Host Devin Becker sits down with Sam Aune (Gaming Analyst at Sensor Tower) to break down Sensor Tower's State of Gaming 2026 report, which covers the current mobile, console, and PC gaming landscape.
The conversation spans genre-level signals and platform shifts, such as why 4X strategy bucked mobile’s downward trend to what’s driving PC’s growth. Devin and Sam unpack recent outliers and inflection points like how creator-focused hits outperformed AAA, Battlefield 6’s comeback, the rising importance of cross-platform parity for shooters, and what GTA 6 could do to the broader “social” game landscape. They close with the biggest observed behavior change from 2025 to 2026 and a grounded look at what State of Gaming 2027 might imply for teams planning for the next cycle.
Read the full State of Gaming 2026 report: https://sensortower.com/report/state-of-gaming-2026?utm_source=naavik&utm_medium=partner&utm_campaign=stateofgaming&utm_content=report
We’d like to thank Heroic Labs for making this episode possible! Thousands of studios have trusted Heroic Labs to help them focus on their games and not worry about gametech or scaling for success. To learn more and reach out, visit https://heroiclabs.com/?utm_source=Naavik&utm_medium=CPC&utm_campaign=Podcast
We’d also like to thank Neon – a merchant of record with customizable webshops optimized for conversion – for making this episode possible! Neon is trusted by some of the biggest names in gaming and can help you sell direct without the typical overhead. To learn more, visit https://www.neonpay.com/?utm_source=naavik
This transcript is machine-generated, and we apologize for any errors.
Devin: Hello everyone. I'm your host, Devin Becker, and today I'm delighted to be joined by Sam Aune, gaming analyst Sensor Tower. And Sensor Tower is an intelligence platform that empowers companies to understand consumer behavior and market performance across mobile apps and more. Great platform. We use it all the time. Definitely a good shout out for that. But today we're gonna explore the stated gaming industry as outlined in a very recent Sensor Tower report that came out not too long ago, and just kind of focusing on some of the major shifts. But why don't we just start out by talking about you, Sam, just for a second. So, can you just give a quick overview of your background and what you do for Sensor Tower?
Sam: Yeah, sure. Hi everyone. I'm Sam, lead gaming insights analyst at Sensor Tower on our Market Insights team. So that basically means I, I lead our global, global gaming reports, blogs, gaming insights, requests across the business. Before working at Sensor Tower, I worked in product and games for a few years. Before that, I was actually an English teacher in, in South Korea and Japan for a while., I'm also a lifelong gamer, so getting to watch the industry as part of this role is, it's basically a dream job for me.
Devin: Awesome. Could you just tell us quickly about the Sensor Tower report that you guys recently used when you put it out and maybe even just where people could find it.
Sam: Sure, yeah. We just released our biggest report of the year State of Gaming last month. In prior years, it was the State of Mobile Gaming since Sensor Tower was historically focused on mobile. But with our acquisition of Video Game Insights or VGI as we like to call it, we were able to broaden the scope this year and turn it into a full State of Gaming report across mobile, PC and console.
I don't know the exact year all off the top of my head, but I'm sure if you Google Sensor Tower State of Gaming, you'll be able to find it pretty quickly. So yeah, please take a look. If you haven't, I'd love to hear anyone's thoughts on that.
Devin: Awesome. Yeah. And, and congrats on the video game insights pickup that now covers console and PC as well. So, it's pretty nice to have that all in one place. Definitely a fan of that just because that is definitely hard to get good data on.
Sam: Yeah. So it, so it seems it's great to have them team on board. They're, yeah, really excited to work with Carl and the rest of the team.
Devin: Awesome. Why don't we just get into some of the, the bigger issues here.
Of course, mobile is somewhat your bread and butter still. So why don't we just start with that. We'll cover some of the topics here. Maybe give a little more detail than the report does, or maybe some more analysis on, on what it covers. But the latest report notes that while mobile got downloads are declining still, revenues remain relatively steady.
Are, are games basically getting better at monetizing as smaller pool of players or is there like a shift in the whale demographic? Like how is that kind of working out at the moment?
Sam: Yeah. So unfortunately, Sensor Tower data doesn't currently let us break revenue down cleanly by cohorts like whales versus numbers.
I know that's really commonly asked for, so maybe we'll try to work towards it in the future, but currently it's hard for me to answer that with hard data. What, what I can say is that declining downloads don't actually necessarily mean fewer players. It just means that there's less demand for like, a new game to play from a player perspective.
So as the market matures and older games keep holding onto their audiences, many cases, those players are investing more over time, makes those games harder to displace. There's those privacy changes that have made targeting high value users were difficult, fewer downloads to be able to compete for.
So it's, it's harder to, for new games to break through, though not impossible by any means. But yeah, I do think that this means that the stories that mobile has become more mature, more, more incumbent driven market, there's more consolidation towards the top, and it kind of makes it harder to scale new games.
But yeah, many of the top games, I would say, are definitely monetizing their existing player bases better than ever. So, allowing revenue to kind of hold flat year over year despite decreasing download.
Devin: Is there any specific strategies you're seeing in live ops or retention or anything like that that's helping with that monetization or like any additional insight you could provide?
Doesn't necessarily have to have hard data, just maybe some more insight into why that's happening still.
Sam: Yeah, sure. So on at a market level, one trend we're seeing in in live ops is, is a shift towards progression events that drive short to meet midterm engagement and retention. We just recently picked up another, acquisition from Play Liner, which covers the LiveOps and they go in and document all sorts of different events and, and strategies that are going on inside of LiveOps games.
And so, I went and, and looked inside of their, their library of, of different events that they cover. And yeah, it looks like there's just more progression events as, percentage of new events that are coming out year over year. As opposed, as opposed to monetization or, or other. Kinds of events and many of the Starbucks examples, progression and monetization are, are pretty tightly linked actually in a lot of these really, really strong events.
Historically, the Battle Pass has been around forever. It's probably the most widespread version of that, but it's not the only model. We're also seeing time lit events recently trending, building around milestones that unlock additional rewards or offers that kind of sits between the bow pass and, and the piggy bank almost they give players clear reward break point than a piggy bank, but they, they'll have a free track.
So maybe it's a little bit easier to balance from an economy perspective on the free to play side. Another big trend I'd call that is social, not just in retention among mobile, really across almost every major metric and in platform even. So if we're talking about social gaming on mobile, I would say Roblox is, is really clear cross-platform example, but most of its players are on mobile.
But you also see things like in the biggest four x games that really took over in, in 2025, Alliance War are a huge reason why players are retaining while they're, why they're paying. There's co-op events in casual, all sorts of different tournaments and so forth. Putting aside the wave of social games on PC console even.
