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March 15th 2010, London
Our quarterly networking event is back once again - save the date!
March 15th 2010, London
Our quarterly networking event is back once again - save the date!
Director Business Development
Competitive Package
UK
With mid-tier games publishers dropping like flies, the carriers have reason to worry.
This week, Namco Bandai Networks Europe became just the latest mid-tier mobile games publisher to tell European mobile operators 'thanks, but no thanks' and pull out of the market.
Games like Pac-Man won't disappear from the operator decks, thanks to Namco's distribution deal with EA Mobile.
But the operators should be extremely concerned at the fact that yet another well-established games firm that entered the European Java market with big ambitions has decided that the economics simply don't add up.
Namco joins THQ Wireless and Vivendi Games Mobile in that regard, while Eidos, Sega, Codemasters and Konami decided long ago to give up on direct on-portal efforts in favour of distribution deals with the big guns.
Those big guns - EA Mobile, Gameloft and Glu Mobile - will be happy to fill the gaps on-portal, with their own games and with those of the companies who've left the market. For the moment, the likes of I-play, RealArcade, HandyGames and Connect2Media appear to be hanging in there too.
But the story here is less about why the Namco Bandais, THQs and Vivendis "failed" on mobile, but about the wider failings of the operator games decks, as the early adopters who used to be their keenest customers have moved on to iPhone, Android and other smartphones.
Individual operators may quibble, but in general there has been a sharp fall in the sales of Java games from carrier decks in the last year - one publisher tells ME that a top-ranked game on some big operators now sells 50% less downloads than it did this time last year.
Against that backdrop, factoring in the cost of porting games and maintaining relationships with the various European carriers, and bearing in mind the aggressive strategies of the three largest publishers, it's no surprise that mid-tier firms have decided smartphones are more likely to deliver a return on their investment.
And yet... this time next year, the operator channels could look very different. Orange already has an app store, Vodafone 360 appears to be the app-focused replacement for Vodafone Live, and pretty much every carrier has plans for their own more open app store in the works.
The question is, will anyone bar the Big Three be left to stock their virtual shelves? The fact that some operators' games teams are now more thinly-stretched than ever thanks to an expanded brief covering apps as well as games won't be a big help in wooing games publishers back.
Namco Bandai may well make its fortune from iPhone and Android in a way that it couldn't from J2ME - and if operators launch their own customised versions of Android Market, it may find itself dealing with them directly once again.
But while market consolidation is a fact of life for most industries, the reasons for the rapid consolidation of the mid-tier mobile games publishers in Europe deserve greater scrutiny. Maybe operator app stores are the answer, but it remains to be seen how many publishers will stick around to pose the question.
Operator portals have always been a horrible business ecosystem for driving innovation in games. They always will be. They're fragmented and don't leverage the scale of their handset partners. The only way to turn this around is to allow their vendor partners to compete with Apple by taking control of their services. Otherwise, this business belongs to Mr. Jobs.
I could back this up with examples, but who cares. Besides, here's all the proof you need.
Have you played Swarm on the iPhone yet? It's freakin awesome, it only costs 99 cents, and the developer is making a mint on it. Nobody but Apple can make that happen right now, and that pretty much says it all.
I think (at least back in 2005) in 3 we showed that it was possible to create a good consumer experience for retailing games from a mobile operator portal... but it was never a priority for the management and it stopped evolving.
Apple have shown how to do this from a Handset-based portal, but obviously the success of this hasn't been repeated by other manufacturers - despite many years of effort.
But the Apps store is not a flawless experience... and as more content gets added they will have to continue to adapt it (and given their heritage I'm hopeful they)
However, I would argue the key to any connected retail (apart from pricing of course!) is reach and limiting your audience to one operator's customers or one handset is ultimately flawed.
Ultimately, its the internet and in time opening up access will have to happen, and then strong brands able to attract customers no matter their device will will win out.
It will be interesting to see if the big mobile-games boys will start to leverage their influence on the various Apps Stores and if that will just mean that the (cool) small developers end up getting squeezed out. Personally, I hope that doesn't happen... but unfortunately I think that will be almost inevitable.
