Hot Five: Zenless Zone Zero's 40m pre-registrations, Squad Busters' $10M in week one, and what iOS 18 REALLY means for games

Start your week right with our quick take on the stories that are impacting the mobile industry right now.

To help get you primed and ready for another week in mobile gaming, we’ve curated the biggest stories you need to know from the last seven days.

1) Zenless Zone Zero surpasses 40 million pre-registrations, beating Supercell's Squad Busters

HoYoverse’s action RPG Zenless Zone Zero is set to launch on July 4th, and officially surpassed 40 million pre-registrations with three weeks still to go until that date. This level of interest is practically unrivalled, far exceeding the 10 million pre-registrations Genshin Impact received and 23 million for Honkai: Star Rail.

HoYoverse clearly has high expectations too, with 40 million its top target for pre-registrations - now reached - where Honkai: Star Rail had only a five million target. And with weeks to go before launch, Zenless Zone Zero has already surpassed Supercell’s Squad Busters’ total pre-registrations too.

2) The state of the hypercasual genre in 2024

Azur Games publishing lead Sergey Martinkevich has explored how hypercasual is fairing in 2024, and how market changes are impacting the genre. As new titles demand more attention and resources, so too do they need more components - progression, visuals, varied content and more - to stand out.

"The good news is the market is growing again, and you can feel it," said Martinkevich. "This growth explains why even older titles continue to thrive and increase in profitability amidst fierce competition. The market expansion contributes to this trend."

3) Supercell’s Squad Busters picks up $10 million in first week

Squad Busters, Supercell’s first globally launched game since 2018, generated $10 million in its first week according to Appfigures. While this exceeded the $4.1 million earned by Brawl Stars in its launch week over five years ago, notably, Squad Busters has already seen a peak on day three and declined since, where its predecessor saw a continual climb.

According to Sensor Tower data, Squad Busters’ highest-spending audience was in the US at launch, followed by Germany, then France. More players downloaded the game from the US than any other region on day one.

4) Sumo Group to lay off up to 15% of staff

Sumo Group is laying off up to 15% of its staff across studios in the UK, Canada, Poland, the Czech Republic and India, as it looks to reduce costs. Employing over 1,650 staff globally, this means layoffs will impact up to 250 people.

The decision has come as a "direct result" of challenges facing Sumo Group and the wider games industry, and was a choice made for the sake of the "security of the business going forward".

5) What Apple's iOS 18 Game Mode means for your games

Among the more discreet rollouts at WWDC, iOS 18 is attempting to make games look better on iPhones than on Android, with a designated Game Mode planned to maximise power into a player's current adventure.

In essence, Game Mode means minimising background activity and reducing other processes while playing games, granting more of the remaining power to those games and maximising their frame rates.