But more and more I would say social motivation is a core part of why players stick around and convert. And games that successfully built social systems into the core experience rather than treating them as a layer on top are generally in a much stronger position of retention. I would say.
Devin: That makes sense. I mean, one of the things I noticed too is, and you mentioned Forex and, and stuff like that, it was that it seems like these, some of these core midco genres are strongly overtaking casual and especially hyper casual with the whole shift in the market around Monet monetizing players better, and, and retaining them, things like that, as opposed to acquiring new players and, and downloads increasing.
Does this look like something where we could see a, a huge reduction in the casual market, or at the very least. Maybe some crash in the hyper casual market, more so than we saw first off, when like the, the privacy changes happened.
Sam: Yeah. This is, this is something we've been watching closely. I think people have been watching to see how these different changes in the market level have been affecting hyper casuals specifically as addition to the other product models as well.
So, yeah, installs definitely declining across mobile more broadly, and I, I think for sure, a lot of hyper casuals publishers have felt faced real challenges over the past few years. But one of the most interesting things I found while creating this, the state of gaming, is that hyper casuals activity is actually not moving in the same direction as the rest of the market in 2025.
Hyper casuals downloads are up while most of the product models sell downloads fall. Time spent was up for hyper casuals, maybe most surprisingly actually, in-app purchase revenue was up quite a bit as well. Hyper casual in-app purchase revenue reached almost $700, $700 million worldwide in 2025, which is up 130% year over year.
And that may sound strange if you're familiar at all with sensor towers taxonomy, because hyper casuals is still primarily an ad monetized category by our definition. But our game IQ team does allow for some limited IAD behavior in. Hyper casual things like ad removal, starter packs, currency bundles, and those seem to be growing meaningfully.
So, when you look at the market level data, it doesn't really point to imminent crash. It actually might suggest that hyper casuals is adapting better than expectations. My own little theory is that hyper casuals has always been a kind of mechanics discovery lab that has to constantly try to find the next sticky loop or die trying.
So, if sheer execution is increasingly becoming a game, only the biggest publishers can win. That means everyone else has to lean more into innovation, to breakthrough. And in that environment, hyper casuals may actually be better positioned structurally than in casual or even some mid-core segments.
Devin: It's definitely interesting to know, like it is obviously one that people tend to panic about.
It's good to know that there's like some level of stickiness there, even if it just requires constant innovation from the developers, both on the monetization side and the the game mechanic side. Forex you mentioned a little bit earlier that was a big growth. I mean obviously it's a genre that's been around for a little while but seems to be doing very well and growing despite a lot of the others.
Why is this specific genre resisting like the general trends. Especially with it kind of being a somewhat saturated genre, like there's quite a few entries. Some of them have been around for a while, some of them have not. Some of 'em have been around for over a decade. What is it that's about this genre that's helping just drive all that? Maybe there's a variety of things.
Sam: Yeah, yeah, for sure, I would say that. 4X strategy growth is primarily driven by a new wave of, 4X strategy games, primarily by Eastern and even like Chinese, Hong Kong, Singaporean kind of publishers. And a lot of the older ones are, are not seeing the same level of growth unfortunately.
And there's, there's two reasons I think this, this big 4X wave is taking over in 2025. First of all, 4X strategy, some of the strongest monetization in mobile. Period. I would say these games, layer progression systems on top of social structures and create real pressure to keep spending, keep showing up.
You're not just trying to beat your opponent in these games like other competitive games. You're, you're trying to not let your lines down. That's, it's, you know, it's a really strong retention and monetization driver. Second, I, I would say the category has gotten really good at building ad friendly mechanics into the actual game.
So last tour has their shooter gameplay that they put in all their ads. King Chaw has their tower defense thing, newer games are continuing that pattern by combining some, some proven ad friendly gameplay hooks. One thing that comes to one game that comes to mind is, last asylum plagues the new Forex that's been seeing some real traction.
They, they take gameplay from. The, my perfect hotel hybrid casual and, and use that in their, their gameplay and, and in their ads to really drive downloads, which is really interesting to see. So yeah, these all have these ad friendly gameplay hooks and they combine that, of course, with the, the mature 4X backend.
So, these games are, I would say they're, they're a little easier to market. They have these mechanics that are just instantly readable and creative. Then you add the fact that many of the top publishers, as I mentioned earlier, are these large Chinese or Eastern publishers that execute extremely well on life ops and ad creative.
And it starts to make sense why a lot of these four X games have exploded despite the broader decline. But what I don't think people should take away though is that this is some magic unique to four x. I think a lot of these lessons really should be transferable. There's no reason deep social monetization can't work outside Forex.
Ad friendly gang play has existed forever in hyper casuals and casual. But, uh, the real story, I think is that Forex has really been better than most genres of innovating on these elements and in combining the ingredients. And that to me points to a broader problem. It feels like innovation in mobile, at least at the mechanics level, it feels a little bit slower than it used to.
It's kind of a broad statement, but it's, it's hard not to notice how much of the casual cattery, for example, still clusters around like match three, merge traditional casino hooks like slots. So, I, I, I would ask rather than why is 4X winning? It’s why more genres aren't really borrowing this playbook as effectively.
Devin: That makes sense. It, it does also have like sort of these long-term hooks with good seasonal cycling, things like that, that seem to work pretty well. That might be a little harder for some of those genres to adapt to. But obviously like these aren't things that are, as you said, specific to four x.
They're just ones that they've refined and polished like over the last decade or two. And, and as you mentioned, leading to some of these new games. Continuing to sort of build and innovate on top of that, which as you, as you mentioned, we're not seeing from the casual ones in, in regards to that. Like are we, do you think we're seeing any kind of shifting to, and this is something that's been discussed for quite a while, this is not like a new thing, but this sort of shift to where the increase of midcore and core players on mobile, like there was, you know, in the earlier days of casual, there was this big rejection of mobile from what we call core players or gamers generally.
Yeah. But the over time it seems like it's shifted towards. Accepting a bit more. This, we're seeing like these very like high quality AA style of games now that are like third person shooters, first person shooters that are like, you know what, almost what you'd see on pc, sometimes PC ports for sure.
Even Rainbow Six Mobile, kind of trying to make a push recently as a, as a sort of port from PC game. Do you think there's a trend towards core gamers at all? Or, or at least like a, at a growing acceptance, rather than a cannibalization of casual, just a, a growth. Of that audience.
Sam: Yeah, it's, it's definitely a trend we're seeing over time as more.
Core games make pushes and, and it feel, it does feel like the core audience has become more accepting of, of mobile games for sure., But looking at the, the games that we were just talking about, the four x strategy games and, and just strategy in general. I guess I, I would say that it's actually, it doesn't feel so much like maturing towards core in that specific instance.
