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Arcade Genres Success Tier-list

Arcade Genres Success Tier-list Based on the analysis of 1,000+ arcade games over the past year that reached at least 1M+ downloadsHere’s the 2025 success rate tier list:🟢 𝗧𝗼𝗽 𝘁𝗶𝗲𝗿 (>𝟳% 𝘀𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲)Best genres for newcomers𝗗𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻• Kick the Buddy: Second Kick• Kick the Buddy — Fun Action Game• Solar Smash𝗦𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘀𝗳𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻• Phone Case DIY• Ice Cream Inc. ASMR• Dessert DIY------🟡 𝗠𝗶𝗱 𝘁𝗶𝗲𝗿 (𝟱–𝟳% 𝘀𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲)Growing genres with solid traction𝗙𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴• Spider Fighter 3• Shadow Fight 2• I, The One — Fun Fighting Game𝗘𝗮𝘁 & 𝗚𝗿𝗼𝘄• Hungry Shark Evolution• Attack Hole• Hungry Shark World------🟠 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗲𝘁𝗶𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗶𝗲𝗿 (𝟯–𝟱% 𝘀𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲)Tougher to stand out, but still viable𝗣𝗶𝗻𝗯𝗮𝗹𝗹• Pinball Masters• Pinball: Smash Arcade• Space Pinball.𝗶𝗼• Bridge Race• Hole.io• Snake Clash!𝗜𝗱𝗹𝗲 𝗔𝗿𝗰𝗮𝗱𝗲• Pizza Ready!• My Perfect Hotel• Outlets Rush𝗖𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗸𝗲𝗿 / 𝗜𝗱𝗹𝗲• Family Life• Idle Bank Tycoon• Money Empire------🔴 𝗟𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗶𝗲𝗿 (𝟭–𝟯% 𝘀𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲)Highly saturated genres with limited […]

Anton Slashcev May 28

Journal

5 New Wool Puzzle Games Released

5 New Wool Puzzle Games Released — Just a Week After Our Article 🤯 Each week, we scan Top Trending to spot rising hits. That’s how we noticed Wool Sort—a game that jumped from nearly 0 to 180k daily downloads in just a month 🚀The game itself reminds us of Screw Jam, one of the most advanced games on the growing Screw Puzzle market 🧩However, it falls short on IAP monetization and relies heavily on ad revenue instead💡That is why, we see two scenarios for Wool puzzle trend to get into the top grossing charts:1️⃣ Wool Sort will double down on monetization and LiveOps like Screw Jam, pushing beyond download charts. 2️⃣ Big players, like iKame Games, will pick up the formula and scale it further.

Andrei Zubov May 28

Highlights

The Rise of Hybridcasual: Supersonic’s Vision for the NEXT

We sat down with Igor Bereslavski, GM at Supersonic, to unpack the studio’s bold leap from hyper-casual dominance to hybridcasual innovation. Just asked him what we're curious about. 🦄 From the breakout success of Screw Master 3D to smarter UA and LiveOps strategies, Igor takes us behind the scenes of Supersonic’s hybrid-powered future, where data meets design, and scale meets sustainability. SuperSonic? From Trash Tycoon to Screw Master, Supersonic has already published 130+ Games, hit 190M+ MAU, and racked up 6.4 Billion installs. Igor Bereslavski, GM at Supersonic Hybrid isn’t just a new genre, it’s now a whole new mindset. To kick it off, let’s first make “Hybridcasual” clear. The term is suuuper vague. Let's make the borders clear, you know, from Casual to Hyper. What does “Hybridcasual” really mean at Supersonic? Hybridcasual at Supersonic is about mixing key elements […]

Gamigion May 28

Journal

Introducing the Playable Testing Flow

🎯🧪 Introducing the Playable Testing Flow: a tiered, data-driven system actually to scale what performs. 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲’𝘀 𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝗶𝘁 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀 👇 No more guesswork. No more budget-burn.Start with a proven winner – use your best-performing video as the baseline.Build playables around it, not the other way around.Test against a control, so you can prove uplift and avoid regression.Iterate fast – kill bad combos early, double down on winners.Only scale what hits KPIs. Lower CPIs, better engagement, higher ROAS.This structured flow isn’t just theory. It’s how I and top studios refine performance before going full throttle.

Matej Lancaric May 28

Journal

Building a Premium-First Game Model

In a market increasingly saturated with live service titles and battle passes, there's a rising countercurrent: studios opting to craft premium-first or premium-only games. The challenge, however, is significant. How can you build a premium game that sustains itself for years, without the constant drip-feed of content updates or FOMO-inducing mechanics? The answer I’ve seen usually has been that studios opt-in for these approaches in order to build games that are fun to play, for the time they get played — and that’s kind of it. Some studios will do well with these, alone or through the partners they have; and it will be all good for them. But for most? I’d say they should take a more deeper approach, about which I’m discussing more on this article. Also, thinking about the challenges here — it’s quite exciting to provide […]

Antti Kananen May 28

Analysis

Why Marvel Snap Players Hated Their Most Profitable Event

A tale of two events: 92% revenue boost vs. community backlash (and what we can learn from it) When Marvel Snap returned from its app store takedown in February 2025, it ran two wildly different events that revealed a fundamental truth about mobile game design: sometimes, the most profitable events aren't the ones players love most. Sanctum Showdown drove a 92% revenue spike but left players exhausted. High Voltage "only" generated 52% more revenue but had players begging for its return. The difference? A delicate balance between monetization, engagement, and actually letting players have fun. Key Takeaways: 📊 The Revenue Paradox: Sanctum Showdown's 2-week grind fest nearly doubled revenue (+92%) but sparked player complaints, while High Voltage's 1-week sprint "only" increased revenue by 52% but became a fan favorite 🎮 Small Tweaks, Big Impact: High Voltage simply changed the game to 3 […]

