manbolo
Meon is one of the most successful game from any indie developers in the Marketplace. We recently reviewed this windows mobile game. Today we chat to the guys behind this amazing game and find out their thoughts about marketplace and learn what is in store for us in the future from Manbolo.
We’re three friends living in France (that explain our poor English…), we’re developing and making games since we’re 14 years old! Three years ago, we started Manbolo to develop some games for us just for fun, on Windows Mobile. We would like to make casual games, cheap but which were well programmed (small size, work on every device), kind of game that you like to play when you’re on the way to work (or during some meetings…) and not reserved to hard-core gamers. We’ve chosen Windows Mobile (sorry Windows Phone) because three years ago, it was easy to develop and sell your product on your own website or on web-vendors website, and also because Windows Mobile was among the most innovative smartphone platform. Today, a lot of things have changed, but we keep confident in the platform. We’re currently developing games under our brand Manbolo and also developing more ‘serious’ app as contractors for thirds parties.
Were your games available before WM Marketplace ?
Yes, there are available on our web site since the beginning of Manbolo, and also on Handango and Clickgamer. (There are also available on a lot of warez sites, and torrent ! At the beginning, we have tried to struggle against it but it’s a never-ending story. Finally, we’ve chosen to put only a weak protection in our app, because the usual kind of protection is just annoying honest people). When the Marketplace opened in August 2009, we were ready and among the first to publish games on it.
How has your experience with WM Marketplace been ? IS there anything you want to change about WM Marketplace ?
Well, very contrasted! There are a lot of things that could be improved in the WM marketplace, if anyone at Microsoft is hearing us and want to hire us, no problem! On developers side, we don’t see the point in the pricing policy of Microsoft for publishing apps. Currently, you’ve to pay $99 for each app submission, and pay again, again and again each time your application fails the submission. Once your application is approved, you’ll be able to publish it on only one market (for instance US market). If you want to publish on another market (let’s say French..), you’ll have to pay $10, and another $10 for each country where you want to publish your apps. There are maybe 30 countries, so the minimum budget for a world-wide product is $400. Someone at Microsoft has to explain us how the Marketplace, with such a policy, can compete with, for instance, the iPhone app store : $99 and you do what you want, and submit for approval every app that you want.
The second thing is the Marketplace client : customer should be able to choose where to install apps, in the main memory or on a storage card. Some devices haven’t a lot of room in the main memory, some customers too like to have their apps in their storage card, so the Marketplace client should propose whether the apps install on the main memory or on a storage card. Doing this, maybe you’ll see 300 MB games arriving soon on the Marketplace.
Another improvement is the ‘Dashboard’, the portal for developers to publish apps. Actually, it is very difficult to modify information about a product once it has been approved. If you want to modify small things, like screenshots, app description, icons, you’ve to be certified again and pass through the approval process. It’s useless. You should be able to modify your app description to include review or promotional content etc…
The last most annoying thing is that the visibility of apps on the Marketplace catalog is non deterministic: some developers aren’t able to see their products on one market although on another market the same apps are visible and published. The Marketplace tries to filter apps that are not available for your device but something does not to work here! Due to this filtering, a customer who has a device without any GPS won’t be able to see GPS based apps. Is is a good idea ? Maybe on the mobile client, but not on the PC web catalog.
So, as you see, there is a lot to say and there is room for improvement. But, there are also a LOT of good points : Manbolo has never sold so many games since the Marketplace is available, on the Marketplace but also on our own website. We find the mobile client well designed and much more responsive than the app store on a french iPhone for instance. The process to get apps is simple on the client and, within our tests, seems to work quite good. The Microsoft guys has been responsive also to bring some improvements on the Marketplace. So there’s hope!
We currently have 6 games, mainly available on English and French spoken markets : Yes, the ‘lite’ version has pushed the sales of Meon, and not only on the Marketplace, also on our website. A lot of people seem unable to buy the paid version of Meon on the Marketplace and they’ve bought it on our website. So, releasing a free version of your app seems to increase your sales. That said, one of our games, Spot Zone, has also a ‘lite’ version and it has not increased the sales of the paid version so there is not a ‘miracle recipe’ like we say in France.
Meon, Meon Lite (demo version of Meon), Spot Zone, Spot Zone Lite, Manbolo Minesweeper and Magic Bubble
Meon and Meon Lite are in the top 20 Most popular apps on the US marketplace so we’re surprised and proud. We’ll continue to add more games as soon as we’ve finished to develop them!
Well, it’s difficult to say, as we still haven’t received any revenue from Microsoft, we hope it’s not another Dashboard bug… About sales, we can say that we have sold much more copies of our games on the Marketplace in three months than on any other web store (Handango, Clikgamer and our own web store) since the beginning of Manbolo. If you look at the region, the leading market is the US market, and some country market are doing very well, like UK market and French market. A lot of market have very few activities, but this could be explained by the MS policy for publishing : while developer have to pay each time they want to publish on a new market, some country market will remain rather empty, and it’s a shame! We’re porting Meon on other platform, we’re also working on an innovative puzzle game for Windows Phone, and some additional packs for Spot Zone, so stay tuned. You can follow us on Twitter and Facebook. The Windows Phone is currently a real opportunity for indie developers : there aren’t so many apps, so it is easier, compare to other stores, to have some success in it. The important thing is to carefully read the Application Submission Requirements (https://developer.windowsmobile.com/resources/en-US/Application%20Submission%20Guidelines.pdf) and see if your apps is respecting each point. Another good resources to post questions and have some answer from the MS staff is the market place forum http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/mktplace/threads?page=1. Count two weeks to be approved for the publication.. Globally, we’re very satisfied with the Marketplace, we’re gaining much more visibility since the Marketplace has opened. At this date, Meon Lite is in the top 5 Most Popular apps on the US market, and Meon is the first paid app, we’re very happy so we would like to thank all the people that have bought our games, and all the people that have help us to improve it. if someone has a problem with one of our games, just send-us a mail, we’ll try to answer you and solve your problem.
But, frankly, the overall Marketplace experience could be much more better, and we expected much more from Microsoft. Come on guys, you have the manpower, money and some good examples, set the developer entries to $99/year to publish all the apps we want, on every countries, and you’ll have a tons of new apps. No need to wait for Windows Mobile 7!
Meon, a small game made by a little team…………..There are a lot of very good freewares available on the net like Pocket Mille Bornes , Vexed and Genesis Plus for Pocket PC for instance.
Our Take : We are quite interested to see what the new puzzle game from Manbolo will be like, with the success of Meon most of us have high expectation from them. We wish them all the very best for the future.
|
Scan this QRcode with Bing vision ( Hit the hardware Search button and click on the small icon that looks like an eye ) on your Phone to download the App to your phone.
 
|
Checkout Our Sponsors
DeeDee
Sanjay
Saijo George
Hog
Ak
harchestr
peng tao
{ 1 trackback }