It's maybe more. They're, they're targeting like the casual and maybe hyper casual audience even a lot better. I think a lot of these 4X strategy games, when you play them, there's a lot of, you know, different progression systems. There's a lot of elements involved, but they don't actually demand super strategic decision making moment to moment.
You know, if you're playing StarCraft in 2005 and then you move to last towards survival, it's, it's quite different. Right? But what seems more likely to me is that these games have really become good at requiring broader audiences, including more casual ones. I actually took a look at Sensor Tower Audience Insights on this. One useful feature we have on there is called Personas, which these are groups that we create based on broader mobile behavior. Things like, so personas will include things like core gamers, casual gamers, PC gamers, console gamers, also non-G personas of force, like e-readers, world travelers. So I looked at a cohort of this recent wave of 4X strategy games.
Top persona, not surprising core gamers, which is our, our persona for specifically midcore gamers on, on mobile. Number two is actually hyper casuals gamers. And it think might be a little bit surprising at first, but to me it actually makes a lot of sense. When you look at their ad creative strategy, it really, it really feels like their creative tactics have a lot inspired from hyper casual.
They have, you know, really strong onboarding and Quest systems. Whenever they get into the game, they use these bright, approachable art styles that travel well across Eastern and western markets and the gameplay hooks. Again, whenever you watch it, it does really remind you, I think, of a lot of, of hyper casual ads.
So, to me, this, this suggests that these games specifically aren't really becoming more core. They're, they're borrowing a lot of the hyper casual style acquisition tactics and successfully pulling some of that audience into core.
Devin: That makes sense when you see the ads. Like even when you have that sort of transitionary period as well.
Like something like White Out Survival was a good example of a game where it kind of tricks you and that we did see a trend of that, especially 4X Games. We, like 4X games are intimidating for the casual or hyper casual audience. So, let's kind of ease them into it, uh, and show them that it isn't StarCraft on mobile.
That you can, that you can work your way into this. And I think that's, that's interesting sort of insight that hyper casual has been sort of pulled into this a little bit as well, along with what you said around hyper casual finding ways to adapt. It just kinda makes you think that that is an audience, regardless of whether or not the market is adapting to the, that audience seems to remain.
And it's just how well can you get them in, get them playing, get them monetizing, all that stuff. And not thinking about them as this audience. That's like a wave that comes and goes. Shifting over to pc though, that was a big growth area. And of course, having the video game insights, helps with that quite a bit to be able to pull that kind of data alongside console.
But PC seemed to be seeing like probably some of the biggest growth. And I know there's been a lot of attention on steam lately, both from just general industry interest, but as well as like legal interest it seems. Why do you think PC in general is, is seeing such a, a massive growth despite some of the, the struggles in mobile?
Sam: I just think PC and console. It feels like it has a much healthier, more diverse path to breakout success than mobile does. When you look at mobile growth is really concentrating into largest publishers, biggest games, even some of the older scheme, PC and console. There, there is a lot of that as well.
There's a lot of legacy titles that are taking a lot of people's time and, and, the active users for sure. But the market is still broad enough that they're, you can see AAA games are still live for service games. There's AA games, there's indie games. They all can kind of coexist to a degree in a meaningful way.
And that creates room, I think for smaller teams to win with these innovative viral hits. And we don't see these, this sort of mirrored on a mobile. I think a big difference contributing to this is social discovery. So you see things like streamers, YouTube, Discord communities, friend to friend recommendations.
These are all much more powerful in PC and console that you don't really see in the same way on, on mobile. There's, there's a real audience that really just looks for new games, especially multiplayer or socially entertaining ones recently, and, and to play with their friend groups. Bubble is much less driven by that kind of organic discovery.
It's more, you know, direct. Paid UA established brands, existing incumbents that seem to be driving the market mobile at the moment. So when mobile install growth, stop stalls a little bit. The natural response it feels like is to double down on these existing audiences, monetize them a little bit more, and the market becomes a little bit more conservative.
It feels like fewer launches, like less experimentation and maybe less room for smaller teams to, to disrupt the category and break through. That also kinda feels like maybe why mobile increasingly borrows from PC and console a lot of the new concepts that feel fresh and mobile adaptations, that are themselves elsewhere.
But going back to PC console, essentially, I feel like there's multiple paths to success in this space. Allowing small teams and innovation to coexist meaningfully with triple A blockbusters and pre to play live service titans.
Devin: Yeah, which is interesting 'cause it, you know, obviously they try and promote sort of that diversity on the app stores.
You know, they have their indie sections and like, try and have that. You know, that MultiPro promotion, but I guess one, one aspect of that that doesn't really work very on mobile is the different business models, right? Where it's pretty much only free to play for the most part. On mobile, whereas sure, it's definitely not the case on say, steam, where a lot of it is paid up front.
And I mean, maybe that's part of it as well. But, but it's interesting to see that you would think by now if race to the bottom was kind of the, the strategy forward regardless that we wouldn't see that growth, that we would see steam struggling heavily because it's not free to play dominated. So I, I suppose that provides some hope for game developers that people are still willing to pay for games. That there's still growth there.
Sam: Yeah, absolutely. And I, I think that the, the model of premium news of its death are, are far overblown in the past and, and maybe even today, you know, I think it's really supportive. A model for maybe some of the smaller teams where if you want to build a durable life service, you need scale.
And if you want to just sell a free, have a small team in there and have a paid game, you kind of don't need that many people to, to play the game for a long time. You just need people to, to buy the game at first and, you know, maybe experience and enrichment to their game, their friends. But at the end of the day, you, you sell enough copies and you're, you're probably okay.
Whereas on mobile, or in just free to play in general, you, it's, it doesn't work the same way.
Devin: Makes sense. It, it did seem like though, that there was a kind of, a little bit of a genre dominance on steam. Now, of course, action, which was the dominant thing is, is a bit of a broad category, in general, because, you know, action could encompass practically everything.
At some point or another if there's real time play. But it did seem like there was cer certain trends around action, especially first person shooters or third person shooters, things like that. What do you think made action such a huge genre this, this year in particular?
Sam: So, action. As you, as you noted, it has just so many different sub genres from the Sensor Tower taxonomy folded into it.
So the biggest games that we classify as action that, we're the biggest units sold hits this year where were games like repo games, like peak, these really social viral hits that managed to, to really come out and, and, and just sweep through the market, I would say. So I would say that these games really are targeting to kind of core audiences, friend groups, content creators are the two that I would call out here.
So, friend groups, they want games that create memorable shared moments. The ideal game night. Everyone's laughing, yelling, panicking, blaming each other. Content creators want something similar. Nuance is a little bit different. They want games that reliably generate strong clippable reactions that will engage their audience and travel well on platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Twitch, and Repo and Peak both deliver exactly that to both audiences.
