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Gameloft Q2 2006 Successfull

July 28th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Companies & M&A | No Comments »

Gameloft announced their figures for Q2 2006. Gameloft has shown a 50% increase on sales in comparison to the same quarter in 2005. Gameloft created a turnover of 15.8 Million Euro which is one million euro more then Q1 2006. Mobile game sales represented 97% of the total turnover. The remaining 3% came from the internet sales driven by jeuxvideo.com. On the 10th of June, Gameloft sold this division for 22.9 Million Euro.

Pimping with HandyGames: Pornmanager

July 28th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Game Reviews | No Comments »

Always wanted to work in porn, but afraid your mother would find out? HandyGames showed us the solution with their newest game called Pornmanager.

Following popular games like The Sims and Rollercoaster Tycoon, this game is also about making a pleasant living for yourself, this time by becoming the new Hugh Heffner (or Hugo Hafner in this case).

You kick off by roaming trough your mansion. Most rooms are closed down because you are just not wealthy enough. However as you progress trough the game, money won’t be a real problem anymore. You get your first assignment right away. Make a simple movie staring yourself and

Telcogames to follow the IQ training games wave

July 28th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Games | No Comments »

Telcogames sent out a press release about their latest title to go into global distribution coming September. Though they claim their game ‘mobile IQ trainer’ will be the first, we found out that other developers had already done it. One of those examples would be Brain Juice from Digital Chocolate. Nevertheless, their announcement sounds really interesting as this game also holds many mini-games like puzzles, algebra challenges, spatial thinking tasks and much more. What makes this pressrelease more interesting to us though is the announcement from Telcogames that they plan to release the game also on DS and PSP. We know the DS seems to be pretty simple to port to and that Gameloft has done some DS titles as well. However will Nintendo allow that much competition to their own titles? Anyway it’s interesting to see which way they will move.

Gamevil aims their nose to the US

July 27th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Companies & M&A | No Comments »

Korean based Gamevil is planning their move to take over the U.S. market by opening up a US subsidiary in L.A. Gamevil’s widest known game is the award winning Skipping Stone released by I-Play. With distribution as one of the biggest problems, Gamevil plans to use D2C and community based promotions which have proven success in Korea where Gamevil is a market leader on mobile games.

Mobile Games & Gamingblog now available on Feedburner

July 27th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Other news | No Comments »

Yes, after some requests we are finally connected to Feedburner. Please update your RSS readers / custom homepages etc. to get the feeds directly from Feedburner. This allows us to keep track of how many of you subscribe to our feed. Also you can now receive email updates trough the box on our homepage. Thanks for your help!

Miyowa is hiring

July 27th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in 1 | 1 Comment »

Miyowa is a company which has a focus on Instant Messaging services and infotainment for (mobile) communities. With clients all over the world, they are now looking to expand their workforce. They need account managers, project managers and Java developers. Contact Pascal Lorne as recrut-mkco@miyowa.com. Please refer to us.

Gameloft shares take a steep fall

July 27th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Companies & M&A | No Comments »

Ever thought about investing in Gameloft? This might be your chance. After industry rumours, stock prices dropped in an amazing rate to only about 50% of their previous value. Will they stay this way? Probably not

Bango’s goes D2C

July 27th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Other news | No Comments »

Following companies like Sharewire, Bango now announced their D2C billing schemes. Bango noticed the need for such billing mechanisms as companies like Hands-On pursuit building up their own branded D2C channels to serve a personal customer base. It comes at no surprise that several big content publishers like Hands-On, Capcom and Codemasters already signed up for the service.

I-Play the 2005 numbers

July 26th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Analysis & Editorial | 1 Comment »

We have received I-Play’s 2005 financial report from an anonymous source today, meaning we have some nice quotes to extend our previous coverage about I-Play declining it’s financial problems.

In this post, We will only pick up on the big numbers. Shares, options and expenses are limited as we don’t feel it’s interesting enough for the general public of this post.

The report kicks of by stating the acquisition of Ditto Studios and incorporating their financial results from the 9th of July onward. Also it states the ownership of the entire amount of shares of a company called Wireless Games Ltd. which has not started trading.

The revenue almost doubled from 6.2 million pound in 2004 to 11.9 million pound for 2005. The operating costs in 2004 where 8.2 million pound and increased to a massive 15.08 million pound in 2005. The loss before interest and taxation increased from 3.62 million in 2004 to 7.16 million in 2005. Looking at the consolidated profit and loss account, it shows the total loss carried forward in 2004 of 22.5 million pound has increased to 29.9 million pound. The number of employees has increased from 74 in 2004 to 155 in 2005.

The growth of the revenue is explained by the increase of j2me/Brew capable handsets in the market (natural growth) and the release of more titles and widening the distribution network. North America is now the companies main source of revenues.

The three main costs for the company where the acquisition of Ditto Studio’s, the development on the North American market and the rebranding to I-Play. Most of the operational costs where in Q1 and Q2. In Q3, duplication of resources where eliminated and the North American market got more efficient which made a sharp drop in operational costs. In Q4, operational costs where eliminated even more.

The report of the directors shows confidence in the company. With the cut down in operational costs at the end of 2005 and the climbing revenues during 2005 and sustaining in 2006, they feel the company is in a healthy state.

From Blaze to Hands-On: Keith McCurdy

July 26th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in People | No Comments »

Industry veteran Keith McCurdy has signed for a new position at Hands-On. Keith already worked in the entertainment industry for 20 years where his most recent position was as CEO for Blaze (Kayak interactive). Before that Keith fulfilled several positions in EA. Keith started July 17th. Till date, Blaze hasn’t announced a replacement.