“Android Games Aren’t Working”

Google hasn’t got people interested

Gameloft, the French development studio behind the likes of Bubble Bash and Derek Jeter pro Baseball (no, I haven’t played them either) is to significantly cut its support for Android phones, citing Google’s weak app store as the major reason.

The company’s financial director Alexandre de Rochefort told investors that Gameloft had been forced to make the decision after figures revealed that it was selling 400 times as many games on iPhone than on Android.

He also claimed that other developers were adopting similar strategies, and blamed Google’s lack of support for the Android app store as the major reason for the market’s weakness.

“It is not as neatly done as on the iPhone. Google has not been very good to entice customers to actually buy products. On Android nobody is making significant revenue,” Rochefort said.

The news will be a blow for Google – Gameloft is an award-winning mobile developer, with deals in place with the likes of Ubisoft and Dreamworks: the company is behind mobile phone versions of Assassin’s Creed and the Tom Clancy games, and is currently enjoying success with its iPhone port of MegaDrive classic Earthworm Jim.