Ubisoft Remains Unsure of iPhone Game Profitability

February 14, 2010 by 1 Comment

Well this really, honestly comes as no shock to me. The iPhone has always found its niche in small, quirky, simple games. More serious gaming just isn’t as appealing to the average iPhone user as the latter type, especially at a higher price point. Not to say that there is NO market for it.

In an analysts phone call following it’s 3Q FY10 quarterly report, Ubisoft did not seem thrilled with the iPhone. While it did state that early sales were good, they were not apparently good enough to warrant additional development investment than was already underway (development is split between Ubisoft and Gameloft, its sister company.)

“It doesn’t seem to be as profitable as on the other platforms,” Kotaku quoted a company spokesman as saying.

Ubisoft/Gameloft will still be releasing new titles this year, both Anno Dawn of Discovery: The Harbor and Silent Hunter 5: Battle of the Atlantic are slated for launch in later Spring.

While it doesn’t come as huge surprise to me at the moment, I do believe that when new hardware is released with more capability the market for such games will begin to pick up steam. Even the release of Nvidia’s Tegra 2 could give such games the spark they are currently missing. There is no doubt in my mind that eventually, cellphones will be as much a portable gaming device (like a PSP) as they are a phone or multimedia device. It’s just a matter of time really.

Filed under iPad, iPhone Tagged with

About Dillon Hanson
Dillon here. I'm 23 years old, married, and I'm a medic in the U.S Army, fresh out of Iraq. I'm stationed in Germany (pops beer cap) for the time being, and awaiting my wife to join me. I'm a relapsing tech geek. I can't say exactly what it is that attracted me to technology, I've just always been drawn to it. I started out intrigued by the computers at school. In 6th grade I finally got my first computer, a hand me down DOS box. I can't remember the model to save my life, but it had a 5.25" drive and a dot matrix printer that was excrutiatingly loud. A few years later I found myself in trouble at school with computers, so I supressed my inner geek. Since then I've dabbled in Linux and programming, worked for a short time in the wireless industry, but for the most part just enjoyed technology instead of making technology itself a hobby. Now I find myself rediscovering it's appeal. I enjoy playing with electronics in general, but get a real rush from manipulation. I don't screw with "hacking" in the Kevin Mitnick sense these days, but unlocking, jailbreaking, modifying, and customizing presents a challenge and can pay off with some real eye candy, added functionality, and WTF reactions. My phone OS of choice is Android, though I think my wife would sooner divorce me than get rid of her iPhone. lol. I use a rooted HTC Hero (European) for my mobile device.

One Response to Ubisoft Remains Unsure of iPhone Game Profitability

  1. zynga poker says:
    February 18, 2010 at 10:53 pm

    i probably would not have considered this was cool a handful years back then again its interesting exactly how years varies the way you see different creative ideas, many thanks regarding the write-up it is really pleasurable to browse anything sensible now and then instead of the ordinary trash mascarading as blogs and forums on the internet, cheers

    Reply

Leave a comment