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每日观察:关注芬兰开发商Rovio或收购第三方作品(7.20)

发布时间:2011-07-20 16:15:33 Tags:,,

1)据pocketgamer报道,有多方消息称芬兰开发商Rovio正准备收购第三方作品知识产权,意欲向发行商身份转型。Rovio目前正与多家尚未推出iOS游戏的开发商对话,准备收购后者的内容,将其纳入自己的手机游戏生态圈。除此之外,Rovio还有可能在第三方开发商的游戏中植入“通关神鹰”内置付费功能。

Rovio(from aray.cn)

Rovio(from aray.cn)

2)在最近的Evolve大会上,不少手机游戏公司针对Android平台盈利及曝光率问题展开了讨论。据Tapjoy高管Paul Bowen所称,使用Tapjoy API并且最具盈利性的游戏(游戏邦注:Bowen并未指出具体游戏名称)目前每月已创收15万美元。

evolve-2011(from gamerepublic.net)

evolve-2011(from gamerepublic.net)

3)《凯西的精巧设计》开发者Noel Llopis最近表示,一次性付费的销售模式已经不合时宜,开发者应为用户提供仅购买其所需产品的选择,即制定富有弹性的定价策略。他认为免费游戏可收购比1美元游戏高20倍的下载量,虽然多数用户并不会在游戏中消费,但他们却可以带来口碑营销效应。免费游戏有80%至90%的收益来自0.5%的付费用户,他称含IAP功能的免费游戏《Flowr Garden》虽然发布已有两年时间,但其收益却是付费游戏《凯西的精巧设计》的四倍左右。

Casey's Contraptions(from 99d.com)

Casey's Contraptions(from 99d.com)

4)PC游戏供应商Exent公司近日发布一项Android手机游戏订阅服务GameTanium,支持用户每月支付4.99美元无限量体验射击、赛车、解谜等各类游戏。该服务目前向用户提供75款无限免费体验游戏,预计到今年底将增至200款游戏。

GameTanium(from venturebeat)

GameTanium(from venturebeat)

Exent网站目前已供应2000款PC游戏,其合作伙伴包括威瑞森、Mediacom和T-Mobile,其服务用户超过100万,每名用户终身价值高达100美元。该公司希望通过进军手机游戏领域,为开发商创造更理想的用户粘性、ARPU值、品牌忠诚度及用户留存率。

5)谷歌于日前发布Google+的iPhone应用版本,该应用的news feed功能介于Twitter和Facebook之间,并且含有一个“+1”按钮(相当于Facebook的“Like”功能)。这款应用的杀手级特点在于直接拍照并上传功能,但其用户体验仍然不甚理想,在上传照片的过程中偶尔会出现崩溃和故障现象,并且不支持用户在上传照片过程中直接为圈子中的好友添加标签。

Google+ app(from venturebeat)

Google+ app(from venturebeat)

除此之外,该应用还存在访问速度较慢(需花费5至10秒钟时间方可访问)等漏洞。据称Google+n已针对这一情况迅速发布一个更新版本,并称如果用户花了1小时40分钟才下载成功,那就可能是遇到了旧版的Google+应用。

6)苹果日前宣布截止6月25日,公司第三季度净利润达73.1亿美元,比去年同期的32.5亿美元增长了125%。该公司在第三季度的总营收为285.7亿美元(去年同期则是157亿美元),其国际销售额占62%。

apple-log(from porsh.idv.tw)

apple-log(from porsh.idv.tw)

苹果在该季度的iPhone销量达2034万部,同比去年增长142%;新增15个国家的42家合作运营商;iPad销量达到925万部,增幅达183%;iTunes营收增长36%,总计达14亿美元,已助App Store开发商创收25亿美元;目前苹果iOS移动设备在全球销量已达2.22亿部。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

1)Exclusive: Angry Birds’ developer Rovio is on the trail for mobile IP acquisition

by Jon Jordan

PocketGamer.biz had heard from multiple sources that Angry Birds’ developer Rovio is looking to acquire thirdparty intellectual property; effectively it’s planning to become a publisher.

With its own IP having been downloaded over 250 million times, the well funded, and aggressively expansive Finnish company is now enthusiastic to leverage its incredible global mindshare to kickstart content it hasn’t developed.

Building big

Apparently, Rovio has been talking to various developers of not yet released iOS games, offering deals to buy their content and plug it into its huge mobile community.

