News
Gameloft, others cutting back on Android development
By Charles Starrett
Senior Editor, iLounge
Published: Friday, November 20, 2009
News Category: Digital Media
Gameloft has said that it, along with other developers, is cutting back on Android development due to the low financial returns seen on the platform. Reuters reports that Gameloft finance director Alexandre de Rochefort, speaking at an investor conference, said, “We have significantly cut our investment in Android platform, just like ... many others.” “It is not as neatly done as on the iPhone. Google has not been very good to entice customers to actually buy products. On Android nobody is making significant revenue,” he added. Gameloft’s App Store offerings generated 13 percent of the company’s revenue last quarter. “We are selling 400 times more games on iPhone than on Android,” Rochefort said. Google’s Android platform has seen increased press coverage lately in part due to the release of several high-profile devices, including the Motorola Droid and HTC Droid Eris on Verizon Wireless.
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1
Currently, developers in the below countries may register as Google Checkout merchants and sell priced applications:
- Austria
- France
- Germany
- Italy
- Japan
- Netherlands
- Spain
- United Kingdom
- United States
This mean if you are from anywhere else, you can only give your application away. Compared this to iPhone development. All developers are welcome to sell their apps!
After waiting and waiting, many developers from other countries are tired of waiting. I am stopping my Android development as a result, and switching to iPhone development.
Posted by Lim Thye Chean on November 20, 2009 at 7:51 AM (PDT)
2
Its not surprising that iPhone games outsell Android by a large margin, though I’m not sure I would have guessed it was 400x higher. I wonder if they mean 400 more copies, or 400x the revenue?
I bought my first iPod touch over a year ago and downloaded some apps. After that initial foray, I stopped buying any more downloadable games since I didn’t think they were that good.
However, I recently got a new iPhone and started browsing the app store again. I am pleasantly surprised how much better the number and quality of the games are. Now I confess to regularly checking the lists. My current favourites are Castle of Magic, Dungeon Hunter, Orion Legend of Wizards, Assassins Creed.
I think this more than anything else will serve to keep me on the iPhone rather than defecting to say, the Motorola Droid.
Posted by Eric on November 20, 2009 at 8:36 AM (PDT)
3
Given Android’s open source nature, surely that’s why people aren’t buying games and apps for it…
Posted by Timsk on November 20, 2009 at 10:32 AM (PDT)
4
Well, there are likely to be several factors making revenue from Android apps so much lower. From the Android discussion group:
“It’s been discussed before - currently, few make much off the Android Market. A combination of lower phone sales, phones that target consumers with less disposable income, no computer based App store, less countries supported to buy apps, more rampant piracy due to weaker DRM, and many more issues all contribute to make it difficult. “
Though with the recent release of Android 2.0 and influx of new Android handsets in the coming year, perhaps its a bit premature for Gameloft to judge the potential market. However, given finite resources, it makes sense for them to focus their efforts where the money is and re-evaluate the Android market at a later date.
Posted by Eric on November 20, 2009 at 12:02 PM (PDT)
5
Or people with android play less games, after all to quote Steve Jobs the touch/iPhone is a game machine.
Posted by Xing on November 22, 2009 at 6:14 AM (PDT)