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Gameloft VP: 'There is room for premium games at a premium price on the iPhone'

by Mike Schramm Feb 22nd 2011 at 8:30PM

PocketGamer got to chat with Gameloft's vice president of worldwide publishing Gonzague de Vallois at last week's Mobile World Congress, and he paints a pretty grim picture for small developers and small games on the iPhone. When the platform first started out, he says, gamers were happy with casual games put together by small teams, but as gamers' tastes are maturing and developers are getting better at utilizing the hardware, "there is already immense pressure on the prices but there is room for premium games at a premium price on the iPhone."

Case in point is EA -- its premium games are selling very well, and even when they're not, the company has learned how to make them profitable with well-timed sales. de Vallois does want to keep prices higher than 99 cents, and he says about EA's sale that Gameloft wasn't "that happy with the Christmas promotion because it was backed by Apple and they highlighted it on their store worldwide." Instead of simply dropping prices, de Vallois advocates finding new ways to make games profitable. "We try new models. There are new opportunities emerging with iOS to try, and you can expect more of these trials from us. You will see freemium, free to play, in-app purchase -- you will see the types of new models coming to our games this year."

Gameloft already started doing that -- its Sacred Odyssey action RPG is a free download that serves as a trial version, with a $6.99 in-app purchase to open up the rest of the content. We'll likely see more experiments from them in the future, as well as more premium content aimed towards a more experienced iOS gaming audience. It'll be interesting to see how this platform develops further -- devs both big and small are starting to put together very viable strategies for selling their games.



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PocketGamer got to chat with Gameloft's vice president of worldwide publishing Gonzague de Vallois at last week's Mobile World Congress,...
 

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Hoopie

EA can suck it! Well timed sales.... They release a game at a premium price then drop it to .99 less than 24 hours later. (iPad SimCity)

February 22 2011 at 8:46 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Anthony

When did Gameloft make "Premium" quality games?

I thought it was low detailed overly-saturated textures, horrible voice acting, and ripping off other actually decent games as standard practice for them...

February 22 2011 at 8:45 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to Anthony's comment
Anthony

At least a 20-hour "well-written" story (some great games like Mirror's Edge are passable at 8,) some sort of DLC or continuous updates, multiplayer that's not just dropping 4 players on a field and seeing what's going to happen, amazing controls and customization, making use of what iOS can do outside of playing a game...

The list goes on.

It will be very difficult to justify spending $30-$40 on an iOS game. We need to see something actually worthy of a price like that come out of the App Store.

It is very easy for a company like EA or Gameloft to just pump out $6 titles here and there, they have the money, resources, and franchises to pull it off... But, they are stuck on last-gen portable gaming quality. It will be the smaller developers who are forced to spend a lot more time developing that will start this trend, if it were to ever actually materialize.

EA and Gameloft don't know how to spend well-worth time on something. It's evident in their games. Developers like Firemint, they spent such a long time on Real Racing 2. It still uses last-gen engines but it's quality is superb. They were forced to spend the time on it given their budget and their small amount of developers. BUT IT SHINES. This is something EA Mobile and Gameloft will not learn for a very long time.

February 22 2011 at 9:03 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
tonyunreal

If you compare their current titles to the games they made on other platforms before iPhone, you can see they are indeed moving towards that goal.

When they started on this platform, their games feel casual, non-creative and cheap. Three years later, I found myself sucked into their games like Modern Combat 2 and Asphalt 6 more that many of the console games(the crappy ones I mean).

It is undoubted that Gameloft is becoming not just a cell phone game maker, they are moving towards better quality games and a variety of platforms. They may not be a "premium" console game maker today, but they dominates the iOS platform anyway and there is definitely room for improvement for them in the future days.

February 23 2011 at 3:34 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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