Scopely’s potential “megadeal”, Ubisoft shares fall and rise, and Wuthering Waves’ journey to $150m | Week in Views
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The games industry moves quickly and while stories may come and go there are some that we just can’t let go of…
So, to give those particularly thorny topics a further going over we’ve created a weekly digest where the members of the PocketGamer.biz team share their thoughts and go that little bit deeper on some of the more interesting things that have happened in mobile gaming in the past week.
Craig Chapple
Head of Content
Scopely plans major acquisition next year
Monopoly Go maker Scopely is gearing up for a “megadeal” acquisition next year.
According to Mobilegamer.biz, the company’s chief revenue officer, Tim O’Brien, shared the plans during a subscriber-only Q&A at Variety’s Entertainment & Technology Summit.
“I hope that we announce at least one megadeal,” said O’Brien when asked about the company’s plans for 2025.
“When I say megadeal, I mean a scaled global franchise doing hopefully at least a billion dollars in revenue.”
So who could that be? I love a bit of wild speculation.
We discussed this on the latest episode of the PocketGamer.biz Week in Mobile Games podcast (which will be released soon). With the aim to target a billion-dollar franchise, the pool of potential acquisitions reduces dramatically.
With the backing of Savvy Games Group, perhaps Scopely could be targeting a swoop for Turkey’s casual games giant Dream Games? The studio recently ranked fourth in our Top 50 Mobile Game Makers 2024 list thanks to its runaway hit Royal Match. The title took over Candy Crush Saga this year as the world’s biggest match-three game. Next month it aims to release the follow-up: Royal Kingdom.
A deal for Dream Games – with its mega-hit and potential for growth from a new title – would meet the criteria O’Brien set out. It would represent another exit for Turkey’s major mobile studios, with Gram Games, Peak Games and Rollic all snapped up by Zynga.
To speculate even more wildly – perhaps Scopely and Savvy could be looking at Homescapes and Gardenscapes developer Playrix? Perhaps Moon Active with its Monopoly Go rival Coin Master and growing portfolio in other genres like merge? Maybe Playtika, which prior to its purchase of SuperPlay for $1.95 billion, was looking for a sale not too long ago.
The M&A train continues.
Ubisoft shares soar 36% as speculation swirls over buyout
Ubisoft can’t stay out of the headlines at the moment. The last few years have not been strong for Ubisoft, and most recently, the release of Star Wars Outlaws didn’t quite hit the intended mark. Then, of course, this was followed by a delay of Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
That delay triggered a plummet in share values, which went to a 10-year low. But then, last week, a report suggested there is talk of Tencent and Ubisoft’s founding Guillemot family considering a buyout. It’s big news, so much so that shares for Ubisoft went back up, seeing one of its biggest single-day jumps on record.
Sounds great, right? But in reality, Ubisoft shares are still way down overall. While the idea of a buyout makes big news, and if it were to happen, there would indeed be changes, perhaps relieving some of the current stress, but could it also mean less transparency in the future?
I could debate whether the potential buyout is good or bad, but when it really comes down to it, I’m not quite sure how much it matters when the thing that needs to change is the company’s core mindset.
Whether Ubisoft is public or private, one of the biggest issues seems to be that it is out of tune with one of the most important aspects of the video games industry – the player.
For me, regardless of what happens, we ultimately need to see some fundamental mentality shifts at Ubisoft. I say all this as someone who would have once told you that Ubisoft was once one of my favourite developers. Maybe one day, I’ll be able to say that again.
Wuthering Waves coasts to $150 million
Making waves in the gacha games space, Kuro Games’ open-world RPG Wuthering Waves has picked up $150 million in gross mobile revenue in just over four months. It raced to the first $100 million and has slowed down since, but with so much momentum behind it, it’s really taken little time at all to reach the latest milestone.
In fact, it’s hit the $150 million mark only one month slower than Zenless Zone Zero, a fellow anime-esque RPG with a goliath like HoYoverse behind it. For Kuro Waves to achieve the same figure in only a few extra weeks really is no small feat, especially when RPG enthusiasm isn’t what it used to be.
According to AppMagic, most of Wuthering Waves’ revenue has been generated in Asia, as players in China and Japan have each contributed 23% of its lifetime earnings. South Korea rounds out the top three.
And though revenue has very clearly declined month on month, Wuthering Waves is riding another high tide with its Version 1.3 update, with the rare, limited-time Shorekeeper incentivising players to spend again; her launch day caused a 292% revenue spike!
I’ll be keeping a close eye on Wuthering Waves’ journey to $200 million, curious as to how Kuro Games will turn its fortunes back around; surely something’s in the works to break that monthly decline, right?
