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Made For Samsung program opens up to indie game devs
Samsung Corp has announced that it will be extending its “Made For Samsung” program to independent mobile game developers, allowing indie devs to get free access to tools that help with analytics, product testing, marketing, and more. In return, they have to agree to make their games exclusive to Samsung’s app store.
Exclusivity deals are hardly new to the video game industry, and they are practically a staple of game consoles like Xbox and PlayStation. This trend has carried over into the mobile game market to some extent, especially with the many apps that are exclusive to either iOS or Android.
What Samsung is trying to do with its “Made For Samsung” program is a little different. Rather than releasing products that are platform specific, as is often the case with console games, Samsung wants developers to release games exclusively through its own app store.
Obviously, the company’s primary competitor in this field is Google Play, and while exclusive deals might draw a few new users, Samsung will certainly have a difficult road ahead if it wants to match the success of Google’s store.
Of course, Samsung does have one very big advantage over Google when it comes to gaming specifically: the Samsung Gear VR headset. Most users will probably not care about a random indie game on Samsung’s app store, but a virtual reality game would be something different that may be interesting enough to get users to try out Samsung’s service if it is the only place they can find those games.
While indie developers interested in participating in the program will have to agree to an exclusivity deal, the agreement does not necessarily have to be permanent.
“Exclusivity for us can be time bound,” Mihai Pohontu, vice president at emerging platforms at Samsung, said during the announcement at the recent GamesBeat Summit. “We can continue to promote an app or game even after the exclusivity program is over. In the game industry, developers would normally find it hard to obtain Hero image featuring in the other app stores.”
Image courtesy of Samsung Corp
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