MocoNews Executive Interview: David Gosen, CEO, I-Play

Editor’s note: As I mentioned last week, we have hired Peggy Anne Salz as our European contributing writer, and she will mainly be reporting from the continental conferences and doing regular audio interviews with senior industry executives. The interview below is the first one…along with the audio.
[by Peggy Anne Salz] In view of the raft of recent M&A activity (AE and Jamdat and Glu and i-Fone to name a few) I caught up with David Gosen, CEO of mobile gaming firm I-Play, to discuss the overall impact on the mobile gaming landscape. His main message: Size matters.
Porting or converting a game for 1,000+ devices is a mammoth task – and few can go it alone. “What you need to succeed in this market is scale.” What else does Gosen think it takes? He’s betting on a balanced portfolio of branded games, mass market games and “one-thumb” games. “We need to make the games simple and intuitive, as we have done and will continue to do, and we will have a balance of games across all the genre.” His company’s own research into game use and usability reveals that only 5% of those consumers who own a mobile phone have indeed downloaded a game. But the level of satisfaction among users who engage in game playing is a whopping 77%. This, Gosen says, shows a huge potential for revenue growth. I-Play, for example, recently announced it operates in the black – and Gosen reveals some of the best-selling titles that are paying off for his company.
Despite the positive outlook, the market can’t sustain more games. As Gosen points out, games get lost in carriers’ hierarchical menus and even branded games can be ignored if they aren’t true to the TV series or film that inspired them. “Given the current fact that the carriers are the major route to the end user, it is not a market that can sustain thousands of games being brought to the consumer. I really believe that less is more in this particular instance. There should be real focus on creating fewer, bigger and better titles.”
In his view 2006 will be the “tipping point” for mobile gaming – providing games companies and carriers spread the gospel. The next big thing: the growth of community-based gaming. The driver: carriers stepping back to let the users decide what games are hot and what’s not. Carriers such as Sprint have gone a long way by giving users the tools to review and recommend games to their friends. “It’s that viral endorsement that will really help grow the industry.”
mp3logo1.gifYou can download the audio (20 mins., 4.7 MB) here
Or you can stream it here … click on the arrow:

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