‘Simple Games’ Rule Mobile Charts

iFone was the number one mobile games publisher in the UK according to an analysis of the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association data for last year. The BBC has reported this is due to the success of Tetris, which was a top-selling game for 8 months… if this is the case I assume iFone is the UK distributor of the game because it’s owned by Jamdat.
Unsurprisingly simple games ruled the chart… “Other big-hitters were Namco’s Pac-Man and Iomo’s Pub Pool.” Adaptions of console games had a mixed reception on mobile phones and games based on movies didn’t do well at all…
“The poor performance of movie-related brands and some of the console ports indicates that games companies can no longer afford to rely on brands alone to achieve sustainable sales,” said Pamela Clark-Dickson, editor of Mobile Games Analyst. “Investment in the development of original IP will likely accelerate in the short-to-medium term, particularly with the increased commitment to mobile of video-games publisher Electronic Arts, which has already stated its intention to create original mobile games.”
The idea of using brands to sell mobile games on the mobile handset was dodgy one anyway… if a console port tried to give the same experience on a mobile handset it was set up to disappoint, so changing the game to suit the medium (such as with Doom RPG) is the best way to go. Likewise with games based on movies — not only is there a short development time available but the movies are only in the cinemas for a few weeks, and then people tend to forget them. I’d go for a brand that promised a lot of sequels or was already a cult hit…
Related stories:
@ CTIA: The Games We Play
Games Becoming a Mobile Play
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