Hot Five

Hot Five: September 5th. The biggest stories from the last seven days, in a bite-sized digest

The HOTTEST stories on PocketGamer.biz in the last week

Hot Five: September 5th. The biggest stories from the last seven days, in a bite-sized digest

Start your week with a Monday briefing of the most read articles from the global mobile games industry in the last seven days on PocketGamer.biz:

There's never a quiet week. The last time we gathered here it was to feature a few great guest posts, as well as touch on #Toywars - Hasbro and Mattel's re-entries into gaming - which I suspect will be something we'll be seeing the first results of over the next six months. This has been a very different week, with a lot of the major players in the mobile space making moves in various directions. Some stories that didn't make it into the big five were whoppers too — IO Interactive expressing interest in mobileNetEase snapping up Quantic Dreams and Dire Wolf Digital acquiring Fandom's tabletop business, to name a few.

But, as decided by where the most eyes landed on our site, below are the biggest five stories on the site from the last seven days.

1) The Pokémon Company sues six Chinese companies

Litigation and IP conflicts aren't exactly uncommon in tech industries - however, whenever anything adjacent to Nintendo comes to the foreground it's always big news. In this case, The Pokemon Company, which is jointly owned by Nintendo and Game Freak, have turned their gaze toward half a dozen other entities for getting too close (or, indeed, cloning) to Pokemon.

I don't know about you, but I feel that as Pokemon has played more outside of the classic structure, there have been a lot more games that have tried to capture its original essence. That said, it's not those games that are listed here; It's games which have basically taken characters, species and artwork directly from the series and distributed them as their own. The article shows an example which shows Ash, Pikachu and more being used to advertise one of the targets of legal action.

2) PlayStation Mobile makes its first acquisition

Back at the start of August we wrote about how Sony was hoping to realise their mobile goals with a new division, well, they've already snapped up their first studio: Savage Game Studios. Not much is known beyond that, but word has it that they're well positioned to work on a first person shooter which is a great fit for mobile and a solid fit with Sony's back-catalogue of IPs. Killzone, Resistance and SOCOM spring to mind, however Warhawk, Syphon Filter and MAG are all due a revival IMO.

3) Unity and ironSource’s merger moves ahead

The time of the Unity merger dominating headlines might well be over, but there are still plenty of big steps ahead to make a future where ads company IronSource merges with engine manufacturer Unity. This week's news was that Unity has called for a shareholder meeting between both parties, however a date has yet to be set for it.

4) Video game platform Roblox has acquired virtual gamified social events company TriplePlay

UGC (User Generated Content) is clearly going to be a major focus over the coming years, and - inevitably - will be core to the future of games. That's why Roblox keeps cropping up in conversation over here on PG.biz. As a company, there might be little love for mobile's current form, but it's got a presence there and what they're doing is - very much - showing a lot of other companies the way through the minefield.

Roblox has scored a lot of wins over the past few years, and was easily one of the winners in lockdown, seeing transformed audience numbers as a result. It makes perfect sense that they want to expand on their value as a 'place where people meet' and so snatching up TriplePlay - a gamified social events company - makes perfect sense. 

5) Google Play Games for PC enters open beta in five countries

A month doesn't go by where I don't kick my way into a work chat screaming about 'The Singularity': That inevitable point where everything with a screen can run anything designed for something with a screen. At that point, everything will be a Pocket Game, right? Well, five new countries are getting a little sampling of that future, as Google Play Games will mean that they'll be able to play a selection of Android on their PC - Good times! 


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