Gameloft has ported every manner of popular genre into an iPhone game and, despite mixed results, has managed to maintain a presence in both the top 100 paid games and paid (overall) apps lists -- with two bargain-bin sales currently in effect, Gameloft has four games among the top 100 paid apps right now. Key to this success, Guillemot claims, is staggering releases: "You can't take care of your titles when you're releasing them shotgun." So, do we just ignore that DJ Mix Tour, Real Tennis 2009 and Rise of Lost Empires were all released on June 3? Clearly, Gameloft is in the volume business, and it's working. But what are the drawbacks?
Guillemot suggests that the speedy Terminator Salvation: The official game price slash (from $9.99 to $4.99) is an example of Gameloft quickly responding to "consumer expectations," as if it is some breakthrough in seller-buyer relations. That's a crafty way of covering up the fact that Gameloft wasn't taking care and, in turn, diluted the market and damaged the integrity of iPhone games that might be worth $9.99. A more lasting effect could be the discouraging of developers that would have otherwise set out to create content worth that ceiling price, but instead turn to those half-baked, $0.99 efforts that are piling up -- almost literally -- a dime a dozen. But hey, at least there's no shortage of experience.
