The number of companies that are able to successfully compete in the traditional retail publishing business is shrinking in the gaming industry. Still, the mobile sector is on the rise and EEDAR analyst Jesse Divnich thinks that mobile publishers will soon resemble the console market with more partnerships, studio buyouts and IP consolidation.
"We're going to see publishers through emerging markets, we're beginning to see publishers rise in mobile," said Divnich to DICE Summit attendees, according to GI.biz. "New publishers will fall and rise. Ultimately what's going to happen is that a developer does something great and it makes a lot of money and they say to themselves 'we do such a great job making our games, we're going to help other people make games.' And then eventually they say 'we did such a great job helping other people make games we could make more money if we just bought them and then we own everything'. That's where we are today with EA and Activision and that cycle is going to start again with mobile."
"The publishing model is not broken but maybe the publishers are," he said. "We've evolved to that point where they do such a great job publishing that they buy studios outright. The higher ups make decisions and the game becomes clunkers because the developer doesn't have an incentive beyond milestones and review scores, they don't have that sense of ownership or autonomy anymore."
Divnich predicted that by working with publishers, some mobile developers will eventually rise to be as prominent as today's notable AAA development studios. "It's just a necessary evil. For people to become the next Insomniac or Bungie they have to cut their teeth, they have work with publishers,” he noted. "If you think the publishing model is broken or is going away, well, what's really going to happen in the long term is these studios who are at the top echelons on our industry have to go through the hard times to build up the name, to build quality, to get the resources they need to exploit and bring their full potential to market."
