Xbox's weird 'North Star', Sybo and Subway Surfers, App Store emulators, Peridot's death, soft launches, data, more

A concise inside view of the mobile game business.

This week:

– A look at what the various statements coming out of Xbox in the last week mean for its vast mobile business, which was barely mentioned at all despite the platform's new 'North Star' being daily active players

– Highlights from a chat with Sybo boss Mathias in which I asked about that long-rumoured Subway Surfers movie, how those two new Subway Surfers games are doing and how being part of Miniclip (and therefore Tencent) has changed the studio

– A quick look at the world of emulation on the App Store – 60m downloads and counting! – in which one developer notes that Apple's backend is dated and not up to standard given the chunk it takes out of all IAPs

– A quick one on the closure of Peridot, Niantic Spatial's virtual pet / AR game which struggled since launch and was not bought by Scopely when it acquired the other Niantic games

– All your usual soft launch, data and new game nuggets

– Slightly fewer ambient sounds than usual, though there is gravel underfoot and a bit with some drilling

#44, 30/04/26. Supported by Xsolla. 

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Hang on, what's going on here? Every week mobilegamer.biz founder and editor Neil Long goes on a walk and explains what's happening in the mobile game business in under 20 minutes. That's it.