Mobile games industry news (w/e 16 August 2013)

hello and welcome to pocketgamer.biz Weekly News Roundup and this is for the week ending the 16th of August 2013 it's been uh I guess as it is in the summer sometimes quite a quiet week um we've got Gamescom and GDC Europe which are the big kind of European game shows trade show and consumer show they're starting next week um so Keith from Pocket Gamer will be out there C cover all that news um and because of that we actually did a bit of a Roundup of some of the uh some of the studios in Cologne there's not cologne's not known as a as a big kind of games hub for the German games industry I mean kind of Berlin and Hamburg and and places like that much kind of a more wellknown but there a few kind of startup companies there it's um it's more of like a TV kind of film type Place clone but um but yeah check out pocketgamer.biz we've got some interview with some of this kind of startup companies who are who are kind of kicking off there um but we're still in a bit of a kind of financial kind of a kind of

period so companies are still giving out some figures and so for this week cuz it was quite a quiet week I'm going to focus on figures part because I like figures um and I think partly because normally kind of figures give you a sense of what's going on in the world so um so my my first number is um is $5 million so that's um that was the money raised um from a company called ganble who are a dutch-based um mobile charity kind of community Discovery networking kind of company quite interesting so they're they're basically providing like a social layer um kind of a bit like open fate used to do and and people like kind of Haz at and gree um but the kind of the focus of it is to allow people while they're kind of discovering games and buying stuff in games to give money to charity so it's kind of interesting they've raised $5 million quite a lot of money um another company um who's ra been raising money is vongal um they've raised $6.5 million um they're american-based video advertising company and I guess that goes to prove something we've all known for the last kind of six months that video advertising is certainly within

mobile is the big kind of like boom so people are moving away from banners obviously very boring even like interstitial ads video is kind of where it's all happening um so $6.5 million for them to build out their platform um and and the biggest Financial round um this week was $9 million and that was for um Absa um and they're kind of very kind of technical in what they do but they they use um they do kind of analytics for mobile games and it's very behavioral focused so um they're kind of like looking to see how how kind of people are interacting with with kind of games and apps on their mobile devices and then kind of working out you know kind of the behavior of individuals and then kind of working out kind of what ads you want to show them and so it's kind of a kind of interesting kind of Interlink interl kind of nature of advertising and knowing who people are and I guess um that's why they've raised more money $9 million that's a very financially um lucrative kind of space if if you can kind of create big Market there um there's been a few deals going on as well so um continuing with the mobile advertising

Millennial media who are a um us um floated company they've bid uh 20 two sorry 225 million dollars for um jump tap who are a a smaller um but more kind of um bit more kind of gaming focused mobile advertising Network um all these advertising Network there's lots of kind of kind of weird peculiarities like one's better certain technical aspects and one's better at kind of other ones Millennials kind of bigger than jump tap so they're kind of looking to kind of kind of take their expert and add it to kind of create a bigger a bigger company um and then and even bigger CU everything's big bigger in China isn't it um uh it's a deal that's been announced a while ago but now has gone through so um basically kind of uh a company called Badu which is effectively often seen as like the the Chinese Google so a big search kind of company they've spent $1 1.85 billion buying a company called 91 Wireless and 91 Wireless are one of the big um kind of Android app apps store kind of uh

distribution channels so um B had did have some kind of of that kind of Android App Store distribution but but not very big in the market 91 Wireless was pretty big um so again this is like a kind of um two kind of companies who are roughly going kind of moving in the same direction but one has different skill base from the other one kind of the idea is they'll come together um but obviously spending 1.85 billion in cash it's quite a lot of money to spend to buy that kind of expertise so but it's very important for the Chinese um Market okay some other big numbers um even bigger numbers so um a bit kind of late in the year to come out you kind of think but the Japanese um mopile uh industry has come up with some figures for how big their Market was in 2012 and they've come up with a figure of $5.1 billion and that was the size of the mobile games Market um just the mobile games Market in ch in Japan last year um the interesting thing about the Japanese Market is it's still um quite heavily uh influenced by what we would call feature phones I mean they're not quite feature