Repo creates these dramatic, funny, scary social moments that make people scream and everyone else laugh. Peak does it through spectacular failure, people falling off mountains, collapsing at the worst time, that kind of thing. In both cases, the game is constantly producing moments that are fun to experience, fun to watch, easy to share.
Once one dig streamer picks up a game like that loop can compound really quickly. Their, their audience sees it, they wanna play with their friends, so they recommend it to them. Other creators notice it's good content, and then you get this big ca cascading wave of attention, and that's how games from small teams can suddenly compete with much bigger titles.
That's why, we've been seeing a lot of growth in action, and especially in Indu in 2025 and in the last couple years even, I would say.
Devin: I guess that goes back to a little bit of something that you're pointing out with mobile, which was the social strategy of things. , Whereas, you know, four x is leading very heavily into it, but a lot of the genres seem to struggle with the social aspect, especially around friend groups, which is different than social with strangers. Right? So like 4X is still—
Sam: Yes.
Devin: Often leaning into social with strangers and sort of those hierarchies that they, that they sort of structure and develop from that, whereas it doesn't seem like. You know, a lot of mobile has stickiness amongst friends and, and maybe that's just my perception. I dunno if there's like really any good data on whether or not people are mostly playing with strangers or mostly playing with friends in any particular genre.
But it seem like that's a big difference in terms of how social is played and, and the way social is structured. I mean, obviously with something absolutely like these, these smaller games that you're talking about, they're, they're only a couple bucks, but they're not free yet. They're still somehow scaling socially, which is an interesting.
Approach where it's like, okay, well this is cheap. Like I could just buy this for a few bucks or whatever and my friend can buy it as well. And you don't necessarily have to like all lay out for like a big four pack or something of the game.
Sam: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's definitely, I would agree for sure that there's, there's just a difference in how social groups approach these different platforms.
You know, I guess anecdotally speaking for me as well, I don't really recommend mobile games to my friends, even though I play them.
Devin: Right.
Sam: I do recommend PC console games all the time to my friends, and that the primary, I think, use case for, for friend groups is just getting on PC on Discord together.
Maybe, maybe consoles for some groups. It's not really mobile unless you're in some of the different areas of the world that are more mobile first. So yeah, it's just a difference in, in social dynamics that makes. Scaling socially seemed really difficult for mobile, although I think we've seen some of that in the past with things like the, the Wordle, which was also available on PC of course.
Right. In different experiences. But, but yeah, it just, it seems like a completely different beast to, to attack.
Devin: Yeah. It makes you wonder too if some of that lack of, uh, social graph of any kind, like so Steam has built in social, whereas, I think it also speaks to the failure of game center. Some of those other attempts to sort of build a social structure on top of it, right?
Like I suppose had Facebook been able to stay, you know, relevant on mobile despite the sort of tiff back forth with Apple and Google and stuff like that, that maybe we, we'd have enough of a social graph for that to matter. Whereas like when you go to recommend to your friend, how do you really connect and you see people like Supercell trying to build super cell IDs to try and sort of build these friend systems cross game and all that.
So it is an interesting thing that we still this far into mobile. Are struggling so heavily with that and, and I don't know, maybe that's a problem area that could be tackled, that would benefit mobile.
Sam: Sure.
Devin: But, I'm interested in, in what other genres as well, like outside of action and sort of social stuff we might be seeing like as a trend towards, in on, on PC.
Like for example, you guys kind, kind of called out a little bit in the report. Simulation is interesting genre, which is also percolated a bit to mobile in a more simplified forms, things like that. What do you guys think it's, is that maybe the next genre to kind of keep an eye on or is that just an interesting data point?
Sam: Yeah. So I would say simulation, especially on mobile, is very. Classify Roblox. So, a lot of times when you see something happening in the simulation genre, it's really just Roblox being gigantic and expanding in Asia or, or what have you. So, I, while I would say that, you know, that is for sure a trend, Roblox being gigantic and worthy of its own conversation in its own right.
Was that indicative of a category level market shift? Maybe, maybe it is, but maybe not in terms of like having multiple different, competitors being able to, to go in, in there and play a little bit. I would say on the PC console side, it's, it's kind of difficult to predict what the next big genre would be from just because PC console is, it's really hit driven and genre momentum is often reflection just of the, the release slate.
So, you know, 2026, so far big releases are like slate aspire to Resident Evil Requiem. So, of course deck building survival horror are really spiking as subgenres and when Grand Theft Auto six releases expect action advantage just to surge. But it's not really a category level market shift, I would say, in that.
So, I, I would, if I were to make a prediction, I would wanna maybe base it just on what genres I think would be affected by some of the biggest trends we're currently experiencing that haven't really been riding the wave as much compared to, to other genres. So, the first trend that come to mind, we've already been talking about it, is, is the social gaming.
Shared experiences, friend, group play, creator friendly, chaos. Still hugely powerful. I think GTA is six, is gonna reinforce that as well. Another big trend I've been noticing extraction. And it's, what's interesting is that it's not really confined to extraction shooters, I think. As well as DNA is spreading a little bit into other genres, I'm noticing.
So, you can see like other, you know, other games taking, taking lessons or pub other publishers, seeing that this is, you know, getting traction. This is getting a little sticky. So, able to, to pull elements of that and, and take advantage. So if you ask me what genre can ride some of these waves that hasn't yet, I, I would actually maybe say RPGs.
They can, they can combine social play, they can have some of the extraction elements. You know, dungeons have been the thing since the beginning of time. I think they can produce a lot of the big reaction moments as well that made games like repo and peak breakout. So well, two examples that kind of come to mind for me personally, just my, my, my personal experience, world of Warcraft, still a huge social experience.
Kind of a unicorn, I, I guess, but just, you know, a big social RPG for sure. One that is, has been attempted to replicate numerous times with, with varying success. But still I think a really interesting case study. And another one is just even off digital gains completely. Dungeons and Dragons is produces, I think, experience really similar to what you see in repo and peak.
So, we're talking about where the next opportunity from, from genres. I feel like there's actually still a lot of white space from, from RPGs that can absorb the, the social and extraction dynamics.
Devin: Well, I think that makes sense 'cause even some of these big action games that we're talking about that were successful, even like Arc Raiders, or even the RPGs, like clear up, like a lot of this sometimes depends still on social, word of mouth, absolute and recommendations seems like even if you're not necessarily playing with your friends, it becomes like a, a topic between your friends.
Like, oh, you talk about Arc Raiders even if you don't play together and things like that. Where is this sort of shared. Experiences. So it is, it's an interesting take on it that doesn't necessarily have to be limited to just social driven games, but that social layer still making a huge difference in terms of word of mouth recommendations.
