Someone in the trade must have been shocked at the news that Zed acquired Player X this week. However, that someone might also be shocked that Apple has entered the mobile market, or that dinosaurs no longer roam the earth.
Yep, this was a deal that everyone (in gaming at least) knew was coming. It was just a matter of when.
It's an interesting one because the two companies emerged from such distinct corners of the market. Player X expertly exploited the rise of the operator content portal. I met Tony Pearce – the wild-haired founder of Player X – in a bar in London five years ago when he had just left Digital Bridges.
Player X was just an idea then, and Tony (he won't mind me saying this) was clearly a great salesman and lots of fun to be around, but not your typical hi-tech entrepreneur.
But hats off to Tony, and his then business partner Ari Honka, for realising that all those growing operator games portals would need an intermediary to connect them with smaller publishers – and turning their start-up into an enduring business. In time Player X became one of the most established of the games aggregators, working with Orange World, Sony Ericsson, O2, Virgin UK and others.
Unfortunately for the firm, the operator games portal concept consistently failed to deliver thanks largely to a crappy user experience. Publishers started to withdraw from the space, preferring to try their luck with app stores, DS and Xbox Live.
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Player X diversified into video production, QA and games development – separating its divisions to avoid the conflicts that did for other games aggregators like Telcogames. It did so with varying degrees of success.
But what it never lost were its excellent relationships.
This is surely what attracted Zed, which is now on a mission to cosy up with operators even though its background is in D2C, personalisation products and social media. I spoke to Zed this week, and although it acknowledged that portals have their flaws, it also stressed that operators (and brands for that matter) are increasingly outsourcing the management of their decks.
For all the success of app stores, there are still billions of users with feature phones for whom the operator portal is the premier content destination. This is the big prize for Zed, and I'm sure it will be particularly keen to replicate the excellent work Player X did with Accumulate in building the 100% storefronts for O2 and Telefonica.
Which leaves just one question. What will happen to the wild industry parties? I'm a virtual teetotaller, but at the Player X party at MWC 2007, I zig-zagged back to my hotel in a fug of booze. Not sure whether Zed will resurrect such revelry. I think you need to be English. And have hair like Tony's.
