Gameloft’s VP Talks Premium Games, Maturing iOS Gaming Market And EA’s Sale Tactics

Last week over at Mobile World Congress Gameloft’s vice president Gonzague de Vallois spoke to PocketGamer and had some interesting remarks regarding iOS gaming. One of the things he spoke about was iOS gamers gaining an increasingly high expectation for games on the platform, particularly in regards to graphics and utilizing the full potential of the device.

He says that taste’s of iOS gamers are maturing and are moving on from supporting the small developers who make small, casual games to the games that are more fully featured and more fully use the potential of the device. To me at least, this seems like a bit of an odd comment given the continuing success of games such as Angry Birds and the caliber of indie games that are continuing to come to the App Store such as Rockin’ Rockets.

Earlier this month the US Nintendo boss Reggie Fils-Aime had criticized the App Store for creating a culture of disposability because of the extremely low prices of games. Gonzague comments on the issue Reggie raised, saying in regards to prices of App store games that “there is already immense pressure on the prices but there is room for premium games at a premium price on the iPhone.”

Apart from Gameloft, EA has also demonstrated that premium games do have a market on the App Store and can sell with a premium price as well. EA has also been able to time sales with great effect in increasing profitability, something that the Gameloft VP criticized in this interview. He says that Gameloft were not happy with the tactics of the recent EA sales in the lead-up to Christmas and dismayed by the strong promotion of the sales by Apple on its worldwide stores.

De Vallois has instead suggested that there are many alternative means to make iOS games profitable, “We try new models. There are new opportunities emerging with iOS to try, and you can expect more of these trials from us. You will see freemium, free to play, in-app purchase – you will see the types of new models coming to our games this year.”

[Via TUAW]