Glu canned DS / PSP expansion plans in 2007
Glu Mobile planned to expand onto non-mobile games platforms last year, but delayed its plans in favour of focusing on acquisitions, according to president and CEO Greg Ballard.
"We were actually one of the very first companies to publicly talk about multiple platforms as the vision for the future," says Ballard.
"During our public offering, we talked about using some of the money to move into other platforms, and we planned on doing it pretty rapidly last year. Then something happened that took our focus in a different direction."
That something was the realisation that two other mobile games companies � MIG and Superscape � were potentially up for sale. Glu duly bought both, but according to Ballard this put the kibosh on Glu's cross-platform plans.
That's not to say Glu has abandoned those plans, but interestingly the delay appears to have spurred a rethink, focusing Glu's attention more on new mobile platforms like iPhone, Android and N-Gage.
"We will be a multi-platform company, but for the time being we view the possibilities around the mobile handset as just as exciting, if not more so, than more remote platforms like PSP, DS or Xbox Live," says Ballard.
"If we had gone off doing DS and PSP titles last year, we might have been less prepared to put some of our resources into these new mobile platforms. And something that we're aware of is that both Gameloft and EA have built-in retail distribution [for DS and PSP] but we don't. So for us to get into the DS or PSP business requires a bit of a business manoeuvre, which is something to be cautious about."
Meanwhile, Ballard says Glu is monitoring developments in the social gaming space, such as games for Facebook and other social networks, but the publisher has no immediate plans to get into that area.
Glu's former European boss Kristian Segerstrale recently started up his own social games firm, Playfish, taking several colleagues with him.
"We're absorbing it, and I would say even that some of us are playing the games ourselves," says Ballard.
"So we're watching it, but we're not at all convinced that there's even a business model for it yet. But as a way of marketing games it's pretty interesting, so we'll probably be doing stuff in that area sometime."
Stand by for the rest of our interview with Ballard, where he discusses why Glu sees mobile games as a "three-company industry", what Superscape brings to the company, and the risks and benefits of big movie licences.