Doctor Who to get his own iPhone game
It's about time
According to a report on MCV, the BBC is planning to bring a host of its hottest franchises to the handheld gaming arena, including Doctor Who, Top Gear, In The Night Garden and more.
THe games will be produced through the commercial arm of the UK TV licence fee payer-owned BBC (so as to avoid having to give licence fee payers a free copy of the games they'll be bearing the cost of, presumably) and is currently courting developers and game creators to get the licences moving.
"We are open to conversations with anybody in games about all kinds of business models to see how we can extract more value," said managing director for children's TV Neil Ross Russell.
In 2005 the Beeb closed its multimedia division after an aborted attempt to get a Spooks game onto the PlayStation 2, but see a much stronger opportunity in the iPhone, DS, Wii, PSP and even Facebook.
"What we're trying to do is build the brands here," Ross Russell added, "this is not about opportunistic licensing. If we wanted to do that we would have done more with these key brands over the last few years."
However you feel about the BBC (and I'm not a fan, since I don't vote or watch soap operas) there's no denying that a Doctor Who iPhone game would be a very exciting - and rabidly popular - project. We'll keep you posted.
