Aaron Astle
Aaron Astle covers the business of mobile games with a data-led, industry-wide view, tying company moves, market performance and cross-platform trends into clear, accessible stories. As Features & Data Editor at PocketGamer.biz, he combines news writing with deeper analysis, often drawing on revenues, player numbers and market dynamics rather than treating games purely as entertainment. He has written more than 2,000 articles for the masthead, building a body of work that helps readers track how mobile and connected gaming evolve over time.
Mobile games performance and market data
Astle’s coverage consistently foregrounds hard numbers, charting how individual titles and segments perform over years rather than weeks. In his reporting on Monster Hunter Now, for example, he focuses on the game’s $336.9 million in mobile revenue over three years, framing it as a milestone for the title and for location-based games more broadly.
His features and data work involves analysing success trajectories and business outcomes, and his professional profile highlights a focus on game data analysis and interviews with leading publishers such as King, Scopely, Cygames, Sybo and Rovio.
Year-end pieces like his “top stories” selections for 2024 and 2025 revisit launches, monetisation shifts and platform strategy, using specific performance indicators to explain why certain games and business decisions mattered. Across this output he treats revenue figures, longevity and market share as core elements of the story, giving stakeholders a clear picture of which titles and business models are gaining ground and why.
Corporate moves, leadership changes and industry bodies
Astle covers the people and organisations shaping the mobile games sector, linking board appointments, senior hires and studio restructures to company strategy. His regular contribution to the “Movers and Shakers” roundup tracks leadership changes across companies such as Rovio, King, Trailmix, Tripledot and Apple, positioning each move within the wider competitive landscape of mobile gaming. He writes on trade and industry bodies as well, including board-level changes at organisations such as TIGA, treating governance and representation as part of the business story rather than a separate beat. In these pieces, the emphasis is on who is gaining influence, where expertise is moving, and how those shifts might affect publishing decisions, investment and platform relations.
This corporate lens complements his data coverage, creating a joined-up view of how executive decisions and organisational structures translate into new products, partnerships and performance outcomes in the mobile games market.
Editorial features, retrospectives and cross-platform trends
Beyond straight news, Astle produces longer-form features and retrospectives that look at how games and platforms change over time. His year-in-review stories for 2024 and 2025 highlight themes such as the rise of the next Nintendo Switch hardware, the surge of Solitaire on mobile, and shifts in Japanese marketing approaches, using specific titles and campaigns to illustrate broader trends.
He pays particular attention to cross-compatibility between mobile, console and PC, treating it as a defining dynamic in the modern games market rather than a niche technical detail. These features typically blend interviews, performance data and product timelines, showing how design choices, monetisation models and platform strategies interact.
The result is coverage that helps readers understand not only which games succeeded, but how multi-platform launches, live operations and regional marketing contributed to those outcomes.
Podcasts, events and weekly news cycles
Astle’s remit extends into audio and event coverage, where he interprets the week’s developments for a professional audience. As a regular voice on the Week in Mobile Games podcast, he discusses topics such as Apple’s high-end iPhone line-up, EU App Store rules, and takeaways from Pocket Gamer Connects conferences, connecting hardware, regulation and business models back to mobile game publishers and developers. Event-focused episodes and write-ups draw on sessions and talks from Pocket Gamer Connects, distilling what matters for companies planning launches, partnerships or platform shifts.
Across these formats he maintains the same business-first approach seen in his writing: products, policies and events are treated in terms of their commercial impact and strategic implications for the mobile games ecosystem.
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