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Gameloft makes select games available for direct download, not available on Android Market

Categories: Android, Applications, Gaming
By: , IntoMobile
Tuesday, May 18th, 2010 at 2:23 PM

In an odd smart move, Gameloft has passed on the Android Market, and brought 10 of its games to its own website available for direct download. The games available on the website are only for higher-end Android devices such as the Motorola Droid, and Nexus One, and completely bypasses the official Android app store in favor a direct-to-consumer model.

Downloading applications outside of the Android Market takes a little more work on the user’s end, but it’s not at all hard. User’s must go into the setting of their devices, and enable downloads from ‘unknown sources’ to be able to download outside of the Market. From their you can download applications and install them to your Android phone at will. With applications like Linda File Manager, enabling the ‘unknown sources’ will allow a user to download any sort of file type, as long as the microSD card has ample space available. The option to download applications outside of the Android Market can appeal to developers who want to give out a beta application to testers without releasing it into the market place.

In an email to Wired.com, vice president of publishing, Baudouin Corman said that the company thinks Android is still in its early stages, and they want to make their games available in more than one place to find the ‘optimal system’ for users to get access to their games. He would be right. Android still has ways to go to get the saturation of games that the iPhone AppStore now enjoys. Newer, more high-end Android devices should appeal more to developers that want to write a graphics intensive game for the platform. Those devices can’t come soon enough.

Corman also mentioned that the company has released 30 different titles in the Android Market. Unfortunately, with my Nexus One (running the Sense UI, I might add), a “Gameloft” search only returns 10 results. Same with my myTouch 3G. While titles like Asphalt, and Assassin’s Creed show up in the search, a lot of the games are a little less appealing – that is, unless you like Uno… a lot. For more appealing games like Iron Man 2, Avatar, and Spider-Man Toxic City, you’ll have to go to the Gameloft website in order to download them.

I think it’s a smart move for the company. They aren’t locked into the Android Market like they are with Apple’s App Store, so trying to get come extra cash from a different place seems like a logical step. Gameloft had reported that they sell about 400 times more games on the iPhone than Android. If Android doesn’t get its fragmentation issues sorted out, I wouldn’t expect this to change anytime soon.

[Via: Wired.com]

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About The Author

Blake Stimac

Blake was born in Beaumont, Texas, about 100 miles away from Houston. Even as a youngster, technology came to him very naturally, tinkering with anything he could. His passion of technology grew with mobile phones when he dreamed that the capabilities of phones would eventually make one's life much easier. Since then it's been his mission to advocate the push of mobile technology to anyone who will listen.

  • JT-

    I think the sales descrepency has less to do with market issues and more to do with a couple other factors. 1) There is a larger user base with the iphone at this time do mostly to the fact that its been out longer then any android phones. The Droid seemed to be the first "great" android phone and has been out for much less then a year. 2) The games gameloft has released on the android market until asphalt5 were and are mostly still low-end games built for non-smart phones are lack the appeal for those users with a large gaming appetite. I wager that once their newer hih-end ports are made available in the android they will see a marked inprovment in sales.

  • grellanl

    I really can’t agree at all that this is a smart move. I want to buy Gameloft’s new generation of games for my Nexus One, but if I can’t buy them through the market, I have no intention of buying them through some awkward nonstandard arrangement.

    They need to get their stuff onto the Market ASAP, same as they do on the iDevices – they’ve put the effort into developing/porting these titles, and that effort is now being wasted because nobody’s going to buy them as things stand.