Feature

PocketGamer.biz Review of 2008: August

Ten stories from the mobile games industry summer

PocketGamer.biz Review of 2008: August
Part three in our review of 2008, which for reasons of us only launching in June, kicked off in, er, June.

Apple's App Store continued to make the headlines in August, with Steve Jobs revealing that more than 60 million iPhone apps had been downloaded in the first month, generating more than $1 million of revenues a day.

Sega was reaping the rewards, announcing that its Super Monkey Ball iPhone game had done more than 300,000 downloads in its first 20 days on sale - just under $3 million in revenues.

But it wasn't all about the App Store in August. Google took the wrappers off Android Market, its own application store, and promised it would be an "open and unobstructed environment to make their content available".

Meanwhile, rivalry at the top of the mobile games industry was intensifying, with EA Mobile's announcement that it had secured the UK rights to TV gameshow Deal or No Deal. Why sign a one-territory licence? The fact that it previously belonged to fierce rival Gameloft may have had something to do with it...

A bigger licensing story, though, was Player X picking up the mobile rights to two PlayStation game brands - Buzz! and Destruction Derby. This, after Sony had reportedly canned plans to make a bigger splash in the mobile games market itself.

In Europe, Hands-On Mobile announced that it was splitting off its EMEA business, which was swiftly renamed as Connect2Media, under the management of a handful of former Hands-On execs.

Meanwhile, rumours were sweeping the industry that Vivendi Games Mobile was about to close its doors, following the merger of parent company Vivendi Games with Activision. The rumours, sadly, turned out to be true.

On the hardware side of things, Bluetooth joystick maker Zeemote announced plans for its first commercial rollout, in the Netherlands with Sony Ericsson. It was using a slightly strange voucher redemption scheme though.

Finally, on the financial side of things, Glu Mobile revealed its Q2 results, while Gameloft gave more detail on its Q2 losses.
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.)