Glu Mobile is showing off a new series of cell phone games reflecting the company’s heavy focus on smartphone platforms like the iPhone, Google Android and Nokia Ngage.
The San Mateo, Calif.-based mobile game company is launching eight new titles in the first quarter, most of them based on familiar brands or franchises. Most are also geared to work on several different platforms. This includes the traditional BREW and J2ME (Java) platforms, in addition to the iPhone, Android and Ngage.
“This is the first time that we can release games that run on all of the platforms at once,” said Greg Ballard, chief executive of Glu.
The iPhone is very unique as a game platform with its lack of buttons and use of a touch screen and accelerometer (for sensing motion like shaking). But Ballard said the company figured out how to incorporate iPhone game development into the same process for the development of its other games. This makes iPhone game development much cheaper, he said.
Glu can make games that run across more than 1,000 different phones in 10 languages and 65 countries. But it has reallocated about 30 percent of its development resources to focus on the iPhone, Nokia and Android platforms. The new titles include Superman/Batman: Heroes United, Cooking Star, Age of Empires III, Bugs Bunny Rabbit Rescue, Build-a-lot, Watchmen: The Mobile Game, Brain Genius Deluxe, and Monsters vs. Aliens. Cooking Star runs on the iPhone, while Age of Empires III runs on the Ngage.
Only two of those titles are based on original ideas developed by Glu itself. But Ballard said that may change as consumers shift from carrier download games to those downloaded from markets like Apple’s AppStore. Ballard said that brands fared well when there were only a few words describing a game that a consumer could buy or not buy on the phone. But the AppStore offers such a rich description of a game that original titles have a much better chance.
Roughly 95 percent of the company’s revenue comes from J2ME and BREW games as well as Windows Mobile and BlackBerry games. But in 2009, the revenue from iPhone, Ngage and Android games is expected to spike. By 2010, Ballard said those new platforms should have a much larger share. Ballard compared the shift to the launch of a new generation of video game consoles.
Ballard said that Glu has scaled back the number of games launched. After acquiring other companies, the headcount grew to 600 people, but it has now cut back to about 550. Most of them are outside the U.S., and the fastest-growing region is China. Overall, revenue in 2009 is expected to be down 10 percent to 15 percent from 2008, largely because of a downturn-related slowdown in handset sales. (The company is also being hurt by the high dollar).
Glu’s rivals are also moving toward new markets. Digital Chocolate, headed by Trip Hawkins, has expanded into casual games for the PC, while Gameloft has invested heavily in iPhone games. Electronic Arts also has a big mobile division focused on iPhone games.