近日，Glu公司首席执行官Niccolo De Masi在采访中，向pocketgamer记者介绍了公司目前的运营情况和发展计划。下文为访谈内容：

niccolo-de-masi

《Gun Bros》创造的100万次下载量一定很让你们兴奋吧？

100万次下载量的确不赖，不过对我们来说，更好的消息是《Gun Bros》进入了App Store游戏的前25名，所以它的营收情况很乐观。

许多人都曾经怀疑Glu的业务转型究竟是否正确，我们能不能开发有价值的原创知识产权作品，Glu的历史性决策对未来的发展到底有多大影响等等。

我现在可以很高兴地告诉大家，我们已经可以证明Glu的发展策略是可行的，我们完全有能力推出自有知识产权的免费模式游戏。《Gun Bros》是我们最畅销的iPhone游戏，这是一个非常振奋人心的消息。

但《Gun Bros》并不是一款典型的《FarmVille》风格的免费模式游戏，这一点很关键。

我们首先关心的是，努力创造出色的免费模式游戏和社交游戏，但并不想创造耗时、农场类的游戏体验。我认为从长远来看，后者并不会成为这一行业的趋势。

我很确信，Glu目前所开发的免费模式游戏，正与这一行的发展现状合拍，而且会推动它的未来走向。

GunBros

你们正在计划推出多种类型的游戏，请问你认为这种做法是否可能不利于游戏之间的交叉推广？

没错，《ToyShop Adventures》和《Gun Bros》两款游戏的用户不同，这两者之间要进行交叉推广确实不太容易。但我们拥有足够的能力维持这两者的用户情况，可以游刃有余地处理针对休闲和硬核玩家之间的交叉推广工作。

我们很早就意识到了一点，如果想创造一个价值1亿美元的智能手机业务，你就得拥有处理双边业务的能力。

尤其让我们激动的是，我们正与《FarmVille》这类社交游戏竞争，那些社交游戏仅仅是移植到了手机平台而已，尽管越来越多的在线游戏和掌机游戏开发商也进入了这一市场，但我们是手机领域的专家，所以拥有极大的竞争优势。

是否曾担忧你们的免费模式游戏营收仅占总销售额4%的这一情况？

在我们今年第三季度智能手机业务的营收中，免费模式游戏占25%，比上一季度增长了98%。我们现在致力于推出免费模式的游戏，所以Glu在这一领域的营收还会大幅增长。

另外，你还得横向、纵向进行比较才能下结论。比如说，ngmoco公司2009年第三季度在iPhone业务上的营收是300万美元，Glu同期的iPhone业务营收也是300万美元。

大家都不看好Glu的智能手机业务仅占总营收15%的这种情况，反观ngmoco公司，他们100%的营收都来自智能手机业务。但要知道，ngmoco公司当年100%的总营收是300万美元，而我们的300万美元却仅占总营收的15%。

事实上，Glu公司去年总营收是7900万美元，我们的智能手机业务营收要从300万美元走向7900万美元大关，当然有点困难，要费一些功夫。但从全球范围来看，这一行业总有一个升级换代的周期，让大家都过渡到智能手机时代，可能需要两三年时间。

不过日本的DeNA公司已经为智能手机市场的未来指明了方向，我们也准备全力以赴把握时机，在这一领域上发挥作为。

toyshop-adventures

对内置付费功能的游戏和广告赞助游戏这二者的区别有何看法？

我们不知道这两者的创收渠道哪个更好，只知道内置付费功能和广告赞助模式适合的用户群体不同。我们十分清楚这种情况，所以在自己的游戏中添加这些功能时会特别注意这一点。

我认为广告赞助模式将获得更大的市场份额，与网络广告模式形成合流，但我认为它不会成为我们免费模式游戏的主要营收来源。

对Glu来说，Android平台的发展机遇有多大？

谷歌正加紧改善Android平台的发展环境，Android平台的发展在2010年初至少落后苹果一两年时间，但在今年底，它与苹果之间的差距应该会缩小到3至6个月时间。

谷歌正重新设置Android平台的计费系统，完善应用商店功能。它想让Android支持全球范围的运营商计费系统，着力于提高Android应用商店的产品曝光率，增加创收渠道。

Glun是谷歌的亲密合作伙伴，我们有一名董事会成员同时也在谷歌董事会中，我们在恩威迪亚（Nidia）董事会中也有两名成员，恩威迪亚为Android手机提供了许多芯片。所以我想你可能没法找到第二个Glu这样能与Android更好地进行合作的公司了。

是否有意推出同时投放于iOS和Android平台的游戏？

我们2011年第一季度的游戏将首先同时登陆iPhone和iPad平台，之后四周才会推出Android版本。我们也可能缩短这个间隔，只要我们想做，也可以让iOS版本游戏最后发行。

但是，Android和iOS目前的用户基数不同，我们认为提前推出iOS版本会更赚钱。

你们的《Gun Bros》刚发行时出现了一些服务器故障，请问这是怎么回事呢？

发行游戏并不是什么容易的事情。ngmoco公司之前出现的问题远比《Gun Bros》的发行情况更糟。

出现这种情况的原因之一是，许多用户使用的是旧型号的手机，服务器要支持这些手机运行150MB的《Gun Bros》，结果可想而知……你永远不可能完美无缺地处理好这些问题。

另一个原因是，我们的用户遍及全球，在美国以外的地区，游戏流量非常之大。

我们原先以为，在美国时间内，游戏才会出现流量高峰。可事实上在韩国和中国北京时间内，我们的游戏也出现了流量高峰，所以不得不昼夜不停地进行加载。

我们已经从中汲取了经验，知道如何改善这种情况，我认为我们已经解决了80%-90%最棘手的问题。我们现在还做好了应对感恩节和圣诞节流量的准备，所以服务器失灵问题不会再发生了，当然我也不能保证这种情况永远不会再出现。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

CEO De Masi says Glu’s mobile expertise has vindicated its freemium decision

Glu Mobile has proved a something of bellwether for the mobile industry during 2010, as the publicly-owned company has tried to transition from its carrier deck featurephone business into a smartphone freemium business.