In terms of business model, it makes complete sense in terms of providing gamers with additional high quality casual content it will enjoy, while expanding Rovio’ s role and revenue streams, which is currently limited to the Angry Birds brand.

As part of this drive, the Mighty Eagle in-app purchase is also being made available to thirdparty developers as an in-app power up via an API so they can include it within their own games. (source:pocketgamer

2)Evolve 2011: You can make money from Android: Top Tapjoy game is making $150,000 a month

by Jon Jordan

Perhaps the trickiest topic during Evolve, at least in terms of real world success, was the panel talk entitled Monetising Android: Full Price vs Freemium?

It was moderated by Greg Robinson, COO, of games publisher Connect2Media.

“Payment methods are the biggest issue for developers releasing on Android, but I think this is changing, and discovery will become more important,” said Paul Bowen, director of European sales, Tapjoy.

“On Android, there is lots of content that’s of a lower quality than on iOS,” pointed out Olivier Bernard, GM, International, Glu Mobile. “I think Android will always be a market for free content.”

“As a developer, you have to think about the opportunity cost of making games for Android,” said Paul Farley, MD, Tag Games.

“There’s fragmentation of devices and stores, so even before you think about monetisation, the cost of launching a game is much more on Android than iOS.”

“It’s all about free games now,” argued Tony Pearce, CEO, TeePee Games. “The industry has changed really quickly from paid to free.”

New ways to pay

Continuing the theme raised by Bowen, Pearce continued to push the value of discovery; something TeePee enables with its recommendation engine.

“I don’t think the top 10 chart exists anymore,” he claimed. “We all have our own personal top 10s,” something TeePee will generate for you.

Tapjoy has been a key enabler of monetisation and discovery on Android and iOS, thanks to its incentivised download system, albeit now banned on iOS.

“There’s a better case for using solutions like Tapjoy on Android because of the lower price point of the handsets and the lack of penetration of Google’s Checkout,” said Bowen.

Indeed, he claimed the top monetising game using Tapjoy (unnamed) was generating around $150,000 a month using the company’s IAP model.

Glu Mobile is a heavy user of Tapjoy, but for the future, Bernard said the publisher was looking to the widespread adoption of operator billing on Android.

“We’re waiting on operators to come up with an integrated global solution that everyone can use,” he said. (source:pocketgamer

3)Evolve 2011: With freemium, 0.5% of your users can drive 80% of profits says Snappy Touch’s Llopis

by Jon Jordan

Despite his most recent iOS game Casey’s Contraptions being sold at a flat $2.99, currently without in-app purchases, Noel Llopis, from Snappy Touch, gave a talk at Evolve called ‘One price does not fit all’.

“We’re in a digital environment, but we’re still pricing games as if they were manufactured products,” he argued.

Using the term Flexible Pricing, rather than free-to-play, Llopis said you have to let people pay what they want to pay you for your content.

“There are cases of people spending tens of thousands of dollars on in-game consumables on iOS,” Llopis said.

From free to lots of dollars

Building up his case with an iterative argument mapping cost, consumer reach and profit, “Making your game available for free easily means you’ll have 20 times more downloads than charging $1 for it,” Llopis said.

Of course, most players won’t spend money, but they are useful for word of mouth marketing. And even those people – typically around 2 percent – who do spend money are heavily segmented.

“80 – 90 percent of your profits from freemium games come from 0.5 percent of users,” Llopis revealed. “You have to get your head around this model.”

Indeed, taking the example of his two games – one free with IAP and one paid without IAP, Llopis says that despite being released two years ago, Flower Garden is currently making four times as much money as Casey Contraptions.

“You have to abandon fixed priced games now,” Llopis concluded.(source:pocketgamer

4)Exent launches all-you-can-eat mobile game subscription service

Dean Takahashi

Mobile game discovery is a huge problem, since it’s easy for great games to get lost in overcrowded app stores. So Exent is giving mobile games a boost today with its GameTanium Mobile all-you-can-eat subscription service.

If consumers like the $4.99 a month service, then mobile carriers can use it to barge back into the mobile commerce business, taking back a role in selling consumer apps that platform owners such as Apple took away from them. Game makers, meanwhile, could use the service get their games noticed by a larger crowd of gamers.

“We want to solve the problem of the discoverability of games on Android,” said Zvi Levgoren, chief executive of New York-based Exent, in an interview.

