Interview

Trip Hawkins talks iPhone, Android and Nintendo

And reveals Digital Chocolate's App Store downloads boom

Trip Hawkins talks iPhone, Android and Nintendo
Much of the hooha around Apple’s not-so-secret plans to launch a $19.99 premium games section on the App Store has focused on whether it’s the right or wrong thing to do.

Less speculation has focused on whether the bulk of iPhone owners will care much.

Digital Chocolate boss Trip Hawkins thinks they won’t. “I don’t have a problem with the idea of having hardcore games on iPhone, or even having a category called Console or Hardcore,” says Hawkins.

“But it’s not going to matter. The reason: at least 95 per cent of iPhone users are not hardcore gamers, and they don’t care about those brands. They’re not looking to buy an expensive game on the iPhone and spend 40 hours playing it.”

He’s not surprised that Apple is looking to go down the premium route, though, based on its dealings with console publishers. “The traditional games industry prefers to sell its games, not give them away, prefers higher price points not lower, and tends to make much bigger games,” he says.

“If Apple is engaging with that industry, that’s the viewpoint they’re going to hear. If I were Apple, I might have a category called Console, but I don’t think they need to tilt and think that gaming is all about what the hardcore gaming companies think it ought to be.

"They’ve failed to innovate in the last decade, so why would you look to them to tell you how to innovate now?”

That said, he takes care to explain that he’s not against higher price points on the App Store, particularly when publishers are putting more investment into bigger, longer games. It’s just that he thinks these kinds of games will be a niche in the wider casual scheme of things.

iPhone downloads success

Unsurprisingly, Digital Chocolate isn’t making 40-hour hardcore iPhone games. Instead, it’s sticking to its original focus of casual original-IP games, having already released iPhone versions of Crazy Penguin Catapult and Chocolate Shop Frenzy (plus a Lite demo of each).

“We’ve been making games for the past five years for platforms like the iPhone,” he says. “They just weren’t out yet. It’s exciting for us to see new platforms today that really take advantage of what we’ve always thought about games - that original games specifically designed for the platform can be successful.”

How successful have DChoc’s games been so far? According to Hawkins, the two versions of Crazy Penguin Catapult have been reviewed more than 100,000 times so far, with high average ratings. What’s more, he has some bullish statements about overall download figures.

“We now represent 1 per cent of all the downloads that have ever happened on the App Store,” he says.

In mid-January, Apple revealed that overall downloads had passed the 500 million mark, so Hawkins is effectively saying that Digital Chocolate’s four products have been downloaded more than five million times. Even if more of those are the Lite versions, it’s an impressive figure.

Mobile tipping point

Hawkins sees iPhone and the App Store as part of a bigger tipping point in the mobile industry, proving that there is a demand among consumers for mobile content, if it’s offered to them in the right way.

He points out that the mobile industry is now racing to try and catch up with Apple, whether it’s Android and the Android Market, operators like Verizon Wireless pushing the BlackBerry Storm, or everyone and their aunt looking to launch an App Store-like service.

“It’s a big deal that the entire mobile industry is moving in this new direction,” he says. “It’s a wonderful direction for the games industry. All of these devices, and everything that is being developed for them from a technology standpoint, will be good for gaming.”

Hawkins has some interesting views on how iPhone is spurring more word-of-mouth recommendations, with users keen to show it off to their friends, and games often providing the reason.

However, his contention that iPhone is “a platform where the cream really does rise to the top” may elicit disagreement from some of his peers, who’ve been complaining that their titles are being buried under thousands of cheap, low-quality iPhone games and applications.

Isn’t there a problem brewing there? Hawkins thinks not. “The rubbish does not rise to the top,” he says, forcefully.

“Go into the Release Date portion of the App Store and you’ll see a lot of products that have never been reviewed. The vast majority of applications that have been released are stillborn. A game does not rise in the ranks unless there’s a public burst [of enthusiasm] around it.”

Brands struggling

Few would be surprised to learn that Hawkins isn’t a big fan of branded iPhone games, although he admits that Tetris works well on Apple’s handset.

Even though the biggest driver of sales for a new game is being featured by Apple on the App Store homepage, he notes that not every title has benefitted from it.

“Brands are performing incredibly poorly on the iPhone,” he says. “Games like Tetris and Monopoly are the exceptions, but actually, Apple featured a Saturday Night Fever game too, and even though it had a 99-cent price, it plummeted like a brick out of the charts.”

How is iPhone affecting Digital Chocolate’s product strategy? It seems to be fitting into the company’s overall roadmap as another platform, joining mobile, PC and Facebook - with Xbox Live to come in the Spring.

Hawkins has a phrase for this - omni media - although many in the industry would simply refer to it as cross-platform publishing. There’s a theory behind it, though, which Hawkins illustrates with a comparison to PC MMO World of Warcraft.

“Our goal is to reach the omni consumer with a form of casual social gaming that everybody would like to play, and which they want to have access to on any platform and any network,” he says.

“World of Warcraft doesn’t really have any agility across platforms: it’s dug in on the most powerful platform it can find. But omni gaming is all about agility. These consumers are showing up with interest in playing these kinds of games on every platform there is, and mobile is the ultimate one, because there are so many handsets out there.”

For now, Digital Chocolate - like many developers and publishers - is taking in as many learnings as it can from the App Store, including testing pricing and marketing strategies. Hawkins admits to taking a keen interest himself, although he’s not impressed by some of the efforts.

“A lot of developers are really amateur marketers and retailers,” he says. “They would be better off turning it over to some professionals. I feel some self-inflicted wounds in the way different products are presented on the App Store. Some of it just makes you chuckle.”

Back to the '80s

However, he’s keen to stress again that Digital Chocolate isn’t heaping all its eggs in one iPhone-shaped basket. Interestingly, he says Apple’s strategy of working with a single operator partner in many countries (although not all) could allow rival handset firms to gain ground.

What’s more, he has an intriguing comparison to illustrate that point. “If you recall what happened in the 1980s, Apple launched the whole PC phenomenon, but then in the long-run IBM, then Intel and Microsoft took it over and did most to expand it. And Microsoft took the approach of working with multiple partners,” he says.

“You can see that strategy being used by Google with Android, with multiple handset and carrier partners, so there’s more activity in more areas.

"Admittedly, they’re still behind Apple - they don’t have as many devices in the market, their user experience isn’t as good and their app store isn’t as advanced - but there are going to be some carriers that end up being successful with app stores and handsets that aren’t Apple’s.”

With that in mind, Digital Chocolate will continue to work hard on its existing carrier business - Hawkins claims that many of the firms dumping operators for the App Store are motivated by “a ton of bitterness” and “sour grapes”.

“If a company says they’re not going to support the carriers any more, and are going to iPhone to get rich quick... I’m not so sure they’re going to get rich quick,” he says.

“You can do something that’s a flash in the pan on iPhone, and have your little moment. But it’s much harder to become a consistent supplier of games that get high reviews, product after product. Probably within a year or two, a lot of those companies will have complaints about the App Store.”

Digital Chocolate is clearly gunning to be one of the publishers that does succeed and makes a long-term success of iPhone. Whether it’ll be joined by those hardcore console firms he was talking about earlier remains to be seen.

However, he has one more thing to say on the subject of iPhone and iPod touch, and their relation to console gaming, mirroring some of Apple’s recent pronouncements.

“I find myself smirking wondering what’s going on in the boardroom at Nintendo when they think about what to do about the iPhone,” says Hawkins.

“Nintendo has always been in the most protected position with its handheld game machines, and suddenly the iPhone - and iPod touch - has come along as a legitimate threat to that.”

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.)