Author Archive

Greystripe and Alten8 partner up

September 8th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Ad Funded Gaming | No Comments »

Greystripe hit another deal with their advertisement powered gamejump.com as they signed up with Alten8. Alten8 inserts 38 new games into the catalogue, boosting it to just about 100 mobile games in total to be available to consumers worldwide.

“Our alliance with Alten8 is a great addition to the game collection and is keeping the site fresh and exciting,” said Greystripe CEO Michael Chang “With so many games available, there’s simply no reason for consumers to continue paying to play games on their mobile, when they’ll find a wide variety of titles for all ages at GameJump.com. Since our launch, we’re seeing thousands of new consumers every day just say ‘no’ to paying for games.”

“This alliance will allow us to greatly increase our distribution of the many exciting games we have and increase the number of gamers we can reach worldwide,” said Sara Andrews of Alten8. “This is also an opportunity to provide many of our older titles to a new audience, giving these popular games of the past a new lease on life. We also may bring exclusive games to this distribution format if the model works well for us.”

The adult market enters a new area of brands

September 8th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Adult Games | No Comments »

The guys at MoCoNews have done an interview with Peter Bergstrom from Giant Mobile. Peter explained that the mobile adult (games) industry has found a new source of brands by licensing individual stars instead of publishing brands like Playboy or Hustler. Though it’s claimed new, we found companies like Adult Gamer doing this for a long time already. The complete interview can be found here.

Waat to score Penthouse

September 7th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Adult Games | No Comments »

Waat Media has managed to pull in a deal with Penthouse to provide their complete content offering, ranging from wallpapers to games to video. The deal covers the US and Europe.

Universomo acquires the Aukio Group

September 7th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Companies & M&A | No Comments »

Our friends at QB just announced that Universomo has acquired PC and Mobile developer Aukio Group. They didn’t say what the amount is, but it’s interesting to see an acquisition where a mobile developer gains PC development.

InfoSpace reacts on Elkware news

September 7th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Companies & M&A | No Comments »

This afternoon we where in contact with Infospace around the recent news that spread around the net. This is the reaction from the InfoSpace spokesman;

"In an effort to improve operating efficiencies, InfoSpace is consolidating its mobile gaming business into two studios. As part of this process, activities currently carried out by the Hamburg, Germany games studio and its supporting functions will be transferred to the UK and San Mateo, California studios."

So unlike the messages that reached us say, InfoSpace has carefully planned out this change and it is part of their company strategy.

Sennari to haul in a $ 10 million funding

September 7th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Companies & M&A | No Comments »

Sennari keeps hitting the headlines. It’s not new distribution or new titles this time, but the most recent round of funding. Previously, Sennari already collected $ 2 million and % 5 million in funding, making this the biggest round. Sennari has collected $ 10 million with the help of Mayfield Fund. Other existing investors also joined in this round.

Elkware in problems?

September 7th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Companies & M&A | No Comments »

I admit it’s a bit hard to publish this as I don’t want to work with just rumors, especially as we like the guys and what they do a lot. However after reading an email this morning about the whole situation at Elkware studio’s, I’d like to post a small snippet. The whole game development had already moved to the UK, but according to the email, the complete Elkware studio seems to be on the verge of shutting down. We don’t know anything more then the emails that are coming in and hope Infospace will soon come with a more official message about what is going to happen.

It’s mobster time

September 6th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Brand Licensing | No Comments »

While Overloaded announced their The Untouchables some time ago (currently near it’s release date) and I-play shortly after announced their mafia themed poker game The Goodfella’s, it seems the theme is growing. Recently, the Soprano’s poker game was released by THQ Wireless and now also VU mobile is about to put Scarface in the market. Scarface is an isometric 3D game in which you are plunged into the early 80’s to rebuild Tony Montana’s crime network and silence his many enemies.

I-play’s Q4 lineup

September 6th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Brand Licensing | No Comments »

I-play is preparing for a strong Q4 presence as they will start pushing a new episode of 24 into the market named Agent Down. Next to the new 24, they will also push in a new episode in their 3D Pool franchise named High Roller and Inca Quest. David Gosen, CEO of I-play stated that again the focus within the games is their one thumb gameplay strategy, keeping games accessible to everyone.

NDP knows the consumer!

September 6th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Research & Stats | No Comments »

Neil Stroter, researcher at the NPD group, published an article at gamedaily about our most beloved subject, the consumer. Neil is convinced they found out what makes the consumer buy our games.

The most important factor? The genre of the game. If people played it before, they’ll like it again. Right after that, consumers voted the good old free trial. Karl already commented on that in the way that the free trials are already missing. Who, these days develops still the free trials and makes successful rates of sales on them?

Right after these is the price (understandable) and familiarity with the publisher or developer. This would mean that the name of the developer is more appealing then a branded title? I wonder if I call any of Overloaded’s consumers and ask them to name five mobile game publishers, if they know more then one. Yes developers, it seems you should promote yourself more to the consumer instead of your games. Ok, I admit in the closing statement branded games are pointed toward as important, but it doesn’t show in the graphs.

The research also has bad news for all you reviewers out there. The reason for buying a game due to a review is only 5%. I don’t know what the percentage is for console/pc games, but we really need to improve this figure as reviews are one of the best tools for consumers not to buy a game they don’t like.

NPD also looked at the consumer satisfaction. There is real good news here. A massive 75% of the consumers is (very) satisfied with their mobile gaming experience and 69% of the consumers is thinking about a repeating visit.

The age is also investigated. Top age group is between 13 and 17 year old with 34%. Following after that is 25 till 34, representing 25% of the consumers. Surprisingly 18% of the consumers fall between those groups at ages 18 till 24. Does this mean they interviewed less people in that age group, or are we indeed talking about skipping a generation?