Birds (sic!) do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it, and now even Oprah (have you been there before her? Check here)… so: what about mobile games companies tweeting? Now, there’s many of them already out there (see list below) but how much sense does it make (that it makes sense for your business I demonstrated recently)?
Tag: gameloft
With the conference season upon us, I shall be trekking to my former hometown of Hamburg on Monday to join the good folks from the Casual Games Association for their European iteration of Casual Connect. It looks like a pretty cool show with lots of interesting stuff going on, in particular also on social gaming and cross-platform initiatives: they have numerous panels and keynotes on both and a whole strand on mobile. Interesting speakers, too: Rob Unsworth (Digital Chocolate), Ami Ben-David (Oberon/I-Play), Philippe Dao (Gameloft) are there plus an interesting panel with Fishlabs’ Michael Schade and Handy Games’ Christopher Kassulke on the same panel (their two companies had a little bit of a tiff recently). I’ll be there to elaborate a bit more on mobile social gaming… Fingers crossed.
Mobile games giant Gameloft, the one company in the space that seemed immune to failure, apparently shuts down its Gameloft Connect D2C service. Gameloft had started this as a iTunes-style application with all the bells and whistles: it was a downloadable PC application that allowed users to browse Gameloft’s catalogue online and bypass bandwidth restrictions (and billing charges) of mobile networks by utilising the computer’s bandwidth. Games could be loaded via a PC-handset connection and activated by SMS.
However, now it seems to only signify that direct-to-consumer propositions for mobile games are a tough business. They may have wanted too much: mobile games are a very real business but they seem to be too niche still to justify a full-blown integrated product like this, in particular when it is not a one-stop shop but only provides access to one publisher’s catalogue (even if such a good one such as Gameloft’s). A real pity that!
Someone went deep into EA’s financials to find that the gaming giant actually makes more money with its mobile games than it does with releases on the super-high-end Sony PS3: the numbers are apparently $37m for mobile vs. $21m and $17m for PSP and PS3 respectively, and this is despite a shallow 5.7% revenue growth (industry leaders Gameloft grew by 51% in the same time).
However, one must of course take into account that the PS3 was only released in spring 2007, so will have a smaller install base and – arguably most importantly – it leaves aside the first big season for the PS3, namely the upcoming Christmas sales, which traditionally account for a huge amount of console and game sales.
It is nonetheless very encouraging that even mighty EA, despite the huge marketing effort by Sony, made more from mobile, which is still being perceived niche by many, than from Sony’s new flagship!
Console game publisher Ubisoft sold its 18.89% stake in leading mobile game publisher Gameloft for € 81.27m (c. $111m) to Calyon, the investment banking unit of French bank Credit Agricole.
The deal is interestingly crafted and seems to have been driven by financial performance concerns for Ubisoft: it is an equity swap agreement that gives Calyon 24 months to sell the Gameloft shares on the market. Any changes in the Gameloft share price will then be recorded by Ubisoft, so the deal will only affect Ubisoft’s income statement when Calyon sells the Gameloft shares. “Ubisoft said the equity swap enables it to stagger the placement of the Gameloft shares so that Ubisoft can keep benefiting from the company’s development potential over the next two years.”
No need to get all hyped up though: the Ubisoft brands will remain safely where they are: The two companies said (other sources said “hinted”) that they will continue to collaborate, especially when it comes to utilizing Ubisoft’s brands on mobile phones.
The fact that the license ties and collaboration will remain, that it will still be the Guillemot brothers at the helm of both companies and, last but not least, the way the deal mechanics work would suggest that this was more a piece of corporate and financial housekeeping for Ubisoft rather than an aggressive new move for Gameloft. On the other hand, even mighty Gameloft may have felt the need to position itself slightly more independently in order to be able to move in a market that has seen continuous consolidation waves and aggressively pushing market players.