🤝 The Unexpected Riot Partnership

Welcome to Lootbox - a weekly newsletter covering the business side of video games.

I can't believe this is the 10th edition of Lootbox 🤯

What's in this Lootbox?

• 📱 Inflation Hits Mobile

• 🤝 The Unexpected Riot Partnership

• 🍎 Apple tip toes into Mac gaming

• 📷 Meme

📱 Inflation Hits Mobile

Mobile gaming revenue accounts for more than 60% of all mobile app store revenue for both iPhone & Android and has been growing steadily YoY.

Until 2022 came around and decided to ruin the party...

Sensory Tower recently reported their analysis of Q1 2022 Mobile app spending. They estimate gaming spending actually fell -7.1% in the first quarter of 2022.

Yikes!

Looks like either Apple's privacy changes are finally affecting the gaming sector, or $7 gas prices are making people second guess spending money on Clash of Clans. It could also just be that covid is finally over and people are starting to live in the real world again.

The biggest losers here could be Apex Legends Mobile & Diablo Immortal. Both of which just launched in Q2 2022 and may have timed the macroeconomic climate a little late.

You can read the full Sensory Tower report here.

🤝 The Unexpected Riot Partnership

Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase 2022 happened this past Sunday which included loads of gameplay trailers for upcoming games, as well as a few surprise announcements.

You can watch the full showcase here if that's really how you want to spend 1.5 hours today.

The biggest surprise announcement was that Riot Games is partnering with Xbox Game Pass.

Riot Games has created absolute juggernauts including League of Legends and VALORANT. Both of which are consistently top of the most watched list on Twitch. Riot Games are only available on PC (except for their mobile specific titles) and only through the Riot launcher (i.e. not Steam or Windows Xbox App).

So is VALORANT coming to Xbox?!?!?!?

Hahahahaha you FOOL!

No instead of launching on Xbox, Riot's Free-to-Play games are going Free-to-Play through the Xbox Game Pass exclusively on PC & Mobile. What's the point of being on Xbox Game Pass then? You get certain unlockable characters pre-unlocked through Game Pass.

Here's what the partnership looks like:

The big takeaway here is that Xbox is really doubling down on Game Pass and trying to dominate not just Xbox, but PC & Mobile as well (move over Steam).

🍎 Apple tip toes into Mac gaming

Last week Apple held their annual WWDC where they announced their Metal 3 API. You probably don't know or care what Metal 3 is, but its Apple's low overhead graphics interface for GPUs.

Let me make it simple for you.

The better Metal gets the more Apple can move into the non-mobile gaming space.

Apple has been a joke to hardcore gamers, but those same hardcore gamers forget Apple's $10B+ revenue from mobile games. They're vividly aware of the potential and slowly working their way into the non-mobile industry.

Along with a bunch of nerdy terms like "MetalFX Upscaling", they showed gameplay footage from Resident Evil Village & No Man's Sky (you read that right).

No Man's Sky is the game that refuses to die and while its not known for pushing the boundaries of graphics, its still fun to see the team expand into a new platform. NMS is coming to Macbook and iPad (with an M1 chip) later this year.

Nothing ground breaking from Apple but... they're slowly making moves 👀

📷 Meme

This is in reference to the fact that at the Xbox Bethesda Games Showcase 4 years ago they announced Elder Scrolls 6. Since then there's been absolutely no news. Gamers were not happy getting another year of radio silence.

Oh what's Starfield you ask?

Imagine No Man's Sky except looks like crap and boring as hell. That's what the gameplay trailer of Starfield looked like.

Ok one more meme

Feedback From Last Week's Lootbox :)

🎮🎮🎮 Great!

"It’s one banana, Michael. What could it cost, $10?”

Go checkout last week’s Lootbox here

What'd you think of today's email?

• 🎮🎮🎮 Great!

• 🎮🎮 Just ok

• 🎮 Boring

Thanks for Reading :)

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