Episode 61: Looking Forward - What we expect to dominate mobile gaming in 2025

This episode of the Mobile Games Playbook peers into the crystal ball to forecast the mobile gaming landscape of 2025 with GameRefinery’s experts, Kalle Heikkinen, Senior Chief Market Analyst, and Wilhelm Voutilainen, Chief Game Analyst.

We'll delve into how we expect monetization models such as DTC and subscriptions to evolve, the continued growth of LiveOps, and the upcoming genres/games we expect to be taking over the charts in 2025. Join us as we discuss the trends poised to shape the future of mobile gaming. This episode will provide valuable insights for developers and players alike, offering a glimpse into the year ahead.

Remember to subscribe, leave a review, and check out our websites, https://liftoff.io/ and https://gamerefinery.com/, for more information on game development topics and strategies for growing your game.

Transcript

Jon Jordan: Welcome to the Mobile Games Playbook, in association with Liftoff. Join us as we uncover the latest trends in user acquisition, monetization, and mobile game design. Hello, and welcome to the Mobile Games Playbook! Thanks for tuning in for another episode. In fact, thanks for tuning in for the first episode of 2025.

In this podcast, we are going to look into our crystal balls and make some predictions about what's going to happen. Obviously, that means, to some degree, we're looking at what happened in the trends of 2024 and how they move over, we think, to 2025, but also a few other things as well that we will be looking at. I'm your host, Jon Jordan, and I'm joined today by experts who are going to make their predictions. 

So we have Kalle Heikkinen, Senior Chief Market Analyst, and Wilhelm Voutilainen, Chief Game Analyst, both from Liftoff. How's it going, Wilhelm?

Wilhelm Voutilainen: I'm doing excellent. It's really great to be here. 

Jon Jordan: I always think the end of the year/the start of year podcast is the most fun 'cause there's so much to say, and it's a really open discussion. We can go where we're gonna go, but we're gonna start off with something I guess that we talk about all the time. 'cause it is the fundamental bit of the mobile games industry or any games industry, and that's monetization. 

Kalle, please kick us off by sharing what you think will happen regarding those monetization trends.

Kalle Heikkinen: Yes. So, just to set the scene, let's discuss the big trends in monetization in 2024 and before that. Of course, the industry has been discussing direct-to-consumer approaches to web store subscription plans and how to monetize those; that has been a big topic, and then hybrid monetization.

And if we think about why these have been hot topics for some time already, game developers are always trying to find ways to diversify their revenue sources and, in particular, to find ways to monetize the non-paying users. Of course, we're always trying to revise genre by genre, but to make a generalization, that's the case.

That's one reason so many new hybrid casual games are entering the market, especially in 2024. The other thing that I would like to highlight is the regulatory pressure on some of the existing monetization methods. I'm looking at gacha or Loot Box monetization in particular.

So I think it was two or three days ago or so that the BBC actually published this piece about developers not disclosing in their game ads that their games contain loot boxes, even though they should. So let's see what the outcome will be. 

But this is just another example of some scrutiny when it comes to these specific monetization mechanics, and there might be some negative outcomes to developers if they're not following the rules set in specific geographical regions, for example, when it comes to loot boxes and how you can advertise them and use them in your gaming products. And then the third thing I would say that technological advancements, so it's nowadays just even more possible to have, for example, even more personalized, let's say IAP offers, or if we think about the web stores, they can be, they're evolving all the time.

They're becoming more integrated, and the user experience is also improving constantly. Regarding direct-to-consumer, which is obviously a hot topic, we see developers adding different kinds of engagement mechanics to the web store. So we're talking about, for example, VIP memberships.

They might be targeted to only the most high-paying superfan users and other kinds of loyalty plans to provide more value to those players who engage with the web stores, but obviously, the challenge still remains that there's quite a lot of friction to drive the first-time conversion to a web store, 

But Wilhelm, I know that you have done some research on some specific monetization offer types, for example. So do you have some insights for us? 

Wilhelm Voutilainen: Yeah. So we have been following, for example, on the casual side, these different, on the live ops in general, we have been following this super closely for the past like three years or so.

If we look at what the top casual games are doing in the standard offers, it's basically this kind of chain and progressive offer. So, basically, the first offer you get is free, and then the next one requires a premium price.

Then, you get the new one for free, and then you pay for the progression element there. That's becoming the industry standard now. But recently, we have seen even further innovation in those mechanics. For example, Coin Master has its progression offers, but on top of that, it has a bonus progression milestone track.

