Week in Views - Olympic esports, Gameloft's cross-play move, and what mobile gaming's history tell us about its future
- The PocketGamer.biz team share their thoughts and go that little bit deeper on some of the more interesting things that have happened in mobile gaming in the past week
The games industry moves quickly and while stories may come and go there are some that we just can't let go of…
So, to give those particularly thorny topics a further going over we've created a weekly digest where the members of the PocketGamer.biz team share their thoughts and go that little bit deeper on some of the more interesting things that have happened in mobile gaming in the past week.
Craig Chapple
A brief history of the mobile games industry
If there’s one thing that’s consistent in the games industry, it’s change.
I wrote about the last 15 years of the mobile games industry, and it’s fascinating to see just how much the sector has evolved in a short space of time.
We’re now at another period of change, forced somewhat by platform policies. Due to increasing global regulation and the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (which according to rumours this week of an impending Apple fine, answers the question of whether or not it has teeth), alternative mobile marketplace are set to appear.
I wrote recently about the dire state of discoverability on mobile. While Steam is certainly not perfect, at least Valve’s strategy is designed around creating a good consumer experience based on games they want - not how much extra revenue it can extract from publishers.
Perhaps the Epic Games Store and Xbox’s web marketplace can create a better ecosystem for games publishers on mobile than currently on offer by Apple and Google. We could even dream of the platform holders actually trying to compete with them! (Probably not).
Then of course alternative billing can drive down the 30% fee, as Apple’s alternative business terms show (notwithstanding that core technology fee).
And another big trend is the cross-platform move. Just this past week we’ve seen announcements for NetEast’s Eggy Party, Sunblink’s Hello Kitty Island Adventure and Gameloft’s Asphalt Legends heading off mobile. Meanwhile, others are starting to leave mobile completely for some projects - Gameloft and no Steer Studios are prime examples.
There’s a lot to learn from the history of the industry, and the sector is going through yet another time of change
Some of the top games may have stayed the same, but this business is always evolving. The lesson? Never get too comfortable with the status quo. Even the innovators at Supercell have had to face that reality.
Daniel Griffiths
Unity pulls out the big guns, appointing 'Major Nelson' Larry Hryb to new Director of Community role
When you need a job doing well, you call in a professional and I was delighted this week to see that Unity - a company with a major, community-wide perception problem - have gone all out to set the ship straight.
To understand the importance of Larry Hryb and the Major Nelson persona one has to remember that Microsoft were once a small fish in the gaming pond. Back in the Windoze days their biggest game was Minesweeper and their most famous 'character IP' was Clippy, the parasitoid paperclip who laid his eggs inside Microsoft Office…
"Looks like you're writing a letter…" Yeah, that guy.
While giving Hryb credit for Xbox might be a little to broad, giving him credit for making Xbox Live a service that cared about its players and listened and acted on what they said certainly fell under his remit, and he did a great job of wearing the Microsoft suit while playing the Xbox game.
I therefore only have two worries as to the success of Hyrb's post Microsoft retirement gig.
One, after having only a single year of rest after 22 years at the frontline at Microsoft, does he realise what a tough gig he's got ahead of him? And two, does he still get to be Major Nelson or is his old gamertag the property of Microsoft?
Either way, as Unity's powers that be continue to pay the price for their runtime fee farrago, and the new CEO works his magic its great to see them taking their users seriously.
Paige Cook
The International Olympic Committee's executive board endorses esports at the Olympics
The International Olympic Committee will vote next month at the 2024 Paris Games on whether esports should have its own Olympic esports games.
Of course, this isn’t their first dabble with esports. We’ve already seen a virtual Olympic series established in 2021, but this would take things to a new level.
I’m sure that the Olympic esports would still be a very separate thing to the overall Olympic model. I’m not sure many people would be switching from the pommel horse to a round of Counter-Strike, but having the IOC backing a full Olympic esports event makes sense to me.
We’ve got the first esports world cup in Saudi Arabia soon, with a massive $60 million prize pool, so why not have the Olympics next?
It’ll be an excellent platform for esports and will provide a platform to let players battle it out to be the best of the best.
I am a massive fan of the Summer Olympics, but it's no secret that viewership has been down for some time. While I don't expect esports to change that,but it is a great way for the IOC to capture a new, and perhaps younger audience.
I, for one, would love to see this happen and to see the continued growth of the competitive gaming scene.
Aaron Astle
Eggy Party to expand onto console with crossplay Nintendo Switch release
There was a Nintendo Direct this week! As an unabashed Nintendo fanboy, these presentations are always a treat revealing plenty of new games to look forward to (playable Zelda, anyone?). But one huge reveal was exclusive to the Japanese Direct…
That announcement was NetEease’s Eggy Party going cross-platform via the Nintendo Switch next month as its first move beyond mobile. The gameplay trailer for Switch is also only on Nintendo’s Japanese YouTube channel, which would all logically suggest that it’s only coming to Switch in Japan.
Then came a tweet from the game’s global Twitter account one day after the Direct, announcing the game to its Western audience, but still with no English trailer. Does this mean it's launching on Switch worldwide? Why else announce it on the global account? But why the delay?
It’s a strange one. Whatever the behind-the-scenes here really is, Eggy Party is coming to Switch on July 19th, and console owners will be able to play against the game's 500 million players on mobile, too.
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