Joseph Kim May 27

Highlights

Apple Blocks $9 billion in App Store Fraud Over Five Years

$2B+ in Fraud Blocked: In 2024 alone, Apple stopped over $2 billion in potentially fraudulent transactions. 1.9M+ Risky Apps Blocked: Over 1.9 million app submissions were rejected for violating security, privacy, or quality standards. Massive App Review Scale: Apple reviewed 7.7 million apps, rejecting 43K for hidden features, 320K for spam/clones, and 400K for privacy violations. Account Enforcement: 146K developer accounts terminated for fraud. 711M customer account creations blocked; 129M accounts deactivated. Pirate App Crackdown: Blocked 10K+ pirate apps and stopped 4.6M illicit installs outside official stores. Rating Manipulation Prevention: Processed 1.2B+ reviews, removed 143M+ fake reviews. Removed 7,400+ apps from charts and 9,500+ from search results. Payment Security: Detected 4.7M stolen cards, banned 1.6M accounts. 420K+ apps use Apple Pay/StoreKit for secure transactions. Bottom Line Apple continues to invest heavily in fraud prevention, protecting users and developers with strict […]

Ömer Yakabagi May 27

Highlights

Embracer’s Mobile Revenue drops 31% after selling Easybrain

UA costs rose to $60m, accounting for 61% of net sales. Embracer Group’s mobile division saw a 31% YoY drop in net revenue, reaching SEK 943 million ($98 million) in Q4 FY2025. For the full year, mobile game sales declined by 9% to SEK 5.35 billion ($553 million). Earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) for the mobile segment jumped to SEK 8.2 billion ($856 million), but adjusted EBIT fell significantly to SEK 91 million ($9.5 million), largely due to the $1.2 billion sale of Easybrain to Miniclip. User acquisition (UA) costs rose to SEK 575 million ($60 million), making up 61% of net sales—an increase from 35% the previous year. Install numbers dropped from 248 million to 204 million, though daily and monthly active users stayed consistent at 28 million and 222 million, respectively. Despite the revenue and install declines, […]

Gamigion May 27

Highlights

Apple acquires its first ever gaming studio!?

Apple acquires its first ever gaming studio!? And it’s not a super studio, it’s a 2 person indie studio called RAC7 behind one of their successful Apple Arcade games.I wonder what the motivations for this are? Is it part of a trend where Apple starts building its own games and strengthening its ecosystem further?Is this because of the Epic Games vs Apple court case, which is now changing the ecosystem and will hit Apple hard in their traditional 30% IAP pocket?Is it maybe to acquire a cool piece of tech they can apply to the store or other games, which we don’t know about? Here you - Rac7 Apple Arcade page. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmcufCv-99A&ab_channel=Apple

John Wright May 27

Analysis

Match Villains: A Dracula-Led Heist Into the Most Brutal Market in Mobile

We’ve said it before, and unfortunately it keeps getting more true with time: this is the absolute worst moment to launch a new Match-3 game. User acquisition costs are no longer “high”, they’re absurd. The casual puzzle market, particularly Match-3, has turned into a battlefield where only the best-funded and most patient teams can survive. And even those often struggle to do so profitably. We mentioned this fact when we analyzed Dream’s wild Royal Kingdom campaign. It is the most extreme (and recent) symptom of a market pushing studios to try everything to make it work. Imagine having to cast a list that includes LeBron James, Kevin Hart, and Jimmy Fallon despite having arguably the best switcher engine in the market… While it’ll take a long time to know whether that absurdly expensive campaign actually paid off, the fact that […]

Ahmetcan Demirel May 27

Journal

Google co-founder Sergey Brin believes threats of physical violence improve AI performance.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin believes threats of physical violence improve AI performance. Sergey Brin stated on the All-In podcast that threats of physical violence increase the effectiveness of interacting with AI.“All models, not just ours, work better if you threaten them. For example, saying: ‘I will kidnap you if you don’t do this, this, and that.’ But the community doesn’t talk about this — it sounds strange and awkward, so the topic is kept quiet,” he explained.Brin stepped down from his role in 2019, but a conversation with an OpenAI employee convinced him to return to the company and work on developing the Gemini neural network — one of ChatGPT’s main competitors. Google CEO Sundar Pichai has repeatedly praised Brin’s deep involvement in AI projects. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8g7a0IWKDRE&ab_channel=All-InPodcast

Michael Khripin May 27

Journal

Lands of Jail passed $250K a day, after 2 months from launch.

Lands of Jail already passed $250K 🤑 a day in revenue after 2 months from launch. What is this prison themed game about ??? 🤔 The game is clearly following a Century Games 4X template of Idle Core first and then 4X map later. You start the game as jail warden, which later operates a force labor toy factory in the jail itself 😅 - that is the idle part modeled after Frozen City. There are some "flavor" mechanics added into the gameplay to spice it up, such as jail rebellion, similarly how Kingshot added the occasional enemy units invasion. In the auto combat based level saga you are capturing prisoner "villains", which you then collect in a sticker album style fashion, giving you boosts to your whole facility. Our narrator character gets captured around 1 hour mark (as always […]

Jakub Remiar May 27

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