So based on how many offers you have claimed, purchased or claimed for free, then you can even get a bonus reward. So that's one of the sort of innovations in that. One other type, actually super interesting, that has come more from this mid-core, but now appearing in casual as well, are these engagement offers, which basically fuse the gameplay with direct monetization together.

So, for example, Dice Dreams is one of the trending, absolutely super-performing casual casino games in 2024. And they have been running this deep dive journey event, for example, where you collect these event currencies and then have this offer where you use the event currencies.

But again, it has this progression element. You purely need to play the game, but to get the maximum rewards, you also need to pay directly.

So there are really unique types of offers there. Some other really trending ones have been, as Kalle mentioned, games coming up with different kinds of monetization methods. We might see some gacha regulation, so games have been bringing, like not just having those gachas in the mid core, let's say, but also, on top of that, you have multiple different kinds of substitution plans. 

Another really trending one has been mini-battle passes; of course, battle passes are one of the core mechanics in most mobile games nowadays. But on top of that, the games that run these battle pass seasons. They are even starting to add this kind of mini-event battle passes to monetize specific events themselves.

At maximum, games can have three to four simultaneous battle passes going on because they have specific battle passes for these specific events. So, I would say the trend is coming up with new kinds of monetization models, expanding those monetization mechanics, and adding a little bit of monetization to each type of mode and mechanic in the game.

Kalle Heikkinen: You described some of the biggest innovations in IAP monetization really well. We've seen what we predict will continue to trend next year as well, but I would just add that there's also innovation on the ad monetization side. 

One thing that I would like to pinpoint is audio ads. This is not something that is super new, but this year, we have seen the first games that have been on our radar. We are starting to use those. So, if there's someone who doesn't know what audio ads mean, these are non-intrusive advertisement methods.

So players can enjoy the game experience and just opt-in for these audio ads. The system will require you to have the game's volume high to be able to hear the content that has been offered to the player. And then, why would a player opt in for this? Obviously, they are then rewarded in the game for opting in in various ways.

We saw this, for example, in a pocket idler game called Pocket Land, where players are then rewarded with in-game currency. It was really super exciting to see that. Are we going to see more of these audio ads in games in 2025? 

Jon Jordan: What's your gut feeling around that? Because it sounds like it's a bit of a niche, and obviously, it's been around for a couple of years, people raising money off the back of this new ad format.

But obviously the point for ad networks is they scale massively. That's the whole point of them is you just scale them and you stick more ads in, and so the audio ads feel like they, just because I guess because they're new, it's not quite clear that the sort of audience is going to quite understand how they fit in.

And it may be that they fit in better to some games than other games. I think maybe there's been certain types of games that are gone for the moment. Do you think it has the potential to become a significant sort of part of monetization, or will it always be a little bit niche on the side?

Kalle Heikkinen: At least currently, I struggle to see it as being, for example, one of the main, like main focus, monetization methods in the game. Again, I see it more as, like we've been talking about this, diversifying the revenue sources. So having different kinds of IAP methods, different kinds of subscription tiers, direct-to-consumer methods, and also ad monetization, what are the different ways that you can generate ad revenue?

So I think this is just another tool in that toolbox to generate, but interesting to obviously see if some games will really try to double down on the audio ads. 

Jon Jordan: Say it's one of those things, maybe it doesn't have to be significant in and of itself, but if it's just adding another, I don't know, 10, 15 per cent that, why would you turn that down?

People like it, and it fits into your monetization flow. Another question, probably there isn't an answer to it, but interesting to get your gut feeling is what you've been talking through these various points you've been raising is a greater sophistication of how monetization has been added into live ops and games and such like do we get any impression that this stuff is actually moving the needle in terms of how many percentage of players are paying in games? 

Which is obviously more of a long term sort of trend. Or is this just really more about better monetizing your existing players? So are we making the cake bigger, or are we just getting more out of the people who were already pretty involved in the games?

Wilhelm Voutilainen: I think, especially, let's say we talk about ad monetization in general, I think that's a fantastic way to monetize non-paying players. I talked about the subscription plans and the mini-battle passes earlier. Those, for example, are excellent ways to, while they don't have to spend you want to monetize your whale players that well with those, but they definitely widen the garden sort of the whole monetized player. 

So, I would say monetization, substitution plans, and mini-battle passes are some ways that can definitely cause a lot of non-paying players to pay players.

