The first panel talk of Evolve tackled the subject of smartphones versus consoles.

Moderated by Xavier Carillo-Costa, CEO, Digital Legends, the other members were Michael Schade, CEO, Fishlabs, Phil Waymouth, first party business development manager, Microsoft, and Stuart Dredge, from Mobile Entertainment.

"More mobile devices are being sold than consoles, and mobile devices are catching up in terms of processing power and graphical quality," said Schade.

Waymouth warned that the comparison wasn't just about pure processing though.

"There are other considerations; power versus battery consumption is more important for the mobile space. We need to be thinking about the experience on console and smartphone," he said.

"The console will always provide a premium experience in your home, but we also invest a lot of money in our Live service, which acts as an umbrella over all our games. The existence of one platform doesn't preclude the other."

"You need to sperate graphics and UI and gameplay, which is something we see in titles such as Infinity Blade," Dredge pointed out. "Just because we can do console-quality games on mobile, doesn't mean that we should."

Value perception

"The problem is how do you educate the consumer about value when a console game is $60, while EA will put their iOS games regularly on sale for 99c," questioned Schade.

This flowed into a discussion of business models.

"The perception value of digital games is much lower compared to retail games, so how do we deal with that?" Carillo-Costa asked.

"We are seeing premium channels in terms of Nvidia's TegraZone and Featured spots from Apple. These aren't changing the price of games, but they are highlighting quality," Schade said.

"Companies such as Zynga and BigPoint are focused on low production quality games, but I think we need high quality to be successful."

Place to shine

"The move from $9.99 to 99c for mobile content was due to price economics, but the move to freemium is something else entirely," Waymouth argued.

"We have managed and unmanaged channels for Xbox and Windows Phone. These channels co-exist well together, but for our managed portfolio, we're making a point about the quality of those games."

Schade has long argued that app stores, notably Apple's App Store, should have specific premium channels to highlight games, and allow prices to be maintained over $10.

"Even at $9.99, Galaxy on Fire 2 has sold very well and been profitable for us, but still I would like a premium store on the App Store for visibility," he said.

"Such promotions need to be more reliable or predictable if Apple expects developers to invest one or two million Euros to make a game."