It's time to rethink licensed IP, Supercell's startup culture, and Shipyard Games is grateful for Pokemon GO

The hottest articles of last week

• 5 Appodeal on its plans for Corona and why more ad companies could enter the game engine fray

  

  Ad mediation firm Appodeal surprised many when it acquired Corona Labs and its 2D game engine in March.

  The deal, the size of which was undisclosed, saw Corona Labs continue to operate as its own entity.

  In fact, the only major change introduced by Appodeal so far has been the move to make the Enterprise edition of the Corona SDK available free of charge.

  To find out more about the motivations behind the move and Appodeal's long-term ambitions for Corona, PocketGamer.biz reached out to Corona Labs' new CEO Stepan Solovyov.

  
  

• 4 It's time for a rethink on how mobile games developers deal with licensed IP

  

  Licensed IPs can raise a great game idea into something the world will want to play - would Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes really have had Western appeal if not for that license?

  But developers are still getting it wrong and making flops with even the biggest names, so MobileGroove's Content Marketing Strategist and Chief Analyst Peggy Anne Salz thinks it's time to rethink how we use licenses.

  Just look at Muhammad Ali: Puzzle King, a game that had been in development for over a year, but suffered due it being launched around the time of the boxer's death.

  "Users assumed – quite wrongly - that the game was made to exploit Ali’s passing. Downloads dwindled, costs exploded and royalty payments guaranteed to the IP owners spun out of control," wrote Salz.

  
  

• 3 Nintendo Switch the fastest selling console in the company’s history

  

  The Nintendo Switch is a unique proposition, and one that most of us at PocketGamer.biz who haven't already got one are eager to get our hands on.

  So is the rest of the world, it appears, as the console sold over 900,000 units in the US in its first month, making it the fastest-selling Nintendo console ever.

  Even more interestingly is that flagship game The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has sold more copies than there are Switch's sold.

  Nintendo has apparently chalked this up to people buying both the limited edition and the standard edition of the game - but either way, it means that the game has a 100% attach rate.

  
  

• 2 Why Supercell built a company of startups, and how it works

  

  Supercell is one of the biggest mobile games companies in the world, so when its CEO Ilkka Paananen gives a talk, everyone tends to listen.

  During RovioCon 2017 in Helsinki, Paananen discussed the reasons behind building a company of startups, and just exactly how it works.

  The Supercell approach is to remember that games are a creative process, and not a science, so you should focus on letting developers lead the teams and leave the business side alone.

  But as well as this, games have to hit a high bar of quality before they're launched - hence why the company only has four games on the market right now.

  
  

• 1 "Pokemon GO is a great opportunity for us": Shipyard talks Supercell funding and its location-based game ambitions

  

  Everyone and their dog started bigging up augmented reality and location-based games once Pokemon GO came out, but there's been very few developers revealing projects that will take it on.

  Shipyard Games, however, is planning to do just that, and with years of experience and $3 million from Supercell behind it, its upcoming single-player experience could be something very special.

  We chatted to CEO Andreas Wedenberg about the company getting the company started, how it got funding from Supercell, and what its plans are for the future.

  "I don’t think there are location-based games and non-location-based games," he told us. "There are only successful games and games that do not succeed as well."

  "Using location in a game is one way of making those successful titles."