December 5th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Brand Licensing | No Comments »
I have never really been posting it on the blog, but a lot of business contacts know that in my job I always regard mobile game quality as something that is really important. After all, in the end we all want the consumers to come back right? What often amazed me though is the fact that there are always highly branded games which deliver a real poor experience to the user. I will not name the games, as I don’t want to point any fingers, but in the past I have said no to games that could have brought in a lot of money if they went live.
In his latest series of interviews, Tony Pearce, CEO at Player X, announced that branded mobile games with bad quality might hurt console games a lot in their reputation. He explains non-gamers might buy a console license on mobile first and after being unhappy about it, leaving the good console version for what it is. Player X in turn, looks more to long lasting licenses that have earned their reputation to a wide public like TV shows.
Personally I think this approach is good. However there are developers that do a great job and make a mobile game that is much better then the console version. As so, I rather stick to looking at quality alone as a reason for picking up or declining a game and hope many other content managers will do the same. One returning visitor is much more important then ten one-off sales as that one will come back and with a bit of luck bring some friends along.
