By Joe Arico | Wed Nov 23, 2011 4:42 pm |
One mobile game publisher is offering its titles through a subscription service, as gaming companies explore new business models on smartphones.
Apple is allowing Big Fish Games, a Seattle-based publisher, to offer a subscription service for users to access dozens of games for $7 a month. Games in the App Store from all other publishers are only sold one at a time at a flat rate.Big Fish founder Paul Thelen said he believes the idea of an "all-you-can-eat" service is a perfect model for smartphones. Rather than have several different games on a device taking up space, users can download one app from Big Fish and have access to all of the publisher's games through the service. Big Fish has a free trial version of the service that comes with ads and lets users play for a half hour before deciding whether they should subscribe to play the games. Subscription services have been used for access to video content like Netflix and have also seen success with online magazines, but Big Fish's level of success may determine if big changes are coming to mobile gaming. One challenge the program faces is that the company's service only works over Wi-Fi, which will likely turn off many gamers who want to be able to play games wherever they go. In addition, when the service is engineered to work with wireless networks, gamers may get frustrated if games come to an abrupt end because they lost their signal, especially if they are about to beat a level they've attempted several times. The number-one factor that will determine Big Fish's success is likely the quality of the games it produces. Users interested in playing games will likely put up with all other shortcomings if the content available delivers a good experience. Big Fish's new service could be the start of a new model in mobile gaming, but if the company doesn't execute its plan properly and overcome some technical hurdles, it may end up being a failed opportunity.
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