I’m fairly certain we have the new and improved (read: more open) NDA from Palm to thank for developers speaking out a bit more on the platform and what their plans are for webOS. The latest developer to share their plans is PopCap.
If you don’t recognize the name yet, you will in a second. They are the ones responsible for the incredibly addictive Bejeweled, Zuma, and Peggle games that have been released on the PC, Mac, Microsoft and Sony’s consoles, as well as some mobile platforms (like Windows Mobile).
Garth Chouteau, Senior Public Relations Director for PopCap recently sat down with the guys over at Pixels to Polygons to discuss, among other things, their plans for webOS and the Palm Pre.
Pixels to Polygons: PopCap has been a company that has gotten on the iPhone and iPod Touch bandwagon with the App Store and that’s been a really big market for you guys. But now as we see that sort of mobile environment sort of splintering with the introduction of Palm Pre and the webOS and Android really coming out into the market, how are you guys going to adapt to fit those platforms, if at all?
Gath for PopCap: Well, it’s a good question. We have plans to support the Pre as well as Android. There are games in the works for those devices. But it is, certainly, a kind of splintering of that market in some way. I guess what I would say is, we think about platforms or perspective platforms in a couple of ways. One is, ‘Is this device right for one or more of our games? Is this the right kind of device for our game? Will it be a fun experience and frankly, as fun as it is n other platforms?’ and also, ‘What is the audience for this particular device?’ and then kind of thirdly but certainly not insignificantly, ‘What’s the install base?’ So all of those things have to be factored in and as new devices come to the market, that essentially represents a whole new platforms, we have to weigh those under a mirror and it takes a while to do that. So we’ll never be the first company to have a game on a new platform. I mean, that kind of happened with Bejeweled 2 but it was a free version, it was a very quick kind of implementation that we’ve since replace with obviously a commercial version and it’s significantly better but generally speaking, we’re more in that wait and see camp. We’ll take 12 or 18 months to bring our game to a new platform, in a lot of cases, just to insure it’s the right platform, the right game, the right experience and so forth and we really pride ourselves on not just doing quick ports to new platforms to cash in on a wave of attention or make a quick buck at the cost of sending people a bad message about one of our games. Having said all that, mobile is a big part of our business, it’s about a quarter of our revenue now. We support 650 handsets of smart phones and feature phones in addition to iPhone so we’re very dedicated to mobile. We see mobile as a huge part of the future.
I don’t know about you but I’ll be anxiously waiting. Have you any idea how addictive Peggle is?!
Related posts:
- Classic HotSync for Palm Pre Coming Soon
- Pandora bets on Palm Pre to be the next iPhone
- Fliq Bookmarks, Available Soon in the App Catalog