Jon Jordan: And I guess coming back to something you talked about at the beginning, the sort of direct-to-consumer web stores, obviously, again, that's been happening for a number of years. Is that fully baked in now? Are all mobile developers doing this now, or is it still the bigger ones tend to do it and still quite a long way to go in terms of being in the majority of games because clearly, it's just much more flexible in terms of the amount of payments people can because you're not restricted to certain app stores.

So your big whales, you can sell them a lot more. So that's good. And also, as you're talking about the personalization, you can build in with a web store. So that seems to continue to be a big thing but, is that going to drive a lot of extra revenue in 2025 or is this already pretty much baked in and everyone knows about it?

Kalle Heikkinen: Yeah, you're correct. This is obviously not the newest, freshest trend. It's been going on for several years already. The number of games, for example, in the top 200 grossing that have their own web stores has been growing all the time.

It has not been decreasing. So I think we're already at the point that, maybe Wilhelm can correct me if I'm wrong, but like most of the games, especially in certain genres, let's talk about 4X strategy or something like that, they have their own web store. I think it’s going to be more about polishing the experience of using the web stores, making the technology better, making it more seamless to the user and not that much anymore about expanding to new games. So that's how I see it. 

Wilhelm Voutilainen: Yeah. You're definitely correct with that.

Like even in the casual side, like maybe. Almost like the majority of casual titles nowadays have their web stores. And one really interesting conversion that I've been seeing lately is that these games advertise in the game that, Hey, you can, there are, for example, these free daily gifts, but to claim those, you need to actually visit the web store to claim those. 

Jon Jordan: I guess the bottom line is it's obviously 30 percent of revenue potentially for free if you just move your pay as over to a web store rather than going through the app store. That's the obvious sort of a win for the developers.

Cool. Okay. So monetization, good. And you mentioned it a little bit, Wilhelm already, that plays into LiveOps, but, in terms of LiveOps as its own sort of subject, what do you think is going to be happening there? 

Wilhelm Voutilainen: Yeah, so of course, LiveOps has been, and still is, I would say one of the key aspects of having a successful free to play title.

But now I would say what trend, especially in 2025, will be as now, especially in these top games, the LiveOps, frameworks and the cadences are more established. So you really have this fluid event calendar with lots of different events running simultaneously. So something we've seen lately, especially, is these kinds of overarching and interconnecting events, and this has been happening both, in the mid core and in the casual.

So if we think about, first of all, the overarching events, that's more on the mid core side. And of course, like on the PC, we have Fortnite being the forerunner in these games. So running these overarching seasonal events, which interconnect all of their modes in the game.

That's actually really interesting. For example, we've been following EA FC, one of the biggest games there is right now, especially in terms of monetization. When EA FC transferred from 24 to 25, they also brought overarching events to their game and on the mobile site.

For example, Wild Rift has just recently started doing this. Riot’s League of Legends Wild Rift has an event called Rift Adventures. What it basically does is that it's this kind of overarching event. If you open up the game, you can see the in-game event calendar there on the UI; it connects all the events that are happening during that longer, I would say, three-month season. 

It connects by having this event shop, and throughout the whole Rift Adventures event, you would participate in all of the events that happened during that time.

You collect this event currency and use it in the same shop, which basically connects all the events together. On the casual side, the interconnecting is happening as well, a lot to, let's say, seasonal collectables, albums, that's been trending a lot, and these larger mini-game events.

So, I would say that going forward in 2025, those will definitely get even more popular. One also really interesting example is actually from Lily's Garden, which has been really hard into this kind of interconnecting events. 

Four simultaneous interconnecting events. So they have their seasonal collectives album. You collect memories from all around the games, from the smaller events of the game. 

Same for the merge events right now. And then they just recently implemented this task event as well, which requires you to play all various different events of the game. So I would say that will be the big trend of 2025 there. 

Kalle Heikkinen: To add to what Wilhelm said, one thing I know is not the trend again, but IP collaboration events.

We just saw so many of them in 2024, and some of them could overlap with some of the biggest revenues that those games had. For example, in 2024, just to name-drop, the Sponge Bob event, for example, in Brawl Stars, overlapped with some of the biggest revenue spikes that the game had.

I'm not saying that it's because of that particular event, but it does show that it most likely had a role to play in that story as well. So, definitely, looking at 2024, it's safe to say that we will see a lot more games leveraging these recognizable IPs to attract different kinds of audience segments to their games.

