Jugaccino

The singer Neil Young has released loads of country music albums, but probably doesn’t even have a phone. But it’s a completely different Neil Young I’m talking about today. This guy has left EA Games to start-up his own publishing company that will focus on iPhone games.

Once one of EA’s executives, overseeing games like The Sims 2 and Spore, Young (who will still remain as an advisor to EA) has started Ngmoco and claims that the iPhone will reignite the “stagnant” mobile gaming market – a view shared by many publishers in the industry.

“This is the moment,” he says. “This next 24 months an industry will get revitalized and re-energized. You have to look at this opportunity on the iPhone and ask yourself, ‘What would a company like Nintendo do?’”

At present Ngmoco is hiring producers, and network and platform engineers, but looks like it wants to publish games from third-party developers.

It’s a strange move when you consider EA Mobile is already developing for the iPhone – including one based on Spore.

Developers, producers and publishing executives are getting all flustered about the iPhone, and the App store that will offer direct distribution for iPhone games without requiring the backing of a large publisher.

Its highly likely hat a load more start-ups will emerge over the coming months from major games firms.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 1st, 2008 at 10:29 am and is filed under Industry News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.