And also, something I, I kind was thinking about was one of the interesting aspects that you sort of brought up a little bit earlier was compared to mobile, the genre diversification, what we have these huge, broad genres like action and RPG and stuff like that. There's also a huge amount of diversification in those genres.
That you said like can sit side by side, I think is kind of an interesting point in terms of like on mobile, if it's only a few genres, like the ones that market best dominate, and then you don't get like a, like a wider variety of gains being successful. Whereas on steam you do get that because like success can also be a little smaller, but it also could be across a lot of weird niche genres.
That just wouldn't make sense on mobile just because of the marketing. You guys called out Battlefield Six a little bit, of course was like a big surprise hit. And I know it's been talked about a lot, but do you, do you have any particular insights why you think that did so well? Especially against competing against Call of Duty was a big deal.
But just in general, like the bad reputation Battlefield had gotten from the previous release and managed to overcome all that to become that success. It was a big leap for players to try and take
Sam: Sure.
Devin: For it to become that big of a success. Anything, any thoughts on that?
Sam: Yeah, for sure. I noticed a few things going on for, from my end.
So first, you know, some previous battlefield titles, maybe they underperformed, maybe there is some, some criticism for them for sure. But I do think the Battlefield brand still has real weight with shooter players. He going into Battlefield Six's launch, and I think Battlefield Six played pretty well directly into what audiences wanted from the franchise.
Second, I think the marketing campaign very effective for a stretch. It really felt like the battlefield Beta completely took over the conversation. People were talking about how good it felt streamers were everywhere. Game really just built momentum and it created the sense that battlefield was just back in, in a big way.
And then importantly, the game itself mostly delivered on that promise. I, I would argue, there was, there was criticisms for sure, and there users have come down since launch. But if, if you, you know, you sell tens of millions of units at a $70 price point, you've, you've kind of already won.
That said, I, I do think it's important to separate unit sales from durable live service dominance, live service dominance. So, you know, Ford Cat Night Call of Duty, they don't actually need to outsell Battlefield six in 2025 to remain bigger live games by active users, which, which they are. So my read is that Battlefield Six absolutely huge comeback, massive launch, actually hasn't displaced the biggest live service incumbents in terms of ongoing scale.
It's really interesting. PC console might seem even harder to disrupt than mobile in that sense. You know, mobile, we saw two new top games of the year by, by revenue. And in terms of top active users on PC console, it's really just the same, same people in the conversation.
Devin: It's interesting, the, the, especially the point you mentioned about the $70 price point.
So, when we're talking about a lot of these sort of fights over taking the space. A lot of it's, you know, either free to play or a lot of these games are, are hitting sort of these 30 or $40 price points as a way to draw an audience without being this big sticker shock. Whereas Battlefield Six is not as much about monetizing the long tail.
Obviously they try to compared to Call of Duty, which does a lot of that, you know, through their skins and things like that.
Sam: For sure.
Devin: But it's still Battlefield Six, not only overcoming the, the sort of bad reputation, but also doing so at a high sticker prices is a pretty interesting thing to, to, to come back from.
And then on the flip side, another game I wanted to bring up that I think is kind of interesting from a cross-platform perspective is Delta Force, which is one that, you know, borrowing the name of an older game, an older series, but like it has managed to be sort of a free to play hit and disrupt in that space that typically.
I would think we'd kind of reject some of the free to play. I mean, outside of, obviously there's stuff like Marvel rivals and, and things that have managed to do well and sort of the free to play side of that. Sure. Delta Force is also like seeming to have pretty good cross-platform success, both on PC and mobile.
And I don't know if you wanna speak to either of those in terms of like where they may be different and interesting, but I, I thought that was a really interesting one that sort of. Disruptive without being like relatively game changing. It's not like a really innovative game. Managed to borrow from a few different genres.
It seems to have found like a weird kind of general brush audience. I don't know. Any, any interesting thoughts on that one?
Sam: For sure. So, yeah, Delta Force, I would say definitely been a real success from several angles. I, I would say it's more on mobile, though, that it's been clearly a success.
It's number 29 mobile game by revenue in 2025. Number five mobile shooter. Genuinely strong result. I would say for, you know, shooters being in ultra competitive space dominated by the biggest publishers with download, shrinking year over year. But looking at 20, 26 year to date, DeltaForce is, is a little bit.
Not as strong on the PC console side. It's, it's not really in the top 10 or even in the top 50 by average mal looking at VGI data this suggests that it hasn't really established, established itself at the level you would want if you're positioning it as AAA free to play, alternative to Call of Duty, I would think.
So, to me, Delta Force currently looks like, a strong mobile success that has yet to find the same level of traction on PC and console., If you look at the broader markets, I, I think that. Yeah, being cross-platform at the moment is, isn't required. So, you know, a lot of the biggest shooter successes on PC and console in 2025, like Battlefield six, you mentioned Marvel rivals, Arc Raiders already, whether you count that as like an action or, or a shooter.
Of course, all these are all games that found meaningful attraction without mobile presence. And that said, the biggest shooters like Fortnite, Call of Duty PUBG, do have strong cross platform presence. So, it feels like it's not cross platform. It's not a requirement for success, but it's like more of the natural expansion when you're a very top player, you're looking for somewhere to go and you, you just say, oh, there's another platform right there.
And for a lot of these top games that that really worked out for them.
Devin: Yeah, I guess it's, it is just in interesting to me, when you look at it compared to some of the other failures, to try and do a chorus platform like Apex Legends. And then, you know, we have some other ones attempting to come in, like Valorant and things like that.
It seems like there's this, this want to bring those over, but there's been pretty mixed success across those in terms of actually trying to for sure have. And, and when you have it the other way around where mobile's actually talking and I mean, I know you pointed out like it's not like a huge breakout success on PC, but even like at this moment, looking at steam charts is still well above Battlefield Six. In terms of active players, like, just in terms of scale, obviously like, you know, monetization, who knows where, that is at the moment, but long tail wise, it seems to be doing a little better than some of those. Yeah, obviously it's, it's time zone matters and things like that as well because there's, I think, a little bit of a demographic that shifts a little more east for Delta Force sometimes than Battlefield Six, for example.
So it is interesting to see that this sort of like, do we move towards little more of these cross platforms? So, for example, just a couple more like examples that came out. Like we had Destiny Rising started try and push on a mobile. Yeah, we actually had war frame very recently come out with their mobile release.
And I mentioned the Rainbow six one as well. There seems to be this push to try and bring these AAA shooters and other related genres over to mobile whether that succeeds or not. Obviously it seems more often than not that the PC version does better. So is there any reason you think that Delta Force one might be the other way around, despite them being pretty similar in gameplay?