So that's one thing. And then the second thing, of course, is that we cannot do this podcast without mentioning AI, right? LiveOps and AI: I know that there's been a lot of talk about how AI could potentially be used to personalize live events, for example, for different user segments.

Think about a user, for example, who is about to leave the game. Could the game launch, specific events, or specific rewards re-engage that user? I know some of that is already happening, but I do think that might be something that we will see more of in 2024 and beyond.

Wilhelm Voutilainen: Yeah, definitely on the AI side, I agree. We don't know how much is used right now or how much will be used in, let's say, a few months. But if we think about how much content, for example, you need to create to keep up with the competition in LiveOps, it's absolutely crazy.

So, even for asset creation for cosmetic items or even the event UI, AI is already speeding those things up and will help even more during the next year. 

Jon Jordan: Given you guys look at this all the time, it's interesting that you assume it's happening, but you haven't really got any good examples.

So I guess that's maybe because developers don't want to say it because you don't want to tell the opposition how much they're using it. And two, there still is this idea of community backlash if you say you're using it. But it does seem a little bit strange that normally when a new technology comes in, lots of people are very keen to publicize that they're using it.

And if you imagine you're a company with a share price, then saying we're using a lot of AI means we're going to be more efficient and more profitable. So that would have a real-world effect on their share price. Why do you think that's not the case? It seems to me when you're talking about sort of personalization for people who are going to churn, we can, that sort of makes sense, but that's obviously not; I'm not an AI expert, and that seems a fairly complicated thing to be doing, not to say AI couldn't do that now, but I just don't know, could an AI system actually do that at the moment?

Kalle Heikkinen: Yeah, I guess I would flip that question around and ask what is the upside of this, for game developers to discuss that towards consumers? What would be the benefit of that? The one concrete example that we do have is that we've had a couple of Chinese games; I think they both were MMORPGs that, in their app store descriptions, mentioned that, hey, the narrative content or the narrative designed has been, I don't remember, was it partly or fully, done by AI.

So they saw something there that they wanted to communicate to consumers. Which is interesting, but yeah. But yeah, I agree. That's a very good question. I don't know if you have anything on that. 

Wilhelm Voutilainen: Not in that on top of that, I agree on the part that is there really a reason that we want to market our game by having that we use the AI?

Jon Jordan: You can imagine it being the case where someone comes up with something so wacky that the point of it, the fact that an AI is creating it and will continue to create it, is that's the point is that we've got this mad AI agent and it's creating this bonkers game.

It's just the experience is just so weird, and so AI like that we, that's the point of it, that you're playing inside a game that a weird AI has made, 

Kalle Heikkinen: That's an interesting point. Maybe we need a game that embraces AI so much that it becomes the value proposition for the consumer.

It's all about AI, so maybe that will be the first one to do that. I would assume many developers are also closely looking at what their competitors are doing. If the competitors are not talking about AI, then maybe they're thinking that maybe we should not talk about it either.

Jon Jordan: Going back to the, actually, one of the early things you were talking about, And I think some PC stores have already brought in tagging. If you use AI in your game, you have to tag your game as using AI. I know Steam does, and itch.io has announced that as well.

So maybe the tagging of gacha in the adverts will require other people to say we've used AI. Maybe it's not a legal thing, but it's a platform thing that people have to start tagging those things in. So we'll see from that point of view. 

Kalle Heikkinen: That is going to be very interesting because how do you find using AI nowadays?

Wilhelm Voutilainen: So I've seen, for example, if you look at the Epic Game Store, you need to, for example, if you have a crypto game, you have to track that as well, like it uses blockchain elements or something like that. 

Jon Jordan: One to look out for anyway. Yes. I think AI will definitely be in our conversations in 2025.

Wilhelm Voutilainen: So my prediction is going to be that most of the new top games in 2025 will either include an IP or they will be some kind of, genre mashups.

We have some recent examples of success stories: Pokemon TCG, and Pocket City, which are doing quite well. Then we have the Royal Kingdom, which is basically using the IP of Royal Match but having a chunk of this genre mashup with this match three combined with this puzzle RPG element.

So thinking a little bit from the mid core there. And then there’s Capybara Go, which is like also a really interesting success story that has been trending a lot. So combining social casino with RPG kind of having this kind of charming mashup there. So that's definitely my opinion. What do you think about that Kalle?

Kalle Heikkinen: Yeah, I agree with the borrowing from the casual casino playbook with different kinds of betting mechanics, and stuff like that. We had some examples, for example, the Merge Mansion was the first one to launch this secret supply event.

