Report
Mobile grows while PC declines in NCSoft’s Q4 financial results
The Lineage M publisher’s financial results paint a mixed picture for the MMO publisher
Staff
Chris James
Job Title
CEO
Contact chris@steelmedia.co.uk
About A footy game fanatic and experienced editor of numerous computing and game titles, lively Chris is up for anything - including running Steel Media! (Madman!)
Articles by Chris James
New Plan
Square Enix mobile games underperform as publisher signals it’ll rebuild business
Lowest sales quarter in 2018 and 2019 financial years for smartphone and browser sectors
Bird’s Eye View
Rovio and Resolution Games partner for Angry Birds VR: Isle of Pigs
Available on Vive and Oculus Rift now
Rune-ing To The Bank
Summoners War exceeds 100 million global downloads
Five-years after launching
Clash Of The Titans
Apex Legends battle royale could get mobile cross-play
One million players in eight hours
Forging Ahead
InnoGames revenue at all-time high as mobile sales grow 37% in 2018
Mobile takes 50 per cent revenue share in key US market
Indie Spotlight
Indie Spotlight: Small Island Games on creating puzzle odyssey Haiku Adventure
"We’re hoping to celebrate the original craft of woodblock printing and allow people to explore it in a new way"
Jobs In Games
Jobs in Games: Hutch's James Levick on how to get a job as a director of technology
"Be persistent and don’t worry if you get rejected - you’ll get there"
Well?!
What industry trends do mobile indies see on the horizon for 2019?
Our mavens weigh in
Indie Spotlight
Mountains' Ken Wong on moving on from Monument Valley to Florence
"I felt like I wanted to grow on my own and I wanted to see what they could do without me"
Demonic
DENA and Platinum's World of Demons possibly canned after App Store removal
The hack and slash game had initially soft-launched in Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia in June of last year
Valued
Which simple tips deliver the biggest value to developers?
Evasyst's Mark Ollila, Madfinger's Marek Rabas, Gamevil's David Mohr, Gram Games' Jeremy Glazman and Pixel Federation's Martin Jurášek weigh in
Uh Oh
Hyper-casual in 2019 "may be even more complicated to succeed without the product and marketing help from expert publishers”
Voodoo's Celine Droit spoke about the coming year in hyper-casual at Pocket Gamer Connects London 2019
Frozen
As many as 6,000 games could be stuck in China's licensing backlog
The waiting list for those titles could be two-years also
Magic
Voodoo's portfolio of games builds up over 1.5 billion downloads
That number grew 50 per cent over the past four months
Bank On It
Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery maker Jam City lands $145m
Funding led by JPMorgan, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Silicon Valley Bank, SunTrust Bank and CIT Bank
Star
Supercell’s Brawl Stars racks up $63m in its first month
Players spending up to $2m a day
Charts
Weekly global mobile games charts: Roblox a top grosser in the UK
Charts from December 31st to January 6th
Say My Name
New Breaking Bad game in development for mobile from Narcos: Cartel Wars studio
San Diego-based games developer FTX Games to spearhead development
Wavey
Subway Surfers dev SYBO picks up EA and Rovio vet to head up strategy and operations
Naz Amarchi-Cuevas is promoted to chief commercial officer, while a slew of licencing partners for SubSurf has been revealed
Super
Clash Royale leads the way as Supercell takes $1.4 billion in revenue from 2018
Brawl Stars brought in $46m despite only launching in December
Charts
Weekly global mobile games charts: Roblox moves up Western download and grossing charts over Christmas
iOS and Android charts from the US, UK and China from for the week of December 24th to 30th
Blacked Out
FoxNext Games reveals Alien: Blackout mobile game
Alien: Blackout could launch as soon as January 24th; more stories based on Amanda Ripley planned in other mediums
Restart
The indie spirit behind the rebirth and growth of the Australian games industry
"We have to share the knowledge that we keep to ourselves and the things that scare us. We have to connect"
Indie Mavens
The mobile games that stood out most to indie developers in 2018
Our indie mavens weigh in
Unstuck
China's big games freeze finally comes to an end after nine months
New licences set to be issued for fresh launches
Ich Bin Ein Berliner
From Gram Games to Voodoo: Alexander Willink's vision for the new Berlin studio eyeing a future outside of hyper-casual
"Berlin has a unique video games community that embodies a passion that is exciting and vibrant, while highly skilled"
Invested
Atomico's Alexis Bonte on what's to come for the investment landscape in the games industry
"I believe that with the lower valuations and rising marketing costs we are going to see continued consolidation in the industry"
Gold Star
Brawl Stars nets Supercell over $5 million in opening week
Comparatively, it made $6m from its one and a half years in soft-launch
Game On
Candy Crush Saga was the top grossing mobile game on the US app stores in November
Supercell’s Clash of Clans and Roblox also featured
Super Data Energy
How is Brawl Stars performing on the download and grossing charts for Supercell?
