Hot Five: Roblox’s new mobile-first AI tool, H1 2026 genre analysis, and Zenless Zone Zero makes $600m in two years

To help get you primed and ready for another week in mobile gaming, we’ve curated the biggest stories you need to know from the last seven days.

1) Zenless Zone Zero hits over $600m on mobile in two years - but it's just 17% of Genshin Impact

HoYoverse’s Zenless Zone Zero has surpassed $600 million between Google Play and the App Store over its first two years.

The urban fantasy action RPG launched globally on July 4th, 2024 and made the bulk of its mobile revenue in year one, with a 51% fall in player spending during year two.

2) Inside Poki's vision for the future of browser gaming

Poki has grown 10 times over to 100 million monthly players over the past five years.

COO Stein Janssen revealed insights into the platform’s journey and why he believes the web is again becoming a core platform for games.

"The biggest technical shift was moving from Flash to HTML5," he said.

3) Google and Epic withdraw settlement as Play Store overhaul moves ahead

Starting July 22nd, Google will begin to carry rival app stores on the Play Store in the US.

This follows Epic Games and Google withdrawing their joint attempt to modify the court-ordered changes to Android app distribution in the country.

4) Roblox unveils mobile-first AI game creation with new Build tool

Roblox has revealed a mobile-first AI game creation feature called Build, allowing users to generate basic games from text prompts in-app.

Users can describe a game setting or gameplay concept to be created by Build, which generates a playable starting point that can then be refined. It shares the same back end and AI models as Roblox Studio.

5) H1 2026 genre analysis: strategy stumbles, RPGs fall, and puzzle revenue ramps up

Mobile games generated a collective $40 billion in gross player spending in H1 2026, led by the strategy genre.

After dethroning RPGs in 2025, both genres actually declined in player spending year-over-year, but strategy stayed on top with its strong lead, while the puzzle genre shuffled into second.