I'm not going to go into details of that. It's actually a little bit of a complicated event, but it had some kind of like gambling elements in the way that the players could choose, if they bet more resources, then they would get more, as potential rewards and so forth. And then Gossip Harbor, one of their main competitors copied that one as well.

And, that event type has actually been overlapping with very significant revenue spikes as well. Yeah, I think we will see more of that because the fact is, that the spend depth is just very high with those kinds of mechanics.

When it comes to, players being able to spend a lot of, let's say, for example, their hard currency in a very short time span. So that obviously is going to help monetization, a lot. So let's see what will come out of that and how, for example, then we talked about the regulations and stuff like that, how will that will fit into that discussion and so on.

So is the discussion going to move from gacha mechanics? People already say that gacha mechanics are gambling related as well. So let's see. I think it's very interesting. 

Wilhelm Voutilainen: Yeah. And, then one like definitely big one, so it has not had a hit in a while. The shooters, I would say there are some really promising titles coming in 2025, after a quite long wait, some of these. So we've been talking about some of these for a few years now and thinking about, okay, when these are going to be released.

So we have, for example, Destiny Rising, then we have the Rainbow Six Mobile. And the Division Mobile and then maybe Valorant just came to consoles and I guess it's going to come to mobile next. So we have those four games. Let's see if this is going to be in the 2026 one as well, or will these games finally be launched? But, I think it is one of the really interesting ones, and maybe you are more familiar than me with this, but it's a Delta Force game that has been doing, hasn't been doing quite well in China, Kalle?

Kalle Heikkinen: Yes. It's in the top grossing 50, and It's been doing very well. I think it's a soft launch or early access in the West, but yeah, it has been doing very well in the Chinese mobile store. And, for people who don't know, it has this extraction shooting mode, and then also this battlefield-like mode. Like I said, it is very military so it's interesting.

When I first heard about this game, I was like, "Isn't that like the Delta Force IP?" The last previous game was released 15 years ago or something like that. So why did they pick that one up? But apparently, that doesn't seem to be a huge problem. It's doing very well in China. Do we have any data on the Western early access stuff?

Wilhelm Voutilainen: Not any exact numbers, but I think it was quite popular on Steam/PC already. And when it wasn't early access, it was streamed on Twitch as well. What I really like about this game is when I mentioned that kind of key success factors for this, especially this mid core games, you either have an IP, or you are a general mashup.

This game combines both of those. One other aspect, which we have not seen on mobile shooters in a long time, is that apparently Delta Force will have a single-player story campaign. So, let's see if it will attract new audiences to the mobile shooter genre as well. 

Kalle Heikkinen: And one thing that is related to this is that most of these games that you have already mentioned have been developed by the Chinese. So Delta Force is from China. Destiny Rising is from NetEase. So that is also more of a general trend, but like the Asian influence, particularly Chinese one is just growing and growing.

And many of the Western IPs that we see coming to mobile have been at least co-developed by a Chinese developer. 

Wilhelm Voutilainen: Yeah. Even on the casual side, we've seen, for example, Truck Star, which is one of the recent match three hits coming from Century Games. So definitely, Asian developers have been, really successful in the Western markets as well.

If we look at the upcoming RPGs coming to mobile, we have Neverness to Everness, which is a funny one—an anime-style GTA. Then we have Project Mugen (Ananta), which we've been waiting for a while as well. And then we have them from the Timi Studios, a super successful studio there creating Monster Hunters: Outlanders, then actually Honor of Kings: World, which I will be looking forward for sure. 

So it's going to be one of the biggest MOBAs in the world of Unordered Kings, and it's going to be made as a kind of open world; I'm not sure if it's an MMORPG or just an open-world RPG, but anyway, we're going for copying, taking his IP, and taking it to a whole new genre.

Also, on the RPG MMO side, it's looking like Asian developers will most likely continue to dominate. 

Jon Jordan: It's a very good point. And it's, I guess, the interesting trend there is sort of China has always been this, Chinese developers have always been lower cost and had the ability to make these big games as it becomes harder to launch new games unless you have this mashup which is obviously quite hard to judge if it's going to work or big IP, which is expensive.

Again, you're not quite sure it's going to work. But you also to get to be successful; the game needs to be bigger in some way. No one's done single-player campaigns for ages. So we'll do a massive single-player campaign, which means you need a team of 200 building that, which means you can't do it in the West.

