Mobile games industry lacking own-IP hits
Branded games dominated UK ELSPA chart in 2007
Analysis of the UK's ELSPA mobile games chart shows the increasing power of the Big Three publishers - EA Mobile, Gameloft and Glu - and the utter dominance of branded mobile games.
The number of games charting in the ELSPA Top 10 hasn't changed much over the years: in 2005 45 games charted, compared to 44 in 2006 and 2007. However, pretty much everything else has.
For example, in 2005, 42 per cent of the games that appeared in ELSPA's monthly Top 10 list were own-IP titles. In 2006, this plummeted to 11 per cent, and then 9% in 2007.
Meanwhile, in 2005 eight publishers had more than three games appear in the chart: Iomo (7), Digital Bridges (6), Mforma (6), Gameloft (5), Sumea (5), Macrospace (4), iFone (3) and Jamdat (3).
By 2007, the top three charting publishers were EA Mobile (12), Glu Mobile (9) and Gameloft (7). Those three publishers accounted for 63.6 per cent of the games that charted last year. All this, remember, is based on sales across all the UK's mobile operators.
Is that a bad thing? Your view largely depends on how big a publisher you are (or working with). However, the brand to own-IP ratio is more troubling, since it indicates that the hit-driven mobile games industry isn't having many hits with its own IP.
Although based purely on UK sales, our research is also a stark reminder of the problems facing mid-tier publishers when it comes to driving on-deck sales.
In 2005, Mforma and Sumea had six and five charting titles respectively. In 2007, by now rebranded as Hands-On Mobile and Digital Chocolate, neither company had a single game appear in the ELSPA chart.
