HeroCraft: We're taking our time with iPhone but BlackBerry is a solid channel

Like many long established mobile companies, Russian developer and publisher HeroCraft has an interested yet cautious attitude when it comes to iPhone.

With a reputation for racers, flight simulations and action games that push the capabilities of smartphones, to date its App Store releases have been more casual and puzzle focused such as Robo and Twice!

But as it looks to expand its iPhone development in future, we caught up with UK development manager Matt Meads to get the company's view on how it would be approaching the market for Apple's touchscreen device.

Matt Meads: We've always had a history at HeroCraft of working with cutting edge devices, from the early Palm and Windows Mobile to the new Apple and Android handsets.

We've taken our time in understanding the full potential of the iPhone, monitoring what works and what the consumer wants from their iPhone games. We've had considerable success in developing for various smartphone platforms and we expect our forthcoming iPhone titles to continue on this trend.

While I can't speak for the business models of other companies, I can speculate on how risky too strong a focus on iPhone development could be.

In a market with so much content shifting 80-90% of development to iPhone is a disaster waiting to happen for established developers. It's also important to note that development houses who are having a hard time balancing the books shouldn't see iPhone development as the answer to all their problems; switching from J2ME to iPhone can be like jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire!

I think with a truly open marketplace like the App Store, it's inevitably going to take time to settle at established price points.

There are many hugely fun games priced at 59p so it's tempting to see prices converge towards that point, but the success of titles like EA Mobile's The Sims 3 at the £5.99/$9.99 premium price point shows that consumers are willing to pay premium prices for premium games.

We at HeroCraft probably find ourselves somewhere in the middle. Our background in smartphone gaming and our talented team of artists and programmers dictates to our customers that our games on whatever platform should have a certain level of professionalism and polish which dictates a higher than 59p price point.

If you look at the Sony-developed titles for PlayStation Store, you'll see simple ideas, well executed, with the professional gloss you would expect from a prestigious company. That's the model we intend to follow.

We've had most of our success on the above platforms - our latest Android title, Farm Frenzy, has mirrored its success on the App Store on the Android Store.

A lot has been made of the App Store's conversion rates, the number of users who actively download applications and games to their device, but this is really a continuation of a trend we've seen for years in smartphone devices. Traditionally the tech-savvy, early adopters have been only too willing to pay for such games and applications, at price points significantly higher than those of the average App Store product.

BlackBerry's new store is a pretty solid sales channel for us now and we're committed as always to providing top quality games to as many operating systems and handsets as we can.

We're always interested in exploring new revenue streams. DSiWare and PSP Minis probably represent the final frontier for traditional smartphone or mobile developers, as the space will be extremely well populated by console developers and from my experience I've always found the offerings from mobile developers to show tell-tale signs of their background when producing games for higher spec machines.

I think it's fair to say that we would investigate all avenues for our new titles in 2010 and if they seem well suited to the PSP or DS we would certainly give that further consideration.

You can keep up with developments at HeroCraft via its website.