Glu gets Perry, Norway is small but booming, and Neeson52 is Angry

Last week's top 5 stories

• 5 Glu Mobile looks to roar with Katy Perry-themed game

  

  Announced alongside its financials, Glu Mobile surprised us all with the news it had signed a five-year deal with Katy Perry.

  Few details have been announced about the game other than the free-to-play title will feature Perry's voice, likeness and personality, and "introduce players to a digital playground of global success and talent".

  "Katy is arguably the most recognized musician in America following her Super Bowl XLIX Halftime performance this past Sunday," said Glu CEO, Niccolo de Masi.

  "We anticipate that Katy's significant global audience, including more than 170 million fans on social media, will make her a strong gaming partner for Glu."

  
  

• 4 Still small but Norway's games industry is on the rise

  

  The first in a regular series of guest columns from Nordic Game Bits looked at the very small but growing and ambitious Norwegian mobile games industry.

  Although only being measured at a value of €33 million in 2012, Nordic Game Bits' EIC Jesper Krogh Kristiansen says the Norwegian scene is now buzzing with activity at an unprecedented level.

  "Not only are more games being released now than ever before, but the Norwegian games industry seems to be organizing itself in new ways, and growing organically," he writes.

  "While this has not yet resulted in the same explosive growth on the monetary side as in Sweden and Finland, several people in the Norwegian games industry believe that they are just on the cusp of beginning to reap the financial rewards of the increased activity."

  
  

• 3 Gameloft looks to in-game advertising in 2015

  

  It's rumoured that a couple of years ago Gameloft CEO Michel Guillemot took the snap decision to remove all in-game advertising from the company's titles.

  That made the decision to set up its own internal agency to run advertising across around 20 games in 2015 a significant one.

  "With major advertising companies now switching a larger part of their budgets to mobile and with Gameloft being one of the leading publishers by downloads and audience, we expect advertising to become a significant new line of business for the company and to unlock long-term shareholder value," stated Michel Guillemot, as part of Gameloft's financial statement.

  
  

• 2 Did the $15 million spent on Super Bowl XLIX UA ads score app store success?

  

  With an estimated $15 million spent by three mobile game companies during the Super Bowl, the big question is what's been the result of such an investment in high profile marketing?

  One way of looking at the situation is to dig down into the changes of the three advertised games - Clash of Clans, Game of War and Heroes Charge - on the App Store and Google Play - something analysts outfit App Figures took a stab at.

  It found Heroes Charge saw a huge spike in downloads - rising from around 260 in the free iOS game rankings to 86 following its Super Bowl ad placement.

  
  

• 1 Liam Neeson takes over Super Bowl for Supercell's $9 million Clash of Clans ad

  

  It's reckoned Supercell spent $9 million on its Liam Neeson-fronted Super Bowl advert for Clash of Clans.

  That's small beer for a game that one analyst calculated generated $1.8 billion during 2014.

  Nevertheless, more important than the money spent was the fact that the ad was funny, sending up Neeson's role in the Wanted series of films, even generating its own meme - AngryNeeson52.