Hot Five

Hot Five: Supercell invests in Wild Games, DeNA games profits slump, and King is working on a Crash Bandicoot mobile game

The hottest articles of last week

Hot Five: Supercell invests in Wild Games, DeNA games profits slump, and King is working on a Crash Bandicoot mobile game

To help you keep on top of a busy news cycle and the latest hot topics in mobile gaming, each week we round up the five most-read stories on PocketGamer.biz.

Read on and digest...

5. Ubisoft moves further into mobile with acquisition of Kolibri Games

Ubisoft has acquired a 75 per cent stake in Kolibri Games, best known for its game Idle Miner Tycoon, which has seen over 104 million downloads since launch.

The acquisition went through on January 31st 2020, with an option for Ubisoft to fully acquire the studio over the next four years.

4. Update: King taps Crash Bandicoot license for new endless runner

King is apparently once again dipping into the IPs of its parent company and developing a Crash Bandicoot endless runner for mobile.

The developer did confirm it was "exploring opportunities to bring Activision IP to the mobile platform", though how far along this particular project has come is anyone's guess.

3. 2020: What's next for hypercasual?

Hypercasual is still the genre to watch as we go into 2020, and the clever folks at ironSource have been looking pretty intently at it for their look at the next year.

"Looking ahead, it’s likely we’ve seen the end of the hyper-growth in hypercasual installs, which has passed the initial growth spurt that a new category enjoys as it launches and as creators race to get their slice of the cake", writes CRO and co-founder Omer Kaplan.

2. DeNA game profits slump as Pokemon Masters and Mario Kart Tour fail to take off

You'd expect that DeNA's partnership with Nintendo would have lead to soaring profits, but its latest financials paint a very different picture.

DeNA's Game Business segment posted revenues of 60.1 billion yen ($548.1 million), down 3.8 per cent year-on-year, and profits of 8.9 billion yen ($81.2 million), down 32.6 per cent year-on-year.

1. Supercell invests $1.1 million in new Stockholm-based developer Wild Games

Wild Games had already quietly announced the fact it received investment from Supercell back in December 2019, but now we know that the Clash of Clans maker had put forward $1.1 million.

We spoke with the new developer's CEO Robert Wasser about why the studio sought such high-profile investors, and what kinds of games the team is hoping to make.

The Wild Games team. Photo credit: Mikael Sjöberg

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Ric is the Editor of PocketGamer.biz, having started out as a Staff Writer on the site back in 2015. He received an honourable mention in both the MCV and Develop 30 Under 30 lists in 2016 and refuses to let anyone forget about it.