Activision is jumping into mobile game publishing full force with a new Mobile Publishing brand and a partnership with analytics firm Flurry. The goal is to “identify and assist third-party developers in the development, publishing, distribution and promotion of independent titles on iOS and Android platforms.”
Games will be published under the new Mobile Publishing brand and developers will benefit from Flurry’s mobile analytics and advertising platform as well as Activision’s scale in the industry. Importantly, developers will retain full control of their intellectual property.
“A world class partner such as Flurry will position Activision for mobile growth in the future and we are confident our relationship will yield significant insight into mobile development and distribution,” said Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Activision Publishing.
“I think you will find that, as you probably know, Activision is not a company that makes a big hullaballoo and then chases after it trying to deliver. We’re trying to be more thoughtful about our announcements and our strategies. We want to ‘do’ and then talk about it once we’ve done it. This is an example. Our partnership with Flurry and our creation with the Activision Mobile publishing group is a significant new initiative for us,” Greg Canessa, VP of Activision mobile stated.
“We’re here to talk about our partnering with indie and smaller developers, developers of all sorts, to bring those products to bear in the mobile space. We also have other mobile initiatives under way. I point you to Skylanders Cloud Patrol as an example and our Call of Duty Black Ops Zombie game, our Elite mobile app. You’re seeing more and more mobile games coming out. We actually do have a number of first party initiatives that we are pursuing in parallel to this relationship.”
For Simon Khalaf, CEO of Flurry, the partnership is about enabling developers to leverage metrics, similar to how games in the social space are heavily driven by a metrics approach. Khalaf remarked, “Looking at this market, we decided that we can assist indies in building better franchises. They are very good at building the game, but they are not so good at building an audience, growing an audience and managing it. So we felt that between the services that Flurry offers and what Activision offers, we can put together a value proposition in front of indie developers.”
He continued, “The market has changed from shipping a game to managing an audience. Yes, social gets some credit that it is metrics driven, but those who have been successful from the start have been very metrics driven. We work with them on a day-to-day basis, more an hourly basis. From user-acquisition to improving the dialog to responding to the community and responding to the game 24/7; that’s exactly the kind of culture we want to inject in the game for them. We want to get to the point of doing this work for them.”
The companies would not say how revenues would be split, but they did say that developers would get the “majority” of money generated by micro-transactions in games.
Source: GamesIndustry International