phones in the sense that they're they're kind of much more kind of capable than what we would consider feature phones in in in the western markets but still smartphones are only just about it's about kind of a 5050 spit obviously smartphones are growing very rapidly in in Japan as as in everywhere else in the world but it's still um it's a big market and it still these kind of like these old devices that are particularly um on kind of platforms like gri and ma um are still quite kind of quite popular but obviously the Japanese Market 5 you know 5.1 billion is a massive massive Market okay but that's not the biggest number the biggest number of the week and this is a bit of a kind of pie in the sky type number I think but um but some analysts at Juniper who are one of these kind of Market analyst companies who kind of come up with these slightly ridiculous numbers to my way thinking anyway have have kind of put their finger in the air like this and they and by um two by 2017 they reckon the market for free-to-play apps and games will be worth $75 billion so I mean quite how they work that out obviously they've taken they've looked at what they think the market is now on taking numbers like

the Japanese kind of $5 billion for last year and they kind of like added them all together and times them by 1.5 and and done a f Factor um whether that's the case or not we don't know cuz in 2017 who knows there might be some other crazy thing we're all doing and maybe paid games will have had some weird Resurrection or maybe we doing subscription who knows but anyway that's how big they think the market is going to be in in a number of years time there's some numbers for you that's not the only thing that's been going on um in in on the news that we've been covering on PO game. is I guess the underlying thing we've known for a while been going on for about a year now is is kind of blackberry um kind of like poling along it's kind of launched its new BlackBerry 10 platform it's kind of got some traction um but still being kind of beaten by by Windows phone to third place so um they announced this week and they have been talking about this for a long time but they've announced kind of more formally that they're going through a strategic review process to think what can they do can they sell themselves can they partner with someone else can they what's the future it's kind of hard being fourth place in in this kind of Market um and um another thing on Pock game. Biz is

not always about numbers and and business and that kind of stuff we like to kind of kind of have some opinion pieces we're very opinionated obviously um and we have our guest columns and our guest columns this week not particularly planned by us um but they were for kind of two I guess kind of more thoughtful kind of columns so um uh Fraser uh mackins who used to kind of work for actually for Pocket game and now he's is's a game developer um so he came up with a with a was quite kind of quite controversial he was saying kind of he he loves Gamers and when he was a he was a gamer and he kind of thought the industry he was quite native about it he kind of thought everyone who was a gamer would be like him he's quite philosophical and thoughtful and and he's basically after working indry for eight years he's kind of come up with the conclusion that a lot of gamers are just a bit jerks and he doesn't really like talking to them that much um and he didn't really come up with any conclusions why how would this changed he kind of I think he thought mobile was a bit more of an interesting industry because it's a bit wider kind of um kind of consumer based not just kind of Hardcore guys talking about kind of Call of Duty or anything um but yeah I guess

he was kind of thinking maybe a little bit about kind of how you approach that kind of audience um and that was kind of taken up as a theme by Oscar Clark so Oscar is a kind of consultant and works with various companies and um and has been around the industry a long time and he's and he came up with a with a kind of a concept which which he called the unique player proposal and his kind of view um I guess taking the taking Fraser was taking the kind of negative side kind of Oscar was taking the positive side of an audience he's saying there's so many games out there you have to think about an audience and you have to think if you're coming up with a game what is the unique proposition for a gamer and he actually comes says there a thought experiment game developers should come up with with they should actually come up with PE with you know you know an individual player obviously invent them but say there's this guy he's 25 he's called Mike he's he works for he's a bus driver and he likes playing what games he like playing and just kind of try try and create like some of these kind of individuals and trying to think why would they like my game obviously you do Focus testing and stuff but he's saying this is a very cheap kind of way you you know like like

a for a group of developers to just kind of like a blue sky kind of think about how the how these things might happen so um so plenty of things to to read on pocketgamer.biz um and I'm sure'll be playing more next week uh when we've been to Cologne or Keith house at least thanks very much see you next week