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Technology Lifestyle Digital Distribution Summit: iPhone is the platform of choice
Technology Lifestyle Digital Distribution Summit: iPhone is the platform of choice | Digital Distribution Summit: iPhone is the platform of choice |
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| by Mike Bantick | |
| Friday, 02 October 2009 | |
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Unfortunately iTWire missed the morning sessions, but the buzz at lunch was all positive for the keynote delivered by David Edery, Manager and Principal at the independent consulting firm Fuzbi. Edery gave an overview of the success stories in games developed for Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Network, including case studies and statistics. Simon Carless publisher of Game Developer magazine and Gamasutra.com spoke about the financial realisms for downloadable games as well as prospects for developer studies looking at this form of distribution. Both speakers received high praise for their market insights. The mostly developer crowd settled in for the afternoon session consisting of talks from Rob Murray, CEO of local mobile development studio Firemint, those hard working folks behind the top selling App Store game Flight Control. Murray emphasised his view of the essential elements of a successful digitally distributed title. Foremost is the game itself; “Take something old and familiar, put a twist on it, something fresh and you will have a hit” says Murray. Murray covered other things to think about, including having a descriptive name and snazzy icon as well as great screenshots to hook prospective purchases after their initial inquisitive click. Shainel Deo is CEO of Halfbrick Studios, a company that has focused on getting content out through the Xbox Live Arcade. Deo, like Murray, commented on the challenges of being heard over a multitude of noise that is a feature of the digital distribution platform. “Open platforms in particular have a lot of noise and crap” Deo said, reflecting an earlier slide shown by Murray indicating the flood of applications hitting just the Apple App Store in particular. In one day last month the graph topped out at 1394 application approvals, 302 of which were games. Deo also commented on his experience with the types of games Halfbrick have had success with. A lesson learned was in accessibility. His team of 35 twenty something year-old males showed that they needed to step away from the types of hard-core games they enjoyed in order to garner sales. In the digital distribution world, the games need to be highly accessible to succeed, “If it is too hard, they won’t get it” said Deo. Sophisticated games polarised the audience, and in the digital distribution world, this resulted in a wide range of online ratings and rankings, something that Deo believes is extremely important for success. CONCLUDED on PAGE 2 |
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