Trip Hawkins has given a good interview running from Digital Chocolate all the way back to the start of EA, over at the Game Tycoon blog. Trip sees 2006 as the year Digital Chocolate blossomed, because carriers took a chance on games that weren’t based on well-known brands. He also expects the western markets to follow those of Japan and Korea, where retro titles give way to original IP—which is unsurprising, considering that’s what he bet DC on.
He also mentioned the difficulties of international efforts: “The markets of Japan, Korea, and China are relatively closed. You can only really do business if you are located there, and you also have to be pretty intimate with the cultures. Most mobile companies are not large enough to operate like a Microsoft. As a result, the biggest companies in these Asian markets do not do much in the West, or vice-versa. However, when you look at the rest of the world, there are many countries where you can do business virtually. We have only two main offices but we do business directly in more than 70 countries and in fact a minority of our revenue is in the US.”
There’s nothing particularly new here (not counting a new product AvaPeeps, an avatar-based game), but it’s a good insight into Trip’s worldview. (via GameDailyBiz)