December 7th, 2007 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Interviews | No Comments »
Today, we have an interview with Charles McLeod, the managing director of our proud sponsor Metaflow. Unlike many of our previous interviews with developers and publishers, we will now look at the topic of standardizing distribution of mobile games and Metaflow’s commitment to that bit of the biz.
Metaflow is a service provider in the world of mobile games, focused at the distribution of mobile games toward B2C channels. What exactly does Metaflow provide to developers and publishers?
Metaflow is the leading provider in content submission. Our unique software solution simplifies mobile games submissions complexity which means that Publishers can get content to market faster with fewer errors. This positively impacts the Publisher’s sales revenues and reduces company costs, which ultimately leads to higher profit margins.
In a demo you once showed me, I noticed there where a lot of validation tools that do basic checks on the game files to avoid common problems. How far does the tool go there?
Metaflow provides multi layered checks throughout the platform to help track and rectify issues pre final submissions preparation. This is to make sure that all of the mandatory submissions expectations are complied with upfront. This avoids any rejection from the sales channel which in turn would negatively impact revenue generation.
We have developed a robust quality control process from the point of discovering games into Metaflow down to a channel specific level when readying games for market. If there are issues, the channel reports or incomplete tasks will clearly show what they are and what needs to be done to rectify them.
How many D2C sales channels are supported by Metaflow now and in how many countries?
I would estimate that Metaflow has approximately 30 D2C channels across 15-20 countries however many more could be reached using our generic submissions channels.
D2C is certainly growing and on top of the well known channels like Jamba, Samsung fun club and Sony Ericsson, the growing trend is that clients are stocking their own private D2C channels using the Metaflow software.
Does this mean Metaflow will also handle D2C catalogue and billing services now or in the future?
There are many established players in the market already providing D2C catalogue and store front services so Metaflow’s role here will be to manage the lifecycle of the asset for stocking purposes into those catalogues.
Our additional value here is when we interface into cataloguing systems so that games go live quickly and we capture the data for when an asset is actually live on deck. Our new products released in the first half of next year will then allow a Publisher’s sales and marketing teams to access powerful reports relevant to their own specific areas of the business on status of all assets across all sales channels from submissions through to actually live.
Does Metaflow also offer services directly to operators and other D2C channels?
Metaflow is increasingly being used by operators and other service providers that update the supported device list. This means that the instant a device is launched into the market a Publisher using Metaflow can immediately see the new device and publish content to it straight away, all leading to greater sales revenue.
Without Metaflow this update process might have taken days, weeks or even months, especially where an operator releases an updated device list quarterly, which we have seen at several major operators in the past.
We can imagine that Metaflow is the product of a problem you stumble on if you are a big developer of mobile games, but what made you do it?
The four founders of Metaflow had been working together in the java download platform space with elata since 2001 which meant that the team knew the operators well and the chief problems with the content ingestion. elata was purchased by Qualcomm in 2005.
We saw that there was a gap in the market for a specialist enterprise solution which intelligently linked Publishers and mobile operators together in a highly beneficial way to the whole industry. The publisher consolidation over the last 2 years and the shrinking of operator games teams everywhere further confirmed that the industry was looking towards more economical ways of delivering mobile games profitably.
In the market, delivery requirements are one of the biggest hurdles at the moment. Do you notice any changes at operators or other channels, to make it easier to submit mobile games?
Unfortunately not, with recent changes to some platforms like Materna at O2, Vodafone Australia and upgrades at End2End content systems, this has meant an unprecedented number of ongoing modifications to the submissions requirements.
Fortunately for our licencees, Metaflow’s support team deals with any platform or submissions changes which means that the publishers can concentrate on their core business of publishing.
The operators definitely have a positive attitude in trying to work more effectively with Publishers now. Widespread recognition of what our software delivers has meant that several major operators have made Metaflow the preferred submissions solution.
This distribution market is pretty much open as far as we can see though some publishers have of course made their own Metaflow like systems. What does Metaflow do to keep its leading position?
To the contrary, I would say that the distribution market is closed to any technology company without direct contractual relationships with operators, since submissions information is completely confidential to each channel.
Metaflow leverages our Publishing partners’ submissions information across multiple Publishers who have direct relationships into each sales channel. In short, Metaflow provides a software solution combined with a fully managed service. Metaflow updates all direct CPs for each channel with the latest information and fully optimised submissions process to get games on deck faster.
The longer established players had to build their own tools and processes to track games from the cradle to the grave, however the market has changed rapidly over the last 18 months and like any maturing industry growing revenue and keeping a rein on the underlying costs to get to market is all that business is ultimately about.
Metaflow keeps its leading position through delivering a solution which our licencees cannot deliver internally as fast or as cost effectively on their own. Increasingly, Metaflow licencees get their content to market faster than non-Metaflow licencees’ submissions and that is our mission. Like any outsource service, Metaflow allows the Publisher to get on with Publishing whilst delivering significant, rapid return on investment.
I have yet to see an individual Publishing tool and process that can get anywhere near the usability, accuracy or submissions efficiency compared to using Metaflow across multiple channels.
This automatically brings us to the future of Metaflow. Will Metaflow stay focused on the core business, mobile game distribution, or will you launch additional services to mobile game developers?
We will continue to focus on reducing complexity and costs whilst streamlining game distribution whenever and wherever we can for our Publishers licencees and operators.
2008 is going to be very exciting for Metaflow. We are releasing a SKU repository with B2B and D2C functionality to compliment our core submissions business and this will all be underpinned with powerful business intelligence and comprehensive reporting systems.
Towards the end of Q1 we are expecting to make some announcements around in-game advertising and subscription enabling services which means that our licencees will have the ability to submit more products in less time from one central store.
Finally, the Metaflow lite solution we have just released will allow smaller players to join the Metaflow community and at the same time support aggregators and service providers who want to push submissions checks for content coming into their content systems back downstream, just as we have done for the mobile operators today.
You noted that Metaflow will move into in-game advertising. Does this mean Metaflow will become an advertising agency as well?
We have no plans to become an advertising agency whatsoever. What we plan to do is to make it easier for our licencees to provide ad-funded content to operators without the crippling costs that would out-weighs the benefit of having ad funded content in the first place.
How about the commercial model, will the in-game advertising based games be available for free to consumers, or will it will just be an additional revenue stream for developers and publishers?
I think an ad-funded model which provides price support for older titles in the market is the one which will support Publisher in the most positive way.
I read Greg Ballard from Glu commenting on this a few weeks ago and I agree
