Gameloft CFO issues warning to rivals

Gameloft CFO Alexandre de Rochefort has warned his competitors against signing short term deals with videogame publishers which could leave them out in the cold.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with MobileIndustry.biz, to be published next week, De Rochefort said, "Overall, our main strategy is that if we sign a deal, it will need to be a long term deal. We do not want to make the same mistake some of our competitors have in the past, which is to sign short term deals with videogame companies.

"During the two or three years when you have the rights, you open the door for the license at many carriers all over the world; you do all the work for the videogame company to reap the rewards at the end of the deal," he continued.

De Rochefort went on to cite the deal I-Play had in place with EA, which saw the mobile publisher securing the rights to FIFA and Tiger Woods. "At the end of the deal, EA took back the license and started selling the game to the same carriers with which I-Play had developed the relationship," he explained. De Rochefort believes that Glu, which currently owns the rights to Sonic the Hedgehog, will soon find itself in a similar situation.

According to De Rochefort, it's up to mobile games companies to resolve the situation - and not those they are purchasing licenses from. "I cannot blame videogame companies for doing that - I'm just saying that maybe it's a mistake that some of our competitors could have avoided," he stated.

"It's making it easy for videogame companies to reap the rewards of work that has been done by pure players in the mobile gaming space. So if videogame companies want to work with us, it's got to be for the long term."

Visit MobileIndustry.biz next week to read the full interview.