Feature

PopCap explains how mobile fits into its 'anyone, anytime, anywhere' strategy

Reinforces in Europe and America but expands in Asia

PopCap explains how mobile fits into its 'anyone, anytime, anywhere' strategy

One of the most innovative creators of PC casual games, PopCap has also released quite a few mobile games - Chuzzle, Zuma and - of course - Bejeweled. But it's taken the company a while to build up its own internal momentum with handheld devices. It was quickly onto the iPod however, and with a relative rush of titles now also coming out onto iPhone (and DS), its strategy to expand casual gaming beyond the PC is finally coming to fruition.And a shining examples of this is the entry of the Pachinko-meets-Breakout experience Peggle, which out soon on mobile in Europe and North America. We caught up with director of mobile business, Andrew Stein (pictured), to get his take on the differences between casual web and casual mobile.Pocket Gamer: Considering the reach of your web-based games, is releasing them on mobile a case of re-reaching your existing audience in a different way or fundamentally engaging an otherwise unreached group of potential PopCap gamers?We think it's a combination of both but it depends on a few factors e.g. the individual game, the territory, etc. For PopCap, the aim is to make our games accessible for anyone, anytime, anywhere.Given that the penetration of mobile phone gamers is so low (5-8 per cent depending on what study you look at), the initial audience tends to be those who are already familiar with our games and brands. However, the PopCap-aware audience most likely covers the majority of mobile gamers in North America and Europe. This is the reason we pour so much into our mobile games as we need to ensure that the phone experience is up to the quality expected from our PC games.In Asia, however, we think that mobile may actually be the first experience customers have with PopCap Games and we are using the mobile games to help build the PopCap brand and start building a relationship that can then extend to the PC.In terms of Peggle Mobile, how are you dealing with the fragmentation of Java, Android, BREW, N-Gage etc as presumably you'll want to get Peggle onto as many mobile devices as possible?PopCap has developed a number of internal tools to allow us to address multiple platforms from the same code base. We've got Peggle coming to both Java and BREW right now and are looking carefully at Android, N-Gage, etc but, as with any PopCap release, we want to make sure that we are able to take full advantage of the platforms. We think the N-Gage version should be a richer experience than Java, for example, so we don't want to just port the Java version over to Symbian-N-Gage.More generally, what's PopCap's long-term strategy in terms of porting its catalogue of games to mobile and who are you working with to fulfil that?PopCap's long-term strategy is to focus on our core franchises and make the best games we can possibly make. We do all of our J2ME/Brew development internally and also nearly all of our porting so we can control the quality. PopCap are quality fanatics as you can probably tell. We plan to continually go back to our core franchises and enhance those with new editions periodically.Additionally we continue to watch developments in the hardware space so we can expand to new platforms that are coming out (i.e. iPhone) and make sure we're covering those with great games as well.Finally, how restrictive do you find the business models you have to deal with for mobile, especially in terms of PopCap being a purely IP developer/publisher?From the creative side, we haven't run into any restrictions on what we can (or want) to do with our games. The mobile business model is challenging to be sure but PopCap works in close partnerships with operators and handset manufacturers. We actually find that certain things work better on mobile than on other platforms - subscriptions for example and the simple bill-to-phone experience - so the overall business is an exciting one that we certainly expect to continue to develop and grow.Thanks to Andrew for his time.


Contributing Editor

A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.