Kicking off the first Go Go Games mobile games conference in Gateshead, UK, Renate Nyborg, head of business management at Metro Apps, described some of the ways it approaches the market.

Part of A&M Media, one of the UK's largest media groups, it has a sophisticated attitude to its games and apps, especially in terms of marketing.

On interesting example given was Metro Apps send its contacts at Apple a weekly performance report.

This provides figures in terms of how its releases are performing on iOS, as well as news about future releases and any planned marketing. It also makes marketing assets to available to platform holders via FTP so any app store promotion is as easy as possible to set up.

The right foundations

This approach starts with product development; some of which are developed internally, and most with third party studios.

"Start with a strong idea and think about marketing at the start," Nyborg said.

"You also need to consider your potential audience. Think about how they consume content, what your competition is doing, and what you can do differently."

She was convinced however that while marketing and promotion is important, the crucial thing for developer is a strong idea.

"Stay true to your original idea. Don't be scared by what other people are doing. And have one killer feature that you can focus on in terms of press and marketing."

Reboot the business

An example of Metro Apps' flexibility was provided when it re-released trivia quiz game Bamboozle!.

Originally released as a 59p game, it broke even but sales quickly dropped to almost zero. However, relaunched as a free ad-supported title, with in-app purchases for additional question packs, it did 65,000 downloads in the UK during its first week without any Apple support, generating more than five times the revenue in the process.