Resolute Games gets more mobile: Memphis firm eyes Blackberry, Google platforms

Only a few weeks after Resolute Games Corp. CEO Chris Przybyszewski launched the company’s first game on Apple Corp.’s App Store, his phone began ringing.

“People started asking us if we could do this or that (on the iPhone), but we would say no because we are a game company and we want to do games,” Przybyszewski says. “After everyone kept hounding us, the light bulb came on.”

Przybyszewski and his 12 programmers are now branching outside of designing just games to provide marketing solutions on the iPhone for local companies.

Resolute has formed a partnership with Memphis-based Good Advertising, Inc., to provide the service and hopes the new business will spur