Friday, May 14, 2010

Gameloft Gets Some App Store Promo Love

Wow! Gameloft got one of the six rotating feature "bricks" at the top of the iTunes App Store. That's some pretty sexy real estate for publishers trying to break through the insane clutter of Apps in the store. What's fascinating is that Gameloft elected to tag the ad with it's company name and link to their catalog of iPhone & iPad titles. Clearly they must believe (or want to test the theory) that Gameloft has become a recognizable endorser brand with consumers who buy games... and not just folks who attend MWC & CTIA. Hmm, I wonder if that's really the case. I've always considered the games business analogous to the film business with respect to marketing... wherein the emphasis is always on the title, because it's assumed that the consumer is generally agnostic about the company releasing it. What do you guys think?

4 comments:

  1. gameloft getting some investments back from apple but consumers dont care about it in my opinion. they buy games as you already mentioned. operators already tried that out and gameloft or ea is only known to hardcore gamers but not to the normal consumers but I guess they love to see their name up as well as some investors.

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  2. I don't think gamers know, but I think publishers, if they do it right, can establish a brand.

    Think Madden... "EA Sports... it's in the game"... I think people do have some positive brand association for that brand and tagline.

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  3. A belated comment to this post, but I caught up with an ex-colleague from the mobile games space last week who now manages the relationship with Apple for one of the big traditional global games companies now doing well in iPhone.

    Word is that this promo created a world of hurt for the Apple games team, as tier 1 publishers lined up demanding they get some App Store love too. The result is that there will not be any future promos like this for any publisher. Apple has to offer it to everyone or no-one; they decided on the latter.

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