Welcome to PocketGamer.biz's weekly rundown of the stories clocking up the hits, picking up the click-throughs and generally keeping the advertisers happy by serving up page views.
Or, if you'd prefer, the top five stories currently dominating our readers' attention.
Each week, we'll be counting down the biggest news from the previous seven days, giving just a glimpse of the industry's big issues, from five to one.
Don't blame gamers for free-to-play failures, says Grey Area's Eric Seufert
It's fair to say that, despite scores of notable successes, some developers handle going free-to-play better than others.
According to Eric Seufert - head of marketing & user acquisition at Grey Area Labs it's wrong to blame players for not taking to free-to-play releases that flop, however. As ever, the main reason why games fail isn't down to gamers, but rather the games themselves.
"For a free-to-play game to be fun, it must utilise big data; it must recognise when players are willing to purchase in-game goods and allow those users to do so as often and to as great of an extent as they want," detailed Seufert.
"Free-to-play games don't fail because their players don't understand the business model they fail because the developers don't."
Opinion: Developers, are you ready for round 2 of the smartphone wars?
Commentators may have complained that Apple's iPhone 5 comes with only the most rudementary of updates, but PocketGamer.biz editor Keith Andrew believes those that have been included the switch to 16:9, for instance are nonetheless important.
Five years in, he believes they signify Apple hitting the reset button, somewhat. With Nokia, HTC and Motorola all also unveiling new handset ranges, it's time for the smartphone wars, part 2.
And the change that will come as a result is something we should all welcome, whatever the costs.
"Just as the majority of developers are bedding down in a market will still don't truly understand, so any acceleration in innovation threatens to muddy the waters further," said Andrew.
"But that's what drew consumers to smartphones in their millions in the first place: the sheer speed at which iPhone and co. changed the way we used mobiles for the better."
Apple shakes up user identification in iOS 6
Such is the focus on all things Apple right now that iOS 6 stories are consistently racking up the hits on PocketGamer.biz.
The week before last saw planned updates to the App Store rate highly. During the last seven days, it's been Apple's UDID replacement.
Dubbed the Advertising Identifier, the tool is to be mandatory for all advertising networks operating on Apple's platform in the future, though it's implementation is to be rolled out rather than forced from day one.
The Charticle: 1 year and 13 million downloads later, DragonVale still rides high in the iOS top grossing chartsOur new weekly look at the games jostling for position on the app store charts is proving popular.
Last week it was DragonVale which has enjoyed an unbroken 366 days in the iPhone's top grossing charts in the US that formed the focus.
"We have seen consistent month over month active user growth since we launched the game last September," explained Backflip Studios' CEO Julian Farrior..
"We are currently seeing more than 1.5 million daily active users and 5 million monthly active users just in DragonVale."
Opinion: Nintendo's Wii U has the power to cross the console-mobile divide
Top of the pile last week was Pocket Gamer editor-in-chief Kristan Reed's look at Nintendo's Wii U, and why from a mobile perspective it'd be wrong to underestimate it.
"The worry is that by underspeccing the Wii U in graphical terms, Nintendo has left itself wide open to being perceived as behind the curve by a full generation," said Reed.
"But at the end of the day, gamers aren't sold on specs, but on the quality of software, and as long as Nintendo has enough in its locker to lure people in, it doesn't really matter what industry commentators have to say on the matter."
Hot Five
With a fine eye for detail, Keith Andrew is fuelled by strong coffee, Kylie Minogue and the shapely curve of a san serif font.
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