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Gameloft: Devs scaling back game development on Android photo

Here's some news that should make Apple fanboys happy: Gameloft says that it will be scaling back its investment in games for the Android platform, and that other development companies are doing so as well. The French game developer, who makes most its money off of mobile games, says that many other companies are following suit thanks to Google's lack of promotion of the games on their platform and the service not being as well put together as the iPhone's.

This was all revealed at a recent shareholders meeting in which Gameloft finance director Alexandre de Rochefort said, "We have significantly cut our investment in Android platform, just like... many others." He then went on to state that Android's app store is "not as neatly done as on the iPhone." Following that statement up by slamming Google themselves for a lack of support: "Google has not been very good to entice customers to actually buy products. On Android nobody is making significant revenue."

I've seen that new Droid phone and played around with it a bit, and I must admit he is correct about the service not being as neatly done, but the phone is just out of the gate and there are a ton of other models that use Android set to hit. I doubt it will hurt Gameloft too much since they are still developing for Android, but they might be kicking themselves over this decision in a few months time.


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15 comments | showing # 1 to 15

flaming burrito's Avatar - Comment posted on 11/21/2009 12:15
flaming burrito
Meh. If i want to play a game while i'm out, i'll bring my ds. But the droid is sex and I love it.
BrandonUndead's Avatar - Comment posted on 11/21/2009 12:22
BrandonUndead
I'm with flaming burrito. While games on the phone are neat as a novelty, I'm more interested in it doing practical and at least semi-productive things. I've never played a great game on the iPhone or any other phone.
linuxguy's Avatar - Comment posted on 11/21/2009 12:50
linuxguy
Maemo is better than android anyway
brimtastic's Avatar - Comment posted on 11/21/2009 13:07
brimtastic
I have an HTC Hero, and it's quite clear that the games side of things on Android isn't nearly as well done as the iPhone. The Marketplace is full of Sudoku games, rubbish Snake clones and general crapness. I'm hoping things will improve with a bit of time, but there's a lot of catching up to be done.

Saying that, I wouldn't ever trade my Hero for an iPhone. I'm not really a fan of these Apple thingies. If I seriously want to game on the go I bring my DS.
ttaylor's Avatar - Comment posted on 11/21/2009 13:31
ttaylor
I've got a droid, but I don't really want to use it for gaming. It's got enough other crap that drains the battery. The Android Market is definitely nothing like the iTunes store, but it works well enough..
Mattchewie's Avatar - Comment posted on 11/21/2009 13:53
Mattchewie
You know when I read this I was all "NOOOO!!!" then it hit me...I don't ever game on my phone so I don't care :P
jonnybryce's Avatar - Comment posted on 11/21/2009 14:13
jonnybryce
Gameloft makes actual cool games for iPhone, like 3d first person shooters and platformers. On Android they just throw their regular java cellphone games like Brick Breaker at it, and there are a bunch of free and cool games that are better than 2 year old java cellphone games you can play on any phone.

Gameloft half asses Android, doesn't make revenue compared to their AAA development iPhone strategy.

SHOCKING.
Markusdragon's Avatar - Comment posted on 11/21/2009 14:15
Markusdragon
The last thing we need is Apple having a mobile phone technology monopoly.
MowDownJoe's Avatar - Comment posted on 11/21/2009 14:49
MowDownJoe
jonnybryce wins the comment thread.

Admittedly, the fact that there are many different Android phones doesn't exactly help with development, though... it's like developing games for a PC circa 1986, sorta.
reuvenb's Avatar - Comment posted on 11/21/2009 14:50
reuvenb
Thank you, Gameloft! Your stuff sucks and was cluttering the market!
The Silent Protagonist's Avatar - Comment posted on 11/21/2009 14:55
The Silent Protagonist
Gameloft makes AAA games? Really? Like what?

Clearly its nothing they've been putting on DSi or WiiWare. If that's how they treat Nintendo, then iPhone users must be getting far more shovelware than Nintendo fans have had to endure.
hpv's Avatar - Comment posted on 11/21/2009 15:09
hpv
A French developer waving the white flag? I'd NEVER have seen that coming.
natetehgreat's Avatar - Comment posted on 11/21/2009 16:43
natetehgreat
@ Markusdragon

They have ~70% of the mp3 player market thanks to people buying a lot of iPods. I don't see how that is bad for the mp3 player market.


@ The Silent Protagonist

Modern Combat, Hero of Sparta, and Assassin's Creed are all highly-rated, big selling games on the App Store. Far better than the few games available on DSiWare.
natetehgreat's Avatar - Comment posted on 11/21/2009 16:58
natetehgreat
@ The Silent Protagonist,

That sounded fanboyish by accident. I meant to say "Better than most of DSiWare games available." I don't personally think they're very creative games (Modern Combat and Hero of Sparta are heavily influenced by MW and Chains of Olympus), nor do they feel unique to the platform.
Zen Albatross's Avatar - Comment posted on 11/21/2009 19:09
Zen Albatross
Fellow Android users: Buy an iPod Touch.

Problem solved.
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