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Gameloft not so keen on $19.99 iPhone game pricing

Concerned it could be a niche

Gameloft not so keen on $19.99 iPhone game pricing
Gameloft SVP of worldwide publishing Gonzague de Vallois says $19.99 price points for iPhone games could do more harm than good.

Apple is thought to be launching a premium $19.99 section of the App Store, but Vallois warns that the affordable nature of iPhone games has been one of the key ingredients in their popularity so far.

"The good thing about the App Store is that it reopens the world of gaming to everybody with these kinds of [low] prices," he told PocketGamer.biz at the Mobile World Congress show today.

"If you go up to $19.99, volumes will go down. If I'd sold Hero of Sparta for $19.99, I'd have sold ten times less downloads, and we'd be back with the video game business, which is  niche for very hardcore and motivated gamers."

Instead, Gameloft seems content with the $9.99 price points for games like Real Football, which he feels will appeal more to casual gamers.

He also thinks the digital  nature of iPhone games should help publishers keep prices low -  not just because of reduced distribution costs, but because of consumer attitudes towards them.

"Brothers In Arms on iPhone is better than DS," he says. "Yet the DS version is sold for 30 Euros at retail, so maybe we should price it at that on the App Store. But it's digital, so the perceived value from the user is very different."

However, he's keen to stress that Gameloft wants to maintain the current premium prices for higher quality iPhone games, around the $7.99-$9.99 mark.


"We think it's important to educate consumers that very good games have a certain value," he says.

"You will never see Asphalt selling for 29 cents. If we do that, then when we launch the next Asphalt game, players will just think 'If I wait three months...'"

But getting back to those premium App Store section rumours, Vallois thinks much of the pressure is coming from publishers with roots in the console space.

"For the biggest video game publishers, there is a threat here," he says. "Their business model is selling games for 30 or 40 Euros, whereas the App Store is 5 to 7 Euros."

Stand by for the full Gonzague de Vallois interview, with his views on mobile game aggregators, application stores, and more on iPhone.

Contributing Editor

Stuart is a freelance journalist and blogger who's been getting paid to write stuff since 1998. In that time, he's focused on topics ranging from Sega's Dreamcast console to robots. That's what you call versatility. (Or a short attention span.)