XMG Studio attacks EA for Christmas app promotion at Mobile Games Forum

While we're in San Francisco at Macworld this week, there's also a Mobile Games Forum going on in London, and one of the discussions over there got a little heated when the talk turned to EA's big Christmas sale on the App Store.

Mobile developers have said before that EA's big push down on even its most premium games to 99 cents before the big App Store freeze over the holidays, flooding the App Store's top list with its own titles and claiming lots of the big holiday boosts in sales for itself, was a questionable move. Ray Sharma, founder of indie game developer XMG Studio, had this to say: "I think Electronic Arts really screwed the industry at Christmas time, and it's unfortunate, because of what Apple did to support them... They basically saturated the whole iOS community, they got 160 million units out there, and as a developer you had to sit there and watch Electronic Arts saturate the whole app economy." Sharma also said he estimates that XMG lost 15-20 percent of December revenue from its iOS games because of EA's move and Apple's support of it.

Of course, we're not sure where Sharma can get a number like that -- it's very hard to estimate what people would have bought that they didn't, not to mention that a lot of people see developer complaints about EA's pricing as sour grapes. But it is interesting -- Sharma also promises that if the push towards freemium apps on the App Store continues, EA will eventually regret dropping prices so low, as it won't be able to compete with indie developers at the same price levels, given the costs in creating its premium, often licensed games.

We'll be talking to more developers of all kinds of software here at Macworld, and we'll be sure to gauge other reactions to EA's price drops as the week goes along.

View Tags

Source: http://www.mobile-ent.biz/news/read/mgf-2011-venture-capital…

Categories

Apple App Store iOS

While we're in San Francisco at Macworld this week, there's also a Mobile Games Forum going on in London, and one of the discussions over...

Add a Comment

Sign in »

9 Comments

Filter by:

Josh

Heh, sounds like they are just pissed for not thinking of it themselves.
Quite your whining already.....
EA made millions of dollars? sounds like a great plan to me.

January 27 2011 at 3:07 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

glad

I bought plenty of EA titles at 0.99 cents especially for my iPad which I haven't yet bought!!

January 27 2011 at 7:00 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

jbelkin

This concept to developers might be shocking but we consumers do not like paying more for things we don't think are worth it ... as Homer Simpson might say - MAKE BETTER GAMES ... How's that Angry Bird game doing? EA had some nice games but was I wiling to pay $9.99 for them? No ... when they lowered the price to $.99 to $4.99, now they were worth it - did I buy them all just because they were on sale? No. Yes, do I like a sale, of course but we all have our price points ... For instance, I have zero interest in the SIMS ... doesn't matter what price it is but Scrabble at $.99? Sure ... same with EVERY OTHER purchase. I have no problem paying $14.99 for a travel app that serves my need and same with games ... so bottom line, make better games then we will all pay what we think it's worth.

January 26 2011 at 11:21 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to jbelkin's comment

Mario

Completely agree. I did not even consider any of the EA apps until they were $.99 and then I bought quite a bunch.

January 27 2011 at 11:11 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Dreamwriter

I agree with these folks - as an iPhone game developer *and* a gamer, it really sucks that developers have pushed iPhone prices down as much as they have. Because of that, only the very top selling games have any chance of making enough money to pay for its development. And because of that, few big developers are willing to risk the iPhone. Now, if EA had put its older apps on sale, fine, but they put *all* their apps, including their biggest, brand new games, on sale for $.99. The more that happens, the less customers are going to want to pay more than that. And the less quality games we'll get.

January 26 2011 at 9:24 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to Dreamwriter's comment

Rolfie

And the less quality games we'll get, the less games we'll buy. And if we buy less games, developers will be forced to make better games and/or raise the prices, and we will be right back on square one. It's the normal cycle of a free market economy.

January 27 2011 at 6:28 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

simontarr

Couldn't have anything to do with XMG's flagship game being Inspector Gadget, could it?

January 26 2011 at 8:43 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Sealos

How is this going to hurt them? Mobile for EA is just one sliver of the pie. Many of the mobile titles are just different ports of the games that are already on their roster. Smart move on their part.

EA doesn't answer to the developer community, they answer to their stock holders and customers.

Sounds like sour grapes to me.

Bitter, party of one... XMG your table is now waiting.

January 26 2011 at 8:06 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

mack

A company dropping the price of its games over the Christmas period to get itself noticed and attract more sales?

Unheard of, unnatural, repugnant, shocking and never been done before!

January 26 2011 at 7:21 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply