Activision hopes to attract indies with new mobile platform

Call of Duty publisher Activision has long stood on the sidelines when it comes to mobile game publishing, but a new partnership may see the company build a substantial network of third-party games. On Wednesday the company announced that it has teamed up with mobile analytics company Flurry to establish a new publishing platform. Games released under the Activision Mobile Publishing brand will be provided metrics, publishing support and, the company stresses, users, thanks primarily to Flurry's user acquisition network, AppCircle. The initiative is aimed squarely at third-party developers looking to get their games out to as many people as possible. Primary targets are those smaller, independent developers who might not have the chops or bandwidth to support marketing efforts or scaling. "We've seen this market develop to a multibillion dollar market, and it is not just a controlled by the indies, it's simply dominated by the indies," Flurry president and CEO Simon Khalaf tells us. "We felt that the best way to approach the market is to simply help the indies organize and do a much better job of managing an audience." To make sure the indies are listening, Activision's platform is keeping IP in the hands of its original developers, though the company was unwilling to disclose to Gamasutra what a revenue share model might look like, with mobile head Greg Canessa telling us they'll work with devs "on a case-by-case basis." "With those smaller developers [we can] provide marketing, funding, resources, and a platform that we're providing to connect the games together into a larger community," he says. That community includes those already playing its existing first-party titles, which has games from popular IPs such as Call of Duty and Skylanders, among others, as the company plans to promote in-network games across its titles.