Game discovery was one of the big issues we highlighted at last week’s GamesBeat 2011. With 18,000 games in the Android Market, it’s hard to get noticed. Since GameTanium highlights a smaller number of high-quality games, it makes life easier for consumers who are looking around to find better games.

Exent will make 75 games available for the subscription service on Android phones and it will sign up partners such as mobile carriers to launch the subscription service under their brand names. The white label service is similar to the GameTanium service that Exent provides for web-based games for providers such as Verizon.

Exent currently provides 2,000 PC games on demand on the web. Its partners include Verizon, Mediacom, and T-Mobile. That service has more than 1 million subscribers and its average

lifetime value of a customer is $100. Now with the extension to mobile, Exent hopes game developers will see more engagement, higher average revenue per user (ARPU), more brand loyalty and customer retention.

Exent is the PC games on demand provider to many of the world’s leading operators, including Verizon, Mediacom, and T-Mobile. With the launch of GameTanium Mobile, operators can extend their brand, games offering and subscriber engagement to new screens, increasing average revenue per user (ARPU) and strengthening brand loyalty and retention.  Jason Henderson, games and music services product manager at Verizon, said that his company has offered games through GameTanium on the web since 2005 and he looks forward to its mobile counterpart.(source:venturebeat)

5)Updated: Google’s Google+ iPhone app is here (hands on)

Matthew Lynley

[Update: it appears Google has already released an updated, less buggy version of the Google+ app onto the iTunes App Store.]

Google has finally launched an iPhone application for its latest social network, Google+. The overall experience feels great, but there are still a few kinks that keep it from going toe-to-toe with other social networking apps like Twitter and Facebook.

The news feed is somewhere between Twitter and Facebook. Like the Facebook app, it lists the number of comments and “+1″ clicks — the Google+ equivalent of Facebook “Likes.” Users can pull the stream down to refresh it, a feature that has seemingly become standard since it appeared in the Twitter app Tweetie (and is now the service’s official app).

The killer part of the Google+ app is being able to take photos and upload them to the service directly — much like the Facebook app’s killer photo uploading feature. The experience is still a little dodgy — it crashed once or twice while trying to load up the photo app. The downside is that Google+ users can’t tag their friends or people in their circles directly while uploading, like you can in the Facebook app. You also can’t tag anyone when viewing the photos through the app.

The app is still new, as well, so there are still a few bugs to work out. The app hangs infrequently and takes anywhere from 5 to 10 seconds to be accessible again. It crashes from time to time when loading more intense parts of the app, such as the photo-shooting part. And it seems like I’m not the only one experiencing crashes, either. “Stoked for Google+ iPhone app, bummed it crashes a ton on iOS 5,” Digg founder Kevin Rose said on Google+.

Google quickly released an updated version of the app, saying the first version available on the App Store was a test version.

“If you downloaded within the first 1 hour 40 mins, you may have downloaded the older test version,” Google+’s lead mobile product manager Punit Soni said.(source:venturebeat

6)Apple More Than Doubles Profits In Fiscal Quarter

by Frank Cifaldi

Apple more than doubled its profits in its third fiscal quarter, the company said Tuesday.

For the period ending June 25, the company reported a net profit of $7.31 billion, a 125 percent increase from the $3.25 billion it reported in the same period last year.

Revenues were reported at $28.57 billion, up from $15.70 billion during the third quarter in 2010. International sales accounted for 62 percent of that figure, the company said.

During the quarter, Apple sold 20.34 million iPhones, representing a 142 percent increase from the amount sold one year ago. That increase is attributed to the company adding 42 new carriers and 15 new countries during the period, the company said during a conference call this afternoon (as reported by CNET).

Its iPad sales fared even better: the 9.25 million sold represents a 183 percent increase, due in part to the company increasing production to meet demand.

“We are extremely pleased with our performance which drove quarterly cash flow from operations of $11.1 billion, an increase of 131 percent year-over-year,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO.

“Looking ahead to the fourth fiscal quarter of 2011, we expect revenue of about $25 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share of about $5.50.”

iTunes revenue was up 36 percent at $1.4 billion, the company said, with $2.5 billion cumulatively paid to App Store developers.

The company also announced that its next Macintosh operating system, OS X Lion, will launch Wednesday.

To date, 222 million iOS devices have been sold worldwide, the company said. (source:gamasutra


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