"We are excited about the continuous growth of the Ovi Store, and the opportunities it creates for global mass-market content distribution,” said Trip Hawkins, CEO of Digital Chocolate. “Digital Chocolate will also be working to provide more value to consumers, and introducing innovative new ways to monetize on Nokia’s Ovi Store."
"Digital Chocolate makes highly addictive games that play very well across a wide range of Nokia devices, allowing Digital Chocolate to reach millions of users thanks to the worldwide reach of Ovi Store, currently having registered users from over 180 countries,” said Marco Argenti, VP and Global Head of Media, Nokia. “Gaming is one of the strongest content categories in most of our markets, and as Ovi Store’s selection continues to grow and we add more Digital Chocolate franchises, we’ll further democratize games and mobile applications for Nokia users around the world."
Digital Chocolate currently has 69 items in the Ovi Store; half of these are demo versions and a few have multiple entries (for different device types). This means there are about 30 different games from Digital Chocolate in the Ovi Store or around 130,000 download per game (although the downloads are very unlikely to be uniformly spread). 4 million downloads, even allowing for multiple games and the boost in numbers provided by demo versions, is a significant achievement. It shows that Ovi Store's quiet growth is continuing even as it faces recurring criticism from some quarters.
However more interesting is Digital Chocolate's commitment to undertake a related marketing campaign, which suggests that their own experience has led them to believe there is significant commercial potential in the Ovi Store.
"Digital Chocolate will support the campaign with a web initiative by creating a new Ovi customized online teaser of three of the campaign games. These web versions are available to play for free across numerous casual gaming sites on the web, and will feature Ovi Store links to direct the qualified game player audience to the Ovi Store offering a variety of mobile games. The viral web campaign will also reach across Digital Chocolate’s other web games, and Facebook version of Tower Bloxx, which has been played by millions of Facebook users."
By leveraging the reach of their non-mobile distribution channels Digital Chocolate will be able to deliver more people to its Ovi Store games. Generally, consumers generally expect web based games to be free, but are willing to pay a fee to continuing playing their favourite games on their mobile device.
This web-to-mobile monetisation strategy could become a popular business model for mobile gaming in the future. It is one way of solving the discovery problem app stores (how do you get people to find your game in a crowded app store?). The idea is already popular for iPhone games and Nokia showcased a similar strategy in its Reset Generation title.
Game Giveaway
The five games included in the free give away are Tower Bloxx™: New York, Rollercoaster Rush™ Revolution 99 Tracks, Crazy Penguin Party™, Nightclub Fever, and Dictator Defense™. They are currently priced at £3 or £4.
The free games have been made available for free via Ovi Store. All the games are "optimized for a range of Nokia handsets, including the Nokia N97 mini and Nokia X6".
The give away only includes select European countries: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.