Born to be Wireless

What started as a direct B2C channel like iTunes, seems to have failed for the French developer and publisher of mobile games as Gameloft sent out a mailing to their consumers that the service will go offline at the end of 2007.

Dear Customer,

We would like to inform you that the Gameloft Connect application is about to be closed.

If you have any free tokens in your Gameloft Connect Account, please use them before the 31st of December 2007. We would have all our new games on the website www.Gameloft.com and we hope to see you very soon on our new website.

Thank you for using Gameloft Connect

Best regards.
Gameloft Connect Team

source: The Mobile Games Blog

Labels: gameloft

The thirds quarter last year brought Gameloft € 16.1 million in revenue, meaning the revenue has grown 51% year-on-year. Of the € 24.4 million, mobile game downloads represented € 23.2 million in revenue. The mobile game downloads have grown 58% year-on-year.

Europe remains the primary mobile games market for Gameloft as it generated 44% of the revenue. North America follows at 35% of the revenue. The remaining 21% is spread over the other global markets. The strongest growth has actually been outside of Europe and North America as the other markets grew 82%.

Gameloft expects a really good fourth quarter with the holidays in mind. Gameloft will release in total 25 new mobile games during the fourth quarter in order to increase revenue even more. The new games include Heroes, CSI Miami and a new title in the Prince of Persia line.

Gameloft has yet again topped up the 2007 outlook. The company has now set their sales target at € 100 million.

Labels: gameloft

Ubisoft Entertainment has sold its 18.89 percent stake in French mobile gaming firm Gameloft reports AFX. The final sale price for the 13.37 million shares was 6.08 Euro per share, for a total of about $111 million. to Credit Agricole's corporate and investment bank unit Calyon, and has signed an equity swap deal with the bank,

Under the equity swap agreement, Calyon has 24 months to sell the Gameloft shares on the market. Any changes in the Gameloft share price will then be recorded by Ubisoft, so the deal will only affect Ubisoft's income statement when Calyon sells the Gameloft shares. Ubisoft said the equity swap enables it to stagger the placement of the Gameloft shares so that Ubisoft can keep benefiting from the company's development potential over the next two years.

The two companies said they will continue to collaborate, especially when it comes to utilizing Ubisoft's brands on mobile phones. More info in release.

Mobile-Ent: The move ends an historic association that began when Gameloft was created as a wholly owned subsidiary of the French company in 1999. Over the years its stake has reduced to just under 20 per cent, although the Guillemot brothers that founded Ubisoft retain a private holding. More on Gameloft's history in this Wikipedia entry.

source: MoCoNews

Labels: acquisition, gameloft

The TV show tie-in game costs $4.99 and is compatible with fifth generation iPods.

It also signals Gameloft's continued platform diversification following reports earlier this week that it's developing Prince of Persia for Xbox Live Arcade.

Apple added games functionally to iPod/iTunes last September, with an initial range that included Pac Man, Tetris, Bejeweled, Mini Golf and Texas Hold ‘Em.

Labels: gameloft, ipod, lost