It’s still got a long way to go, but following on from its first successes with the release of freemium games ToyShop Adventures and Gun Bros. – both of which have been downloaded over one million times – it seems to be headed in the right direction.

We caught up with CEO Niccolo De Masi to get his take on the situation.

Pocket Gamer: You must be happy with the one million downloads of Gun Bros.?

Niccolo De Masi: The fact we’ve had one million downloads is good, but what’s better is that Gun Bros. is in the top 25 Top Grossing chart so it’s monetising very well.

There have been questions over whether Glu’s strategy was correct, whether we could make original IP that was valuable, or whether what Glu has done historically would be relevant in the future

I’m delighted to say that we have vindicated the strategy and shown that Glu can come up with the chops in terms of our own IP for freemium games. Gun Bros. is our best selling iPhone game, and that’s pretty exciting.

It’s not a typical freemium FarmVille-style game either, which is significant.

We’re trying to make freemium and social games that are great games first. We’re not trying to make grinding, farming, monetising experiences. I don’t think that will be the direction the industry will be going the longrun.

I’m feeling fairly confident that what Glu is doing in terms of freemium has caught up to where the industry is now and is also pushing ahead in terms of where the industry needs to be in future.

You’re planning a diverse range of titles. Do you think this will have a negative impact in terms of the potential for cross promoting them?

You’re right that you can’t cross promote the ToyShop Adventures’ audience with the Gun Bros.’ audience easily but we’re big enough to able to sustain both demographics, and we’ll be crossing selling very well between the more casual and the hardcore.

We recognised early on that in order to be $100 million smartphone business, you have to be able to tackle both sides of the business.

In particular, it’s exciting that we can show we’re competing with social games such as FarmVille. I think that audience has only partially been translated into the mobile space, but our mobile expertise provides a competitive edge for us, even though there continue to be more entrants from the online space and console space.

Is it a worry that your freemium revenue is currently only 4 percent of your overall sales?

Well, it was 25 percent of our smartphone revenue in Q3 2010, and that grew by 98 percent compared to Q2. You’re going to see this sector grow explosively given that we’re now focused on launching freemium games.

Also, you need to compare apples to apples. For example, ngmoco did $3 million of iPhone revenue in 2009, and Glu did $3 million of iPhone revenue in 2009 too.

People seem to find it okay to complain that only 15 percent of Glu’s revenues are from smartphones while ngmoco’s are 100 percent. Sure, but it’s 100 percent of $3 million overall revenue; the same as our 15 percent in absolute terms.

The fact is that Glu did $79 million of overall revenue in 2009, so to grow our smartphone revenue from $3 million to $79 million will take some time. Globally, there’s an upgrade cycle going on, so it will take two to three years for everyone to upgrade to smartphones.

But companies such as DeNA in Japan point to the future in terms of what can be achieved with smartphone gaming once the market matures, and we’re really well positioned to capitalise on this.

What’s your feeling on the differences between in-app purchases and ad-supported games?

We’re agnostic as to the source of monetisation is, but IAP and ads cater to different audiences. We saw this pretty clearly when we were retrofitting such features to our existing games.

Over time, I think ads will take a larger share, converging with the web advertising model, but I don’t think it will be the majority of our freemium revenue.

How big will Android be for Glu?

Google is ramping up Android very quickly. It was one or two years behind Apple at the start of 2010. By the end of 2010, it will have closed the gap to three to six months.

Google’s fixing billing and the store. Remember, it’s trying to do this differently. It’s trying to enable carrier billing globally. It’s also trying to improve discoverability and the monetisation of the store.

Glu is a very close partner to Google. We have one board member that’s also on Google’s board, and we have two board members on Nvidia’s board, and it is shipping a lot of chips for Android devices. I don’t think you’re going to find a company better primed from Android growth than Glu.

Will you be planning simultaneous iOS and Android releases?

Our 2011 Q1 titles will be simultaneous on iPhone and iPad, with Android following on four weeks later. We will shorten this over time, and, if we want to, we can always hold the iOS releases back.

However, Android and iOS are currently separate user bases and we find we make more money overall to release iOS earlier.

You had some server issues with the launch of Gun Bros. What was the problem?

Launching these games is never trivial. Just look at the problems ngmoco has had with its games. It still has far worse issues than Gun Bros.

One issue is supporting people using older devices, especially when they’re running a 150 MB game like Gun Bros..You can never be flawless in these cases.

The other is that we’ve experienced phenomenal popularity globally: in particular there’s been a lot of traffic outside the US.

We expected our traffic spikes to be within normal US hours, but we’ve had spikes in South Korean and Chinese times, so we’ve had to deal with more of a round the clock loading.

We’ve learned how to optimise for these situations, and I think we’ve broken the back of 80-90 percent of the issues. We’re also preparing for Thanksgiving and Christmas traffic, so we won’t have those sort of problems again, although I can’t promise we’ll never have a snafu again.（source:pocketgamer）