We've done 10 million Ovi Store downloads says Lunaforte CEO Hazenberg
Now operating profitably
Dutch outfit Lunaforte, which operates under the Lunagames' consumer brand, is one of new wave of developers targeting multiple mobile platforms, with particular emphasis on freemium gaming.
After appearing at the mobile gaming panel talk at Nokia World 2010, we caught up with CEO Richard Hazenberg to get his opinion on where Nokia now stands.
Pocket Gamer: Were you impressed by the announcements at Nokia World 2010?Richard Hazenberg: Yes. New Symbian^3 based smartphones and the announcements related to the Ovi Store, including in-app purchases, certainly spell out new opportunities.
What do you think about the N8 smartphone?N8 offers a big step forward in terms of user experience, which I believe is key in attracting consumers. The Ovi Store also offers a seamless experience and will surely increase the adoption rate of consumers in terms of downloading apps.
Our freemium business model which relies on cross promotions will certainly benefit from both changes.
What are your views on MeeGo?Our engineers are keen to work with it, but from a user experience and commercial point of view, I'll reserve my opinion until I actually get to play with it.
Do you think Ovi Store is now a viable commercial app store for games?Our Ovi Store downloads have recently passed the 10 million figure, and are now running at a profit.
With the recent developments, we believe we're well positioned to continue our growth across the Ovi Store.
Are you impressed with the potential of being able to do operator billing and in-app purchases via Ovi Store, even at a reduced revenue split of 60:40?In-app purchases were top of our wish list. In-app purchases suit our freemium model very well and we should see improvements in terms of the up-selling of premium content.
Also, operator billing is key to getting high conversions as it's by far the easiest option for the consumer. As the 60:40 split for operator billing is based on the end user price, I think it's actually an improvement.
How big an issue is it for you that Nokia doesn't have any presence in the North American market?It's not really an issue for our business as we target consumers worldwide and try to leverage the geographic strengths of specific platforms.
Furthermore our cross platform strategy evens out geographic strengths and weaknesses per platform.
What do you think Nokia needs to do to encourage more game developers to support it?Keep building a successful ecosystem for developers. Developers look at the numbers - well, at least, we do.
Thanks to Richard for his time.