January 5th, 2009 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Marketing Strategies | 8 Comments »
Fishlabs has made a lot of noise for the last couple of months. In their latest blog post, the company says goodbye to many sales channels including those of the operators.
Instead, the company will start selling their newest games directly to consumers via their own website and a limited amount of selected partners.
“we will, for the time being, not develop any new Java mobile games for sale via network operators and Internet portals.”
The mobile games will be sold as try&buy software. Consumers can freely download the mobile games and install them over the air or directly via PC. To fully unlock the mobile games, consumers will have to purchase Fishlabs credits. The purchasing price will differ from market to market in order to reflect the purchasing power of local consumers.
In the blog post, the company opens up about the gros rev-shares it has and all other reasons for not going over the traditional channels anymore. Surely the company will provoke a lot of channels, so it is to be expected that their mobile games that are already available, will be removed from most channels.
“Mobile network operators keep at least 50 % of the revenue. Distributors help themselves to up to 25 % of the end-user price for the more or less simple task of passing on the mobile game. Mobile games are marketed like ring tones
As soon as the raised capital is over this experiment will end and 30 talented people will look for new jobs. Where should the revenues come from. No brand, no marketing and some billing system that also eats up shares… The internet has no boundaries and price points differ by country… I do not get the strategy. Seems like a desperate attempt to save the fish.
It is very sad, that good mobile games do not sell better than bad ones (any reskinned solitaire with some bikini girls does sell more in one month on an operator deck than galaxy on fire in its whole life).
Fishlabs will be one more technological superior product that fails. Other projects come into my mind… e.g. the concorde 😉
I agree with the post above that this will probably be the end outcome. Very sad really if comes down to this later as they do produce some really great mobile games!
Maybe they will have more revenue luck on iPhone?… I certainly have as compared to everything java mobile before it anyway.
Good luck to Fishlabs and the talent that works for them.
I worked with several operators and many of the reported 38 sold units within this or that month…so revenue from 50 Euro. I can fully understand Fishlabs ! Meanwhile there is a time for mobile games before the app store and now…apple shows the way and hopefully Nokia Ovi will be an app store of 10 times the size then Apple with all their devices. Maybe the operators will be reduced to isp
Fishlabs has to sell to nvidia or any other 3D company but they already messed with too many guys around the globe.
If your games dont sell dont complain build other titles that sell. Fishlabs is just a small fish in the big sea.
i cannot see anywhere that fishlabs complains, they stopped developing java games for operators, so there is more space for other to try their best on operator sales.
Sam, what guys are you talking about ? Is fishlabs messing up with so many guys in the world ?
they do good games but piracy works against them or what do you mean
Just ask the big publishers what they think about Fishlabs. Most of them worked with them already.
I agree with most of the opinions here. This move is probably the last one possible to keep the anxious investors at bay as revenues are dropping. Of course this is not only Fishlabs’ problem, but they never made any real money anyway and will be hit very hard by the downturn in mobile gaming. Of course dropping marginal revenues is easy, getting revenues that pay the bill is impossible. So farewell, Fishlabs!
FFS – i post here as Sam so to the bloke above please piss off considering that there are probbly only 20/30 posters of ay regularity.
The Real Sam’s 2 cents – FL are not in a good place and the reasoning behind there decision lie’s beyond the statement given.
Cannot understant the HandyGames bitchiness at the same time tho. Those blokes would want to lighten up a little anyway…