We chart Supercell's fifth release through its first week in the charts
Spotted
Activision and Tencent’s Call of Duty Legends of War surfaces in Australia on Android
The classic shooter is currently in Alpha
War And Peace
InnoGames on taking over Warlords from Wooga and making it all its own
“We had to keep track of our existing community, whatever changes we did had to be considered with them in mind as they like the game as it is”
Legal
iPhone XS and XR could be banned in China amid Apple-Qualcomm battle
Though Apple maintains that its handsets are still for sale in the People's Republic
Oh No
Mobile ad intelligence platform SafeDK finds ‘thousands’ of in-app ads auto-direct users to porn sites
Firm claims to have used its User Ad Journey tech to track the ads and find their origin
Up
Animoca Brands Q3 revenue rises 283 per cent year-over-year following Crazy success
The Chinese firm has also consolidated its position in blockchain through a string of investments and acquisitions
Strike
Marvel Strike Force has earned over $55 million worldwide
To date, FoxNext’s superhero RPG has been downloaded over 13.7 million times
Huge
Monster Strike and Puzzle & Dragons have grossed more than $7 billion each
More than five years later, Mixi’s game is still experiencing revenue growth
India
India will be home to 310 million gamers by 2021, report claims
Research suggests that by 2021, half of India will have played at least one mobile game
Monumental
Monument Valley worldwide revenue climbs to over $25 million
Non-euclidean puzzler has made almost 18x its reported budget back in revenue
Not Bad
Tencent's Honour of Kings made $185 million in April 2018
Fortnite meanwhile generates $296 million across platforms
Creatively Speaking
Inkle, Laser Dog, Creative Assembly and more games companies named in Creative England 50
List celebrates top companies in UK creative industries channelling diversity and taking creative risks with ‘resonating messages’
G5 Financials
Hidden object specialist G5 Entertainment grows revenues to $43m in Q1 2018
Net income reported at $5 million
Fortnite Android
Epic eyes summer release for Fortnite on Android
Mobile version of battle royale hit to get smaller install file and new updates
Power Of Ip
Lineage M spikes NCSoft profits up 570% year-on-year to $189m
But revenues are down quarter-on-quarter as Lineage sales stabilise
Mena Expansion
PocketGamer.biz expands with new Arabic-language sister-site PocketGamer.me
Steel Media partners with leading Jordan games publisher Maysalward
Pocket Gamer Connects
Meet Niantic, Netmarble, EA, King, Super Evil Megacorp, Ubisoft, Zynga and more next week at PG Connects San Francisco
Join the cream of the mobile games industry in West Coast America for an amazing two-day conference
Ready To Float
Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi files for world's biggest IPO since 2014
Could value company at as much as $100 billion
Nintendo's Potential
Nintendo could grow revenues by $2.5 billion from IAPs and subscriptions, says Newzoo
Market research firm looks into the ways Nintendo can improve its revenues
Most Read
How NetEase's mobile PUBG-likes are performing, HQ Trivia eyes $15 million funding, and KamaGames on Facebook Instant Games
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