Sam: Yeah, I, I think that maybe just comes from the background. You know, it's coming from, it's kind of a Tencent backed venture here, and Tencent is very much about mobile. They're very much about the Chinese market, where mobile shooters are huge Valor, mobile, you mentioned released in China. It's doing quite well there actually even though it hasn't spread to other markets quite yet, and it feels like a lot of these shooters,.
Are doing well on mobile, are targeting more of the Eastern markets. That said, there are success stories outside, for example, in the US, Free Fire, huge growth in 2025. So that's really another really interesting story to look at. A, again, that's purely mobile as far as, I don't think they have a PC console presence last time I checked.
So yeah, it seems. Going from PC console to mobile can be a tough jump, especially if you're not able to effectively target the Eastern audiences that are able to make games like Delta Force and Valor Mobile scale as well as they have.
Devin: Interesting. I mean, I guess we'll see where the, where the market shifts over time and look forward to that next state of gaming report to see if there's any shift there.
But, it's just an interesting trend I've noticed in terms of like attempts to do some of these things to try and capture that market. I mean, at least Fortnite back on the actual proper app stores now after, after everything that's gone down in the courts between them for one of.
Sam: Since Tara's definitely happy.
Devin: Yeah,
Sam: So sure we're, we're definitely happy to be watching them again.
Devin: Yeah, that, that definitely helps when you get the actual, like in the stores instead of having to go through the site platforms like Epic Store on mobile, which I imagine probably hasn't gotten a huge amount of traction yet.
Sam: Yeah, it's, it's just a little bit more convenient for sure.
Just be able to go and type in Fortnite and get that on your phone. Speaking selfishly.
Devin: One other genre that's been kinda interesting in you to look at, of course, is a broad genre as well, is, you know, with, with 4X doing as well as it has and, and maybe some of the other related genres.
Strategy was generally you mentioned like, StarCraft for example, was kind of a, a genre that was, I feel like a lot more core gamer, PC centric, especially like a lot of the RTS or even, , some of the other types of strategy games that were, you know, these sort of long, complicated games have seemed to have shifted now where obviously there's still some success on pc, but it seems like mobile's actually doing almost better if you're especially looking at four x side of things.
I mean, you mentioned some of the simplifications and some of the ways that it was approached. Do you think there's any other reasons why strategy has managed to make that sort of leap and actually maybe even a little more, a little easier for it to grow versus some of the PC side of things?
Is it just people aging up? Don't have time for that level of game on the PC anymore?
Sam: That could for sure be a part of it if you're, I don't know, I'm a bit older, so I personally don't have the, the, the, the reflexes and the, the a, the, the clicks per, per second or whatever to, to play StarCraft anymore, like I might once have.
So yeah, maybe there, there's definitely people gravitating to more strategy games on mobile, having a little bit less time. So, being able to just do bite-sized gang gang chunks on, on your phone is a little bit, a little bit easier than, than doing, you know, hour long hours, long sessions on, on your PC.
But yeah, this, this whole jump from PC console to, to mobile for strategy has been really interesting to watch. We, we do have some, some different strategy games that are still, you know, league of Legends is still huge on PC for, for certain. But, yeah, it, it, it's an interesting topic because I don't, I don't know if I'm gonna, we're gonna see this in other genres, honestly. And I'm, I'm not positive why, what makes strategy special in that sense of like, declining in PC and, and increasing on, on mobile. Although I will say it is pretty different formulas, as I mentioned earlier, in terms of what, what were the really popular strategy games before and what are the popular ones on mobile now?
And I, I would say that's. Maybe if we're expect looking at other genres, expecting action to, to move, move in a similar direction. Maybe, in theory, you, you think that action is a genre that'll be able to apply some of the same lessons we've seen work elsewhere on mobile, like in strategy, things like deeper monetization, stronger social motivations, ad friendly gameplay hooks.
I think there's a path there. Although looking at the data today the shift looks, doesn't look imminent. Action is kind of struggling on mobile at the moment. But, but actually we also, inference strategy and PC console is permanently dead. Either, maybe the Peak Air franchises is kind of behind us for now, but there's, there's still some sub genres.
We're, we're finding traction. Deck builders for sure was kind of a durable breakout. Hit slate. Aspire Twos seeing really strong CLS and engagement. More than half of Slate Aspire. Two players have already logged 20 plus hours apparently according to, to BGI it's not from the kind of post-launch DAU drop you, you often see.
So that's, I think they've been great, great game also. But they've, they also had a co-op, so another argument for the social side of things.
Devin: I think that's a great point. I, I'm interested too to see if it manages silly Aspire two manages to make it over to mobile because we've seen a lot of those, like RA you mentioned.
Yeah, we got remote. In fact, those who didn't catch it, ball X pit also recently made it over to mobile. And that was one, one of those sort of surprise breakout hits. That was like a sort of indie one. So, we are seeing some of those make it over to mobile. I don't know if they have the same level of success on mobile and it's more of almost like a, well, I'll play this on the go now because I don't have my like a Steam Deck with me or something.
But it's interesting. I just think this cut sort of cross pollination and when we're talking about mobile struggling and PC growing or vice versa, and then attempts to sort of. Go back and forth between the two. Obviously, like we're not in NH where the two can like merge, but, you know, you mentioned action struggling.
Maybe it's just lack of a good controller sort of aspect of things where no one really has like a sort of permanent controller attached to their phone with the, the engage didn't take off, so we're kind of stuck with this, like attach a black order or something to it. Right? And so, I mean, obviously virtual joysticks and stuff like that, there are, you know, some games that define like, you know, bra stars does pretty well for being a very, very action, real time game.
Despite, you know, that that sort of lack, but it is also simplified down. Right? And like Delta Force, as I mentioned, is that's, that's sort of thing that, that struggle to do on there. And , I mean, I know I mentioned a couple of those, but Rainbow Six was a really, really difficult game to port to mobile.
So, I'm curious to see how that managed to handle, because without a controller, it does support controllers without a controller, like you're talking about a lot of different buttons to potentially try and adapt, whereas something like Warframe actually like adapted a ton of controls to like single button contextual controls.
So, you saw one where they actually like really adapted to trying to be like mobile friendly. So, I, we'll see how some of these go and obviously you will as well, since I'll, I'll be seeing it through sensor tower's, eyes especially. So, it's a very helpful to have that kind of follow up data.
Sam: Yeah. You mentioned too, like a really interesting case study that I, that I wanted to mention.
So, I think there's two really bright spots in action despite the broader. Downfall at the moment. One of them is Brawl Stars, which you mentioned really interesting to look at. They had that huge 2024 arc. And then, Supercell in 2025, it was more about Clash Royale, and it feels like Brawl Stars might be doing the same thing again this year.
