Hot Five: Squad Busters undergoes radical changes, Apple’s NFC update, and the winners of the Mobile Games Awards 2024 are…
Mario Bautista
- Here’s the biggest stories from the last seven days
- Get up to speed fast!
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Start your week right with our quick take on the stories that are impacting the mobile industry right now.
To help get you primed and ready for another week in mobile gaming, we’ve curated the biggest stories you need to know from the last seven days.
1) HoYoverse is in the Zone, winning Best Developer at Mobile Games Awards 2024
PocketGamer.biz celebrated mobile game makers from all across the industry in a star-studded Mobile Games Awards at Gamescom 2024, awarding Best Developer to HoYoverse. The Chinese dev has made quite the impact with three RPGs launched in four years, shattering many records between them.
With Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail often competing for each month’s biggest mobile gacha, HoYoverse rakes in the cash either way and has now added Zenless Zone Zero to that equation.
2) Monopoly GO! wins the prestigious Game of the Year award at the Mobile Games Awards 2024
Also at the Mobile Games Awards, Scopely’s Monopoly GO! won the prestigious Game of the Year award after a stellar year, proceeding past $3 billion in player spending just last month.
Monopoly GO’s success is staggering in such a short time – not even 18 months old yet – with millions of daily players and billions earned to date. It goes to show that year upon year of development can ultimately pay off, with GO’s journey dating back to 2016 and leading to an overnight success still taking the industry by storm.
3) Game analysis: Squad Busters update makes radical changes on a quest for lasting success
Supercell’s Squad Busters released a radical new update this month with not only a selection of new characters, but an overhaul to some aspects of its core game design. This included the removal of all consumables.
Game design expert Jakub Remiar explored the update and its potential impact, highlighting the “pay-to-win” element these consumables fuelled and how this change should win favour with the in-game community. However, this could hurt the game financially in the short term…
4) Tilting Point’s Warhammer: Chaos & Conquest makes 50% of revenue from its web shop
Speaking at Devcom, Tilting Point and Hunted Cow Studios discussed Warhammer: Chaos & Conquest’s web shop accounting for 50% of its revenue. The shop has been live for two years and differs from the in-game store by offering weekly rotations and higher-priced bundles.
Some of these packages are priced as high as $1,000, as the game’s creators explained some players prefer making one big purchase as opposed to buying multiple smaller bundles over and over.
5) Apple will be unlocking iPhone NFC chips for third-party apps everywhere
Apple’s iOS 18.1 update will allow third-party developers to access its NFC chip, in a move to appease the DMA. Under the weight of European pressure, the tech giant agreed terms to open up its devices’ NFC capabilities which were previously limited to Apple Pay, giving Apple a monopoly on contactless payments via its hardware.
Now, the change to these chips will roll out not only in the EU but worldwide, giving iOS users everywhere the ability to choose their preferred form of contactless payment this autumn.
