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Apple and Google are offering to heavily promote games in their app stores in exchange for exclusivity

Well I never

Apple and Google are offering to heavily promote games in their app stores in exchange for exclusivity
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In a slice of news that we all saw coming, the Wall Street Journal has revealed that Apple and Google are scrapping it out over exclusive games.

The two companies are apparently offering to heavily promote titles in exchange for a period of exclusivity. This is according to several "people familiar with the situation."

Quite who these people are is unclear, but they cite Plants vs Zombies 2 and Cut the Rope 2 as prime examples of Apple throwing some promo around to secure an exclusive deal.

According to the sources, the delays between the iOS and Android releases of those two games, which stand at around three months, were down to agreements signed by EA and Zeptolab.

App scrap

Amazon is in on the act as well, using the same promotion-offering tactics to secure exclusive games for its Kindle Fire range of devices.

Gameloft's head of sales and marketing Gonzague de Vallois said that the company had been in talks with Apple over exclusive deals, but ultimately decided it was better to launch on Android at the same time.

While the move does bring to mind the console wars of the past, the idea that you might buy a smartphone just because you can play Plants vs Zombies 2 on it a bit earlier does seem a bit silly to me.

And Lewis Ward, an analyst at IDC agrees, saying that "in terms of decision factors of why you buy the device you do, games are very low."

Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.