Interview

Simon Read: New Star Soccer's slow success outside UK is the 'million dollar question'

British humour may be a factor

Simon Read: New Star Soccer's slow success outside UK is the 'million dollar question'

New Star Games recently unveiled a partnership with Thumbstar Games designed to export the appeal of BAFTA-winning New Star Soccer to Asia and Latin America on Android.

We already chronicled the European success of New Star Soccer in our studio profile, but we were curious what studio founder Simon Read has in store for the game's global expansion as the Android version shifts to free-to-play.

And, naturally, we were equally interested in what value Read believes Thumbstar will add to New Star Soccer's success as publisher.

We caught up with Read to get his take on the process of going global.

Pocket Gamer: New Star Soccer's looking to expand to Asia and Latin America, but why are you using a publisher - Thumbstar - to target these markets?

Simon Read: We did the translations ourselves, but we felt that Thumbstar could give us a better chance of reaching certain markets.

They have a knowledge of and a presence in countries where we have none, so their experience and connections should prove very valuable.

You launched New Star Soccer with a premium price tag but then shifted to free-to-play on iOS. Why didn't you launch as free-to-play to begin with?

It was a paid app on Android simply down to technical reasons.

It was difficult to implement the Android SDK with the coding language I use - Monkey - but those difficulties have been overcome now with the help of FourDoorLemon.

Do, you expect to see a similar performance boost on Android that you received on iOS after going free-to-play?

The paid app sales on Android are pretty poor in comparison to the revenue from the iOS version so I'm certainly expecting to see a boost.

I'd be surprised if it gets anywhere close to that of iOS though.

Why do you think New Star Soccer has had difficulties in markets outside of the UK, given the global presence of football as a sport?

This is the million dollar question and I think several factors come in to play.

The retro feel and the humour in the game are very British and perhaps doesn't appeal in other countries.

On a practical level, some of the translations were poor and I never actually got around to translating the app store descriptions! This has at least been rectified now.

Do you have any plans to target the US with the push toward global expansion?

We are not specifically targeting the US with New Star Soccer but in terms of downloads and revenue it ranks third behind the UK and Italy which proves just how important it is even for a soccer game.

Of course we always want to do better so we will continue to push it in the States as much as we can.

Thanks to Simon for his time.

US Correspondent

Representing the former colonies, Matt keeps the Pocket Gamer news feed updated when sleepy Europeans are sleeping. As a frustrated journalist, diehard gamer and recovering MMO addict, this is pretty much his dream job.