Over the last couple of years, the West has been making redundancies as it overexpanded. So, for both those reasons, you now have Tencent and NetEase, in particular, but other Chinese developers having that real sort of advantage in being able to build very high-end and enormous content games and do all the LiveOps and stuff like that.

So it's quite a change that sort of slowly crept up on us over the years, and now we see as you went through those games. I was thinking, yeah, Tencent is developing most of those, which is obviously the biggest games company in the world. So there we go.

Cool. Good stuff there So, coming to the end anything else you want to highlight? that you think is going to be worth us paying attention to in 2025? 

Wilhelm Voutilainen: Yeah, I think we have a couple of ones. So maybe I can start. So of course, I think one, if we look at the overall crypto games, as we know, the crypto markets have been starting to trend again a little bit.

If you look at the download charts, crypto apps are definitely trending, but it's interesting to think if this is going to transfer over to the gaming and the mobile side in 2025. Right now, we have, for example, Telegram games have been gaining popularity a lot as well. we have mobile games on Telegram, but also lots of different crypto games on mobile. Mythical Games, which created NFL rivals and was surprisingly successful in the download charts, they are actually creating this game called FIFA Revolve. looks promising. Then we have MapleStore, and also Battle Royale of the Creed.

I think that’s coming in January next year. So my prediction would be that we will probably see some kind of Web3 gaming hype come back, at least to some extent. Maybe not the 2021 craze that we had, but something will probably happen. I would say there when it comes to this hype and maybe some couple of successful games, but on the mobile, will we see Web3 games on the top grossing charge or the top download charts? Maybe not, but I would say a bit more than we've seen right now. 

Kalle Heikkinen: I think, what I would add, switching gears a bit, about the engagement features and consumer apps or non gaming apps or whatever you want to call them. The prediction that I'm going to make is that we're going to see a lot more gamification. So what I'm talking about is that we see apps already in certain app genres or verticals using competitive features like leaderboards. You open up Strava for example, which is a fitness app, and they utilize that very heavily.

Streak systems are very good at driving daily engagement and retention. We see that utilized quite a lot, so we will definitely see more because, as we know from the gaming side, keeping an existing user is much cheaper than acquiring new ones. And that applies to non-gaming as well.

There are so many examples nowadays. Instagram has an achievement system for certain user cohorts. If you have ever used Bing, the Google competitor, they have a task reward system in place that incentivizes you to do various kinds of searches and use different kinds of Bing features to get in-app currency. I guess everyone knows that LinkedIn added games to the platform, which is interesting to say the least.

And you mentioned the crypto apps. So those are full of various kinds of, progression mechanics, different kinds of levels that you can progress to get various kinds of rewards. You have tasks, daily tasks, onboarding tasks. And stuff like that. And the features are fun, for example, but definitely, effective in driving retention and encouraging that daily, usage.

So let's see, like very interesting times in that. 

Jon Jordan: It's a good way to wrap up, and I think one of the things I really took out is something that people have mentioned for a while clearly is that the sort of the big successful games are continuing to be the big successful games and grow their audience and just the ability for any new game to break in and take audience away when people have been playing these games, Fortnite being the obvious example, maybe for many years.

And there's so much in those games now as they add new features and new sorts of rewards or in the case of Fortnite, bring new games in or become a platform in and of itself. And to a degree, lots of the games, mobile games we've spoken about during the year, one of the things you've said is they're all adding these things all the time.

Obviously, I guess something we haven't really discussed today is Supercell bringing back one of its sort of failed standalone games as a mini game, or it will be bringing it back as a mini-game inside Clash of Clans. The games have very much become platforms or places where you go to play your favourite game and see what other experiences are in there.

And that's again, what you've been saying, Kalle, there about engagement across all apps. So in that way, increasing competition and harder for new games to break into markets. But I guess when the new games do break in, they become much more viral in the sense of if everyone's suddenly playing a new game, I think virality now because everything is generally more stable when people are playing the same games over and over again.

Always exciting times. Anything else you want to add before we finish up our crystal ball gazing? Nothing 

Wilhelm Voutilainen: I think we covered the main trends for 2025 quite well here. 

Jon Jordan: Just to say thank you to Wilhelm and Kalle for your expertise guys. Always a pleasure. Thank you. And thanks to you for watching, listening, however you are consuming the podcast. We hope you are going to stick with us through all the thrills and spills of 2025. So don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss out on any episodes, but we will see you next time. See you then. Bye bye.