They've already seen a lot of increase in downloads, and so that's another story to watch for this year. Feels like maybe this is the new thing, like Supercell just chooses a game and that game explodes in this year, and then next year will be a different one., Another game that I think is really interesting to watch in action at the moment is called One State, which is, basically like a GT online inspired mobile title. And there's been more of the, there's been games like this on, in mobile before. A lot of them are just like hyper casual games that find more traction in like India and Brazil than in, say, the us. But one state has been scaling pretty, pretty significantly in the past couple of months.
And it's been in pretty major markets. Like, I wanna say 40% of the revenue about is coming from the us. And then the number two and number three markets by revenue or I think France and Germany. So, it seems to be proving out that GT online sort of. Gameplay can actually work on mobile and in western markets, which is really interesting to see, especially since the controls are, you know, it's, it's not the control are attached to your phone, as you mentioned.
Yeah, it, it kind of seems also a part 'cause it's a very social game with that emphasizes like, role playing. So, yeah, it's kind of, again, I keep going back to this, this well, but adding onto the argument that this, this social gameplay is, is going cross platform. It's, it's everywhere and it's, it's not going anywhere for the moment.
Devin: Well, you mentioned this earlier and, and just now as well around GTA and the social aspect of things and, and talking about, you know, the, the hopefully imminent release of it this year, assuming no more kicking the can down the road. , But you said that the, the, it's likely to have a, like some impact on the social side of things, you know, obviously it's a very social game.
And you mentioned the role playing aspect of it as well, which is a very interesting thing now that they're sort of incorporating that potentially a bit more with having picked up some companies related to that. What impact overall do you expect this to GTA release to have? Because you mentioned it vaguely, but like what more concrete?
Like both on PC and mobile, as you just mentioned, one state, , kind of maybe being something interesting to look at in that same space and maybe even potentially, assuming there's no GTA 6 mobile at the same time, which I, I obviously doubt, does that then go, Hey, we, let's look to mobile also for what to play when we're on the go. Do you, do you expect some kind of specific impact.
Sam: Oh yeah, for sure. So, just looking at the current leaderboards, I guess GTA five, still like the third biggest game by MAU according to VGI data across steam, PlayStation, and Xbox. Huge community, just it's, it's, and it doesn't really seem to have many competitors.
It produces a lot of the same moments, it feels like, as these other social games where it's just chaotic and people having fun and, and doing different things. But in terms of direct comparisons, there's kind of a Darth, honestly, it's just GTA. So, that's really interesting to watch. And so, this huge audience, I feel like is probably going to migrate to GTA 6, assuming that GTA 6 has the same sort of experience, which I, I, I hope it does in, in the short term, you know, it's gonna be a huge black hole just taking time and spend away from, from other social games, I would assume as well. And, but I think GTA 6 is going to bring the social gaming trend to the mainstream even more than it already is. You know, repo and six repo and, and peak where we huge sensations.
But GTA is, it's like a generational release, right? So I think it'll bring this social gaming experience to a huge new audience. And then once it's gonna be, I think it's gonna continue to be huge post release, but. I think it'll also continue to open doors and increase the market size, increase the size of the pie for even more social games post-release.
I suppose you could say there's a chance the audiences will get maybe some social game fatigue eventually, but I don't know. Humans are social animals and even at this current iteration of social gaming guys out, I feel like some form is going to continue as long as games exist.
Devin: Well, outside of the social aspect of things, which you've brought up many times for a good reason, because that is like a huge.
Trend for the last couple years? No, it's, it's, it's great. Like, because I think it's being underutilized still, so it's, it's worth hammering that home. But outside of that, what do you think is the single biggest change in player behavior that you saw during this last period up to this report? Because again, I, I think you would pick social, if I, if I allowed you to put I will.
So let, let's, let's pick a second one, just, just to explore a different area. What would you say?
Sam: This is more anecdotal. This is something that I don't have a lot of heart data to back up, unfortunately, from Sensor Tower. I think that players are getting more and more. Likely to hop from experience to experience.
So there, there are these big games that, you know, continue to have huge player counts. But it's, it's more about, you know, you maybe they come back for Fortnite, OG and maybe they drop off again a few months later and start playing something else. So, the, I feel like there it's more about waves. You know, everyone's playing ARC Raiders for a while, you know.
Last, 2024, everyone was playing Pal World for a while and then maybe it dropped off a little bit. So, I feel like there's more about waves and players are more about finding the next big experience than continuing in one game and having that be their one game, which you might've felt like more in the past,
Devin: I suppose. Roblox being so huge only helps push that trend, right, where it's, it's very much hopping game between game 'cause that's the whole platform. Absolutely. And then Fortnite with their, their UFN islands obviously encourages that as well, so it's. It's an interesting way to look at it in terms of like these sort of tread waves.
Like, I remember talking to game developers in Korea a few years ago, and one of the things that I thought was an interesting insight is how they often tend to all play the same game, as a country it seems. And then like, but for like a very short period of time and then shift to the next one.
So, there's like kind of only one big game at a time. Obviously like that's anecdotal and a little more specific to a demographic, but it is interesting. There's like sort of these, these demographics where that happens. It makes it a little harder to sort of predict whether or not you might have a hit or not, if, if there's not room for a ton at the same time.
But it is an interesting way to look at the market as like, well, don't expect a lot of these games to have super long tail. With a big audience. Well, more of a, you know, a, a long but small tail with some of the more hardcore players. Like, you know, you look at hell divers. Yeah. And there's still a hardcore audience playing that, but it's obviously not sure the, the amount that you saw on the initial release when everyone was super hyped about it.
Sam: True. But at the same time, I think that that's part of why these, this new release of games, they're, they're kind of mid-level price blinks makes a lot of sense. You know, arc Raiders, hell being released for, for what, 40, $50? Somewhere around there. So, they're able to make up a lot of their, their, their costs that way.
And then they have the, the tail end afterwards. It's kind of a, a cherry on top to a degree. They don't, it, it's great to have, and you know, they've seen a lot of success with it, but maybe they don't necessarily need it whenever they've already sold millions of copies upfront.
Devin: Well, based on all the trends you've seen so far, what do you think the state of gaming 2027 looks like in your mind? Like what's different? What are you guys gonna be probably calling out in the next one, or, or some interesting trends that you're, maybe, maybe you don't know where they'll go, but that you're kind of bookmarking your mind, like, I'm gonna keep an eye on this, on sensor tower.
Sam: Sure. So, PC and console side, obviously if it, if it, I'm gonna assume it's coming out, GTA 6. I'm gonna con be constantly talking about that. I feel like in the state of gaming, 2027. But outside of that, I do, I do think we hopefully see meaningful innovation continuing to come from Indian and AA teams outside of that. I think one of the healthiest things, one of the best things I, I, I personally like about the PC console market right now is that smaller teams can still break through, as we've talked about before, and just lot, lots of different experiences.
You can, you can have there. In mobile. I do think it's going to be a lot of continuation of the same to a degree. We're gonna see some more consolidation in the top games. I think Eastern publishers are continued to take over to a degree., If we want to reverse this trend, then Western publishers need to do something different.
But I think that hasn't happened quite yet. I do expect to see another genre breakout, actually, I think four x strategy. We're looking at the, the revenue trend as, as a sub genre. It's the growth is kind of tapering off. So, I think publishers everywhere are gonna be looking somewhere else for the next big opportunity, taking those lessons from four X strategy, but in a different sub genre.
So, in my mind, state of gaming 2027 on the PC console side, probably a market defined by GTA 6 at the top but still supported by a broad ecosystem. There's where new ideas can still emerge. But on mobile, I do expect to see Dallas continue to decrease revenue, probably relatively steady, while the market continues to consolidate into the biggest games.
Devin: Makes sense. That's one of those sort of like, almost boring predictions in a way, but one of those ones that's probably a little more realistic is to say that's how it's been. That's how all gonna go. You guys have been doing these for a while, so it's obviously you kind of see like what is the more realistic.
Predictions for these things. Hopefully, as you said, there's another breakout genre. I'd love to see like some real innovation taking from what Forex learned and applying it to something new.
Sam: Yeah.
Devin: Hopefully not just an existing genre, but actually like breaking something out 'cause we are, as, as you said, seeing a bit of stagnation, , in certain areas like especially western developers that I'd, I'd love to see remedied.
Sam: For sure. I, I think there's absolutely still areas in the market that are, that are right for, for innovation. I know I talked about one state earlier, but there there's been, you know, hundreds of million. There's games with hundreds of millions of downloads in this, the Action Sandbox genre, subgenre.
They're mostly hyper casual, but they, they do have, you know, tons of downloads, tons of players playing these games, and yet no one has really come in and tried to, I don't know, maybe some have, have come in and tried, but it doesn't seem to be, haven't, we haven't seen really success really until, until one state, and there, this isn't the other sub genre that where people are downloading and playing games, but it's just not.
We don't see a, a huge, you know, casual midcore player coming in and, and, and taking advantage. So, I hope to see more of that and taking lessons from games like one state and four x strategy games. And I think those opportunities are out there for, for western publishers or for anyone who are, who are looking for something new to, to innovate on.
Devin: Maybe it'll take, stealing the concept of like using the ads to sort of trick them into thinking it's a much more casual game. And then they come in and it's somehow other aboard, deep genre.
Sam: Yep. That's, I, I predict more of that as well.
Devin: It's worked well. I mean, obviously if people didn't like it, they'd probably be leaving the games once they hit that point.
So obviously it's not necessarily like a negative tread. It's just kind of an interesting observation on, marketing in general games.
Sam: For sure. Yeah, and it's controversial for sure. But, at the same time, I do think that they're trying to solve a problem of explaining what the game is in a second, you know, and it's a really complicated 4X strategy game, so you're trying to explain like, oh, there's some tower defence involved, but there's also some progression involved and there's a hero.
And so, while you might not see that exact gameplay in the game, maybe they're just trying to miniaturize the game loop and, and show it to players make it instantly legible and it's worked. I
Devin: I mean, hey, do you, do you like collecting wood and then put, and then using it to build something? Okay, well that's, that's part of 4X.
So, you know, like I, I don't think it's like a complete mismatch. And it's interesting to laser, laser focus on one aspect of the game that people might find interesting and present in a different way. But I digress. It's a, it's a whole rabbit hole. I'm sure you could go down, but one that I think we'll see as you said, more of, just a couple quick rapid fire questions, then just kind of wrap things up, keep it interesting.
So, first off, biggest surprise of the report for you personally? Something that that actually went, wow, I didn't expect that. Or that I, I didn't see that coming.
Sam: I think it's gotta be hyper casuals growth on mobile. A lot of the broader market trends we've, we've talked about that seem like they should be killing hyper casuals.
And yet it keeps surviving. It keeps adapting. At this point, we probably just need to accept the hyper casuals isn't going anywhere and maybe it's even one of our biggest sources of innovation.
Devin: Yeah, they got, they gotta keep innovating. So, speaking of innovating though, what is probably the most.
Underrated genre. You think that has growth potential? I mean, we're talking about next genres that could break out. What do you think is underrated that has good growth potential over say maybe the next two years?
Sam: Yeah, I'm gonna say RPGs again. They're solid on PC and consoles still, but they're still not filling the space that, I think they could in terms of the writing, social waves and extraction wave and all the, some other waves that we've seen RPGs struggling on mobile for sure, which to me suggests there's, there's some room for opportunity for a new formula there. I, I think when mobile, there's room for RPGs to grow, borrow more from the 4X playbook. And there are some mobile games actually that already kind of blur that line.
Top heroes comes to mind. But yeah, PC and console leaning harder into the social trends, mobile, leaning into the Forex playbook. I think RPGs have potential that's untapped at the moment.
Devin: Makes sense. It's not exactly a brand new genre, but it's plenty of room to keep growing and people like to see numbers go up, so is that yes, they did. In just a few words. What do you think is the biggest challenge though for mobile developers for this next year?
Sam: Yeah, I, I said this word I think in this call, but innovation. If, if you're not one of the biggest publishers, it's getting much harder to win through execution alone. So, you need something different. You need something new to break through.
Devin: Awesome. Well, thanks for joining us today. A lot of like interesting insight on top of the report. Of course, if you haven't read the report out there, make sure you're checking it out 'cause it's a great report presented very nicely.
A lot of great charts, graphs, graphics, cool stuff. It's not so word heavy that it's hard to read. I think some reports can be. So, I, I appreciate the, the effort you guys put into making it a very good and exciting read. So, a lot of cool stuff in there.
Sam: We put a lot of hard work into that.
Devin: Definitely make sure you just check that out. It, it's just available, I think, pretty easily through the Sensor Tower website. And also Sensor Tower as well. Great tools. I mentioned something we use here quite a bit at Naavik. Very much enjoy as a tool. Pretty much the, you know, how do you compete with, with how well you guys are doing at that space, especially including video game insights now.
So, some great stuff there. So, shout out to you guys, for doing an excellent job on executing and continuing to grow and providing us a lot of data that helps with our insights. So, it's great to have you.
Sam: Well, thank you so much for the shout out.
Devin: Cool. Well, everyone, thanks for, for tuning in. Of course, again, make sure to check out the report and of course, all the things we have going on here at Naavik, including other podcasts, our digest, all the fun stuff going on. And in the meantime, thanks for tuning in and thanks to you, Sam.
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