It’s Official: EA Owns the App Store – Now What Do We Do? | Hacker News Reader

It’s Official: EA Owns the App Store – Now What Do We Do?

iphone.ezone.com

19 pointsdavidppp13 comments

Alarmist.

EA is running a massive sale- 99 cents instead of the usually $6.99. Because of that, they got a huge, massive boost in sales.

When they increase prices, download amount will go back down.

The Paid charts are based on downloads, not revenue- seems to me they're increasing their iOS install base ahead of putting out new versions of their games, so they can cross-promote against those new paid apps.

EA is usually dominant on the App Store, but not this dominant. The big story is how many independent developers are normally in the Top 10. Ever see a 50/50 studio/independent split on Xbox or Nintendo DS? iOS is still the best deal going for independent game developers.

What EA is doing is really quite clever. By making such a massive sale just before Christmas, they ensure that the charts are dominated by their apps come Christmas day, when all the people who received gift cards go check it out.

I'm just waiting for them to jack up the price for Christmas day - so all the people that get given an iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch for Christmas view the top list and buy at full price.

Having said that - I purchased five EA iPad games on the weekend because of this sale. SimCity for 99 cents? Yes please!

I thought jacking up the price was implied in my comment. I know I will check the app store on Christmas day just to see whether it is true.

Also, thanks for the heads up about SimCity, had not thought about that.

What Do We Do? Make better games. That's what mobile game devs need to do.

Angry Birds isn't up there because EA bought the publisher a couple weeks ago. It's up there because it's a fun and addictive game.

Pardon my ignorance:

What does it mean for Chillingo/EA to "publish" Angry Birds in this case? I understand what publishing houses did back when software was only sold in a box; but in this case, I fail to see what exactly does EA do for Angry Birds.

The main thing publishers do is advertising. The second main thing is getting the product into channels (not an issue here of course).

And sometimes publishers will actually fund a project, usually in the form of advances.

I don't know Angry Birds specifically though.

I haven't read about the deal, but I'd imagine EA also got rights to the game for other platforms, and that that is the primary value here. For app store stuff it's probably more a case of free advertising.

I believe that EA only publishes Angry Birds and does not own it as the article states. How that effects the revenue stream is beyond me.

EA simply bought Chillingo, the publisher of Angry Birds (and Cut the Rope, and several other top iOS games) a few weeks ago. I don't know what deals Rovio, Zetptolabs, etc. have with Chillingo, but no, EA does not own Angry Birds as far as I can tell.

Rovio has been moving away from Chillingo/EA for a while now. All their new releases are self-published.

Source: http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/20/angry-birds-chillingo/

That explains it. I was looking at the chart in the article and thought he had missed Angry Birds Seasons. Just makes the EA logo next to Angry Birds seem out of place.

There is still unprecedented independent developer parity. I'd build on iOS if I were into making games. I am more interested in enterprise software, however. :)

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