Speaker Spotlight
PGC San Francisco speaker spotlight: Zorka.Mobi's Dmitry Liapin on dealing with influencers
Dmitry Liapin offers advice on influencer marketing campaigns and tells us what to expect from his talk
Linked In
Steam Link app lets you play your PC games on your mobile
Launches week of May 21st
Augmented Reality
Google’s ARCore 1.2 gets social
User can collaborate in the virtual space
That’s A Lot Of Money
Fortnite Mobile hits $50 million in revenue on iOS
Player spending increased 293 per cent following the launch of season four
Winning
Empires and Puzzles takes home Best Breakthrough Hit from Google Play Awards
Broken Rules also won the Standout Indie Award while Pocket Gem snagged the Community Award
Avenger Royale
Thanos brings the Infinity War to Fortnite
Two giants collide in a limited-time mode for Epic's smash shooter
Google Io
AI shines at Google keynote event
The first day of the Mountain View showcase introduced us to a range of AI enhancements
This Report Is Quite Operational
Sims Mobile and Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes help propel EA Mobile bookings to $659m in FY18
The games giant has two new mobile titles set for release in the next year
Flip The Switch
Virtual Console unlikely to be coming to Nintendo Switch Online
The games giant also revealed data cloud backup and pricing for Nintendo Switch Online
Its Time To Play The Game
Google Play Instant opens to all Android developers
The internet giant revealed the update at its I/O 2018 developer conference
Mena Expansion
PocketGamer.biz expands with new Arabic-language sister-site PocketGamer.me
Steel Media partners with leading Jordan games publisher Maysalward
Epic
Epic Games set to host series of workshops and panels at Pocket Gamer Connects San Francisco
The talks will centre on the latest Unreal Engine mobile advancements
Pokemon Goes On Tour
Pokemon Go Summer Tour heads to the US, Germany and Japan
Events will feature a host of interactive adventures and special challenges
Indie Spotlight
Indie Spotlight: Laser Dog's Simon Renshaw on Ava Airborne and the passion of indie games
"Personally, I’m a big believer in doing what you really want to do. I draw the things I love for a living and I couldn’t imagine a better job"
Hot Five
Fastlane's rapid success, Facebook Instant Games adds in-app purchases and PUBG’s first week revenues
The weeks' hottest articles
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
Q1 Financials
Glu Mobile cuts losses as it hits record $86 million in bookings
Design Home, Covet Fashion and Kim Kardashian: Hollywood the key performers
Pocket Gamer Connects
Sign up for one-on-one mentoring at Pocket Gamer Connects San Francisco
Learn from the best at the IGDA Mentor Cafe, Monday May 14th
Why Not
Activision Blizzard has eyes on battle royale's mobile success
King has been working on a Call of Duty title for mobile
Installed
CrossInstall launches new playable mobile ads service for Facebook, Snapchat and Google
New service offers design, development and quality assurance for playable ads
Rewarding Creativity
IMGA founder on rewarding creativity and its ambitious plans for 2018
Maarten Noyons discusses hot industry trends and brand new events
Lumos
Jam City slashes Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery IAPs following player backlash
Only some players are receiving the discounted prices
New Studio
Google spins up mobile social games start-up Arcade
Developing a new kind of social network
Crushed It
Candy Crush Saga revival propels King revenues to record $534m
King’s monthly active users jumped up to 285 million
Decent
Apple posts best second quarter ever with revenues of $61 billion
International sales accounted for 65 per cent of Q2 revenue
United
Unity introduces scriptable render pipelines and C# Job System in 2018.1 update
Latest version includes 330 new features and improvements
On The App
Annual consumer app store spend to increase to $157 billion by 2022
Mobile app downloads will also increase to 258 billion by 2022, according to App Annie
Four In A Row
CSR Racing 2 and Words With Friends 2’s strong performance extends Zynga’s profit streak
Plus Willy Wonka’s Sweet Adventure in testing
One Share, One Vote
Mark Pincus’ decision to relinquish Zynga majority voting rights reflects “my confidence in the company”
Founding CEO is stepping back
Less Mario, More Rpg
How Nintendo plans to create an annual $1 billion mobile games business
Starting over with a clean slate
Formulated
Gumi’s The Alchemist Code racks up five million downloads worldwide
The Japanese mobile games developer is celebrating with special in-game events
Chicken Little
PUBG Mobile’s first week revenues on iOS only a fifth of Fortnite’s
Players outside of China spent $700,000 in its first week of monetisation
Indie View
The Big Indie Pitch interviews: From tiny bubbles come big things
We speak to Pine Street Codeworks about their multi-awarding winning game Tiny Bubbles
Instant Hit?
In-app purchases come to Facebook Instant Games
But monetisation through Google Play will smaller less returns for developers
Into The Wild
Facebook wants to make virtual reality more accessible with $199 Oculus Go launch
F8 Developer Conference attendees get free headset each
Marvellous
Marvel Future Fight breaks the 70 million players mark
Netmarble celebrates the milestone by extending its in-game event campaign
Competitive Gaming
Amazon’s $100,000 Mobile Masters esports tournament returns in June
Games include Power Rangers: Legacy Wars, Survival Arena, World of Tanks Blitz and Critical Ops
On The App
Mobile games revenues to hit $70 billion in 2018
Revenues will account for more than half of the $137.9 billion made across all platforms
Key Release
$1 billion mobile title Disney Tsum Tsum comes to Facebook Instant Games
'Introductory version' launches globally
Face Games
Snapchat gets ‘Snappables’ augmented reality games
Weekly games launch on the platform
On The App
Games featured on iOS 11’s Games Tab see 450% more installs
Largest increase in percentage was seen in the Medium List which resulted in a 451 per cent increase
Time Is Money
How does Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery monetise?
Casting a consumerius spell?
Lost And Found
Nintendo taps up Cygames for new RPG game Dragalia Lost
New RPG will be released this summer
Not Bad
Fortnite made $223 million across all platforms in March
Revenue was up 73 per cent from February according to SuperData
Switching It Up
Nintendo’s mobile games brought in $359.5 million in the last year
Overall revenue increased 116 per cent to $9.66 billion
Events
Blockchain Gamer Connects San Francisco speakers: The third wave
The talent behind CryptoKitties and CryptoWars, plus Super Game Chain, PlayTable and more
Spellbinding
Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery tops App Store download charts in first 24 hours
Tops rankings in UK, US, France, Germany and Spain
Ir Guide
Mobile games industry financials calendar
Keep up to date with financial releases with this handy guide
Content-tastic
Pocket Gamer Connects San Francisco 2018 schedule is live
Niantic, King, Super Evil, EA, Zynga lead best line-up to date for May 14th to 15th conference
Updated
Bidalgo launches self-serve tool for optimising Google universal app campaigns
The mobile app user acquisition platform aims to help marketers grow apps