Mobile gaming powerhouse Gameloft is not happy with Electronic Arts, criticizing the publisher for its holiday iOS sale, in which a huge amount of games were offered for a measly $0.99 apiece. According to Gameloft head Michael Guillemot, such a sale threatens innovation and makes it hard for smaller titles to compete.
"There is a high uncertainty for the future anytime somebody can steal the market at Christmas," he states, adding that it will lead to a "good enough" attitude where developers rush games out of the door for a quick 99 cents, rather than develop a better title that costs more money.
Frankly, as much as I respect Gameloft, this guy is talking out of his ass. I've argued for a long time that major publishers need to start charging less for their games, because iPhone gamers generally don't want a lot of $10 titles. Guillemot acts as if the iPhone top ten chart hasn't always been full of $0.99 games, when it nearly always has.
Indie developers have been competing just fine with their dollar games. The fact that EA reduced so many prices to a buck only tells me that the publisher is finally starting to "get" what mobile gaming is about. EA isn't changing the market -- it's fitting into it.
Guillemot's Goal: Gameloft on Every Screen [IGN via Pocket Gamer]
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Contest:
1:00 PM on 01.11.2011 | 
Basically a rip-off of Modern Warfare. Although the name itself juxtaposes itself with a name like Modern Combat: Domination... Wonder if I have heard anything like it?
EA makes original titles and manages to corner the market.
Are you kidding me?
How cutting edge you are.
I am sorry, but given your track record in the mobile market, you are neither small nor innovative; So stop posing as an indepent developer and crying about EA giving you some competition...
Ah, that's all PopCap ever did, was rip-off other peoples games and look at them now. Everyone loves them for their new innovative games. So maybe in 5 years time, GameLoft might find some originality, and creativety as well. You never know!
More cheap games FTW! Go EA! Gameloft is just upset that EA did better than they did this past holiday. Crybabies.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHA!
poor little gameloft :(
If EA had released a game on xbl indie Market the devs would perhaps have a right to grumble as that's a dedicated to small devs/teams but gamelofts moaning is unwarranted.
If course they could also be pisses because EA had actually done a pretty spiffing job on their iPhone adaptations of console games.
As I said I like Gameloft games but it seems to menthey didn't quite make as much money as they wanted so their lashing out at the big dogs.
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