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PocketGamer.biz review of 2008: November

Remember, remember, the ten big stories of November

PocketGamer.biz review of 2008: November
Latest in our series of posts harking back to the key mobile games industry stories of 2008.

November started with some stats on N-Gage being released, belatedly, after Nokia's Games Summit. It included details of geographic spread, the number of repeat purchases, and promises of eight new N-Gage handsets in the first half of 2009.

It was also quarterly results season, with Gameloft revealing Q3 revenues of €26.2 million and also that the iPhone App Store was now its single largest sales channel, Glu announcing Q3 revenues of $23.9 million (but a whopping net loss), and THQ Wireless revealing Q3 revenues of $6.2 million.

EA Mobile had a mixed month, with a corporate reorganisation spurred by the resignation of EA's Casual Entertainment boss Kathy Vrabeck, but also the announcement of some innovative mobile-to-console connectivity in its Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 game.

November was the month that Vivendi Games Mobile finally closed its doors, with a letter to partners confirming what had been widely rumoured for months. It seemed newly-merged parent company Activision Blizzard saw no need to keep mobile games in-house.

iPhone continued to evolve apace as a gaming platform, with the entry into the App Store of social games firm Zynga, joining its rival SGN. Meanwhile, it was around now that Apple made a determined push to pitch iPhone and iPod touch as genuine handheld rivals to DS and PSP - something we had a few qualms about.

Finally, November saw the latest 'you're all going to be rich!' forecasts from Juniper Research, predicting that mobile games would generate $10 billion of revenues by 2013. Although this time in 2007, the company was saying that milestone would be passed in 2010...
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.)