Glu boss: 'Android and iPhone will rival DS'
And Greg Ballard thinks Speed Racer's box-office woes won't hit the mobile game
Glu boss Greg Ballard says the company is excited by the prospects of new mobile platforms in the year ahead, including iPhone, Android, N-Gage, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile.
"We expect that these phones will generate more revenue per phone than current and past devices have," he said in an analyst conference call yesterday, after announcing Glu's latest financial results.
"Second, we believe these devices are even better and more engaging game experiences and they will provide a better and more seamless user experience... Finally, these new handset platforms will have a positive ripple effect on other companies."
Ballard cited the efforts of LG, Samsung and Sony Ericsson for the latter point, and how they've responded quickly to the iPhone with their own touchscreen phones.
Glu plans to take advantage of all these developments: "We do have significant internal efforts underway to support the initial launch of both iPhone and Android," he said. "You can expect that we will be measured but aggressive in our efforts. But again, we think that this is more likely to be an '09 story than an '08 story."
He was also bullish about the quality offered by Android and iPhone, predicting that they'll rival Nintendo DS. "Technologically it's going to be right on top of it," he said.
"I think it's going to be to a large extent up to publishers and developers to find out how much we can do with these new platforms. In my mind, a year from now people won't be talking about the DS and the... iPhone and Android experiences being substantially different from each other."
As I reported last night, Glu made $20.6 million (£10.6 million) of revenues in the first quarter of this year, up 31 per cent from the same period last year. It's predicting $23.5-24 million (£10.2-12.4 million) for the second quarter, spearheaded by the company's Speed Racer game.
However, its prospects could be damaged by the stinking reviews and poor box-office performance of the movie it's based on. Ballard is hopeful that this won't be the case, though.
"Obviously the box office performance in the weekend was not what everybody expected Speed Racer to do, so we are watching it closely," he said. "Speed Racer is obviously a racing game as well as a movie game. We expect it will do well even if the box office ends up being a little bit less stellar than we originally planned."
Glu is hoping the upcoming Wedding Dash and Ice Age: Mammoth Mayhem branded games will be hits this quarter. However, the publisher is also pretty chirpy about own-IP games, which accounted for 20 per cent of its revenues in the first quarter.
Ballard thinks Space Monkey "could become a franchise for us", and is also enthusiastic about the prospects for CrossPix, Poppin' Panda, Super Slam Ping Pong and Brain Genius II in the coming three months.
Other data points from the conference call: Glu's top 10 mobile games accounted for 43 per cent of its revenues in the first quarter this year, down from 57 per cent in the same period last year.
The average revenue per top 10 title was $886,000 (£456,457) during the quarter, and the best-selling title made $1.24 million (£638,948). During the quarter, Glu paid out $5.5 million (£2.8 million) in royalties to brand-owners - 26.7 per cent of its revenues.
Just over half (51 per cent) of Glu's revenues came from North America, with 30 per cent coming from the EMEA region (Europe, Middle East and Africa), and 19 per cent from the rest of the world. The publisher reckons its revenues for 2008 as a whole will top $100 million (£51.5 million).
