionization-could-negatively-impact-business 
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Jun 15, 2023 17:30
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Jun 15, 2023 20:23
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Fruits of the sea posted:I suspect younger generations are a little more savvy with IAP. Parents have let their kids go wild on phones and tablets - they learn from a young age that you just gotta click to get past the pop-ups. Where is the bulk of mobile game revenue? For all the anime gatcha games it's like 80-90% Japan/Korea/China. I also question the concern because apparently 8% growth rate for 5+ years is completely insane and unsustainable but the moment it slightly drops the knives come out. I would assume if you look at the long term it is perhaps leveling off after a massive run of 130% growth since 2017.  The article says they saw a drop of $250mil to $200mil a month, which % is a big chunk but still means those games are basically money printers. If anything it's just an excuse to plead poverty while they gut their workforce.
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Jun 16, 2023 00:06
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pentyne posted:Where is the bulk of mobile game revenue? For all the anime gatcha games it's like 80-90% Japan/Korea/China. China is hilarious amounts of money if you can get your game approved for release. But the party only releases so many, and even fewer foreign games. Japan, Korea, US are big. There's also a bunch of whales in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, etc.
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Jun 16, 2023 00:23
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I was looking at some of the statistics and was actually totally caught off guard by the apparent obsession for "simulation" games in Japan and the rest of the world's complete disinterest for the same genre. The whole report is actually a pretty interesting read.
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Jun 16, 2023 00:31
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It might be a case of country-specific terminology, because IIRC when you say "simulation game" in Japan they would think you mean "tactics game" or something like that (someone please correct me on this, all I remember is that "simulation game" doesn't have the same meaning in Japan as it does in the West).
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Jun 16, 2023 00:54
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Fruits of the sea posted:I was looking at some of the statistics and was actually totally caught off guard by the apparent obsession for "simulation" games in Japan and the rest of the world's complete disinterest for the same genre. The whole report is actually a pretty interesting read. Germany loves a good sim
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Jun 16, 2023 01:03
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Fruits of the sea posted:I was looking at some of the statistics and was actually totally caught off guard by the apparent obsession for "simulation" games in Japan and the rest of the world's complete disinterest for the same genre. The whole report is actually a pretty interesting read. That's for sports, the bars are a bit off from the labels at the bottom.
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Jun 16, 2023 01:07
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Any particular reason why that might be? I wonder if the novelty for phone game hell is finally wearing off and people are actually educating themselves and their kids about the glorified crane games they all are. I don't have any official insights, but just anecdotes. What I have noticed is that several of my extended family that have engaged with mobile gacha crap in some capacity have just stopped, citing that it 'seems like a scam' after their drug of choice went out of service a few times. It seems like you can only run that scam then shut the game down and run it again so many times before people see the real shape of things. Dragalia Lost specifically seemed to shock a few people when it shut down and turned them off of mobile entirely.
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Jun 16, 2023 05:23
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I wonder how much that sports/simulation shrinks if you cut out Uma Musume, which is like the #1 top grossing mobile game in Japan. But also which statistics are you looking at? I don't see anything like this in the unity report linked above.
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Jun 16, 2023 05:28
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Ibblebibble posted:It might be a case of country-specific terminology, because IIRC when you say "simulation game" in Japan they would think you mean "tactics game" or something like that (someone please correct me on this, all I remember is that "simulation game" doesn't have the same meaning in Japan as it does in the West). and yeah uma musume is one of the biggest games in japan and is actually just a track racing management sim
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Jun 16, 2023 05:28
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Shooting Blanks posted:A big part of it is the combination of so many jobs transitioning to WFH since COVID kicked off, and the CoL in Austin absolutely skyrocketing over the past 5-25 years (pick your timeline). Add the fact that traffic in the Austin area is absolutely hellacious and you need to already be a homeowner with decent equity, or have some other very good reasons for sticking around. Yeah, COL in Austin skyrocketed to the point where it was just as cheap for me to move back to ... Orange County California of all places. Property taxes and reassessments killed me in Austin area, I didn't factor it in when I moved out there. I didn't expect housing values to basically double over the past few years. And I'll be blunt, Austin ain't worth it, it's high cost of living city with non of the high cost of living perks. Right now seeing a lot of studios fumbling around with RTO mandates and backing off in some cases.
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Jun 16, 2023 06:48
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RPATDO_LAMD posted:I wonder how much that sports/simulation shrinks if you cut out Uma Musume, which is like the #1 top grossing mobile game in Japan. You have to sign up via email and get a link emailed to you. https://images.response.unity3d.com/Web/Unity/%7Be779a16e-b41d-4411-9872-1517786b50e6%7D_2023-Mobile-Growth-and-Monetization-Report.pdf
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Jun 16, 2023 06:49
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I did download and skim it but I didn't realize people were talking about the ad-clickthrough-rate chart. "Japanese consumers are 13% more likely to click on a mobile-game ad for sports games" is a lot different from what it sounded like the thread was discussing Also my uma musume point is kinda a meaningless non sequitur in that case. On another tack, the unity report's focus on offerwalls is actually kind of hilarious if you think a little further about the industry-wide dynamics in it. They say some users are never gonna pay, you should instead monetize them by giving them "offerwalls" which are basically "install and play X other game (which paid us for advertising) and we'll give you some ingame currency". So basically, you should figure out who your least valuable, least-likely-to-pay-money-in-a-mobile-game users are, and then get other game devs to pay you for installs/clicks from those users. Which means the devs paying to be placed in the offerwalls are specifically buying worthless users who guaranteed won't make up the ad/acquisition cost. Advertising is a crazy market. RPATDO_LAMD fucked around with this message at 07:11 on Jun 16, 2023 |
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Jun 16, 2023 07:09
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All the mobile games I've worked on have been whale driven, that means US, Europe and the Middle East. There are guys in the Middle East spending 7 figures on mobile games. Asian markets are really hard to break into if you're not an Asian developer, but if you can manage it, there's gold in those hills. Japan is especially hard for western games, it's rarely worth the cost to localize something for JP. Years ago I launched a game in mainland China, it was a nightmare of hoops to jump through and it flopped pretty hard (probably because it was bad).
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Jun 16, 2023 07:33
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