EA takes Tetris free-to-play, while Gameloft tempts users with a 99p weekly subscription offer
Last week, Apps Blog looked at how mobile games firms Godzilab, Papaya and Gameview were making money from freemium Android games, with all three companies notably positive about the potential of Google's smartphone OS – in contrast to the gloominess of developers focusing on paid games.
Now there are two more examples of publishers trying new models beyond pure paid downloads. What's more, they are two of the bigger beasts in the mobile games world: Electronic Arts and Gameloft.
EA's strategy: it is giving away one of its premium brands for free. Tetris, to be specific. A new version of the classic falling-blocks game is free to download and play on Android Market, complete with a press release quote from Tetris licensor Henk Rogers claiming that going free for Android will ensure "fans can fall in love with the Tetris game all over again". Advertising appears to be the sole source of revenues for the new version.
Gameloft, meanwhile, is turning to a different money-making model: subscriptions. Its new Android HD+ Gameloft Club is hosted on its own mobile website rather than the Android Market store, and charges people £0.99 a week. For that, they get one new Gameloft game to download and keep every week, starting off with two when they first sign up. For now, this is a UK-only club.
The difference in approach is interesting for two companies that have been slugging it out for top-dog status in the mobile games industry since well before apps were a glint in Apple CEO Steve Jobs' eye.
EA's move is the more surprising of the two at first. In that pre App Store era, Tetris was the dominant mobile game worldwide. With tongue firmly in cheek, you might describe it as the Angry Birds of its day: a joke with teeth, since it hints at how the game developed by Finnish studio Rovio has supplanted Tetris as king of the mobile games landscape in the last couple of years.
There are likely to be two main motivations behind EA's decision to make the game free and ad-supported on Android. First, the difficulty of making a lucrative business out of paid games on Android, likely with a side-order of concern about potential piracy.
But second is the recognition that with 550,000 new Android devices activated every day, Google's platform has the scale to support ad-funded models, especially for apps and games that are likely to be used regularly for fairly long sessions. It's the same logic that led Rovio to make Angry Birds free and ad-supported on Android earlier this year, of course.
There are some gripes about the "intrusive" ads on Android Market from players posting reviews of Tetris' free version already, but time will tell if the model pays off – and of course, EA has the scope to offer an in-game payment option to remove the ads.
How does Gameloft's subscription model compare? Logistics made the decision to run the Gameloft Club from the company's own site an obvious one, but it will also give the publisher plenty of data on subscribers and their gaming habits: as well as a tailor-made mailing list for marketing new games that sit outside the subscription offer.
The 99p pricing means many games will be just a third of their regular price, which is a good deal for players as long as the available catalogue is good. Gameloft makes a lot of games every year, so at least there should be no problem with the flow of new titles for subscribers.
It is somewhat fashionable for games firms to grumble about Android's unfriendly climate for paid games. By experimenting beyond pure paid downloads, EA and Gameloft – as well as the numerous firms going down the freemium route – are arguably taking a more positive approach to establishing the real potential of Android as a gaming platform.
--
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/appsblog/2011/aug/30/android-games-money-strategies
~
Manage subscription | Powered by rssforward.com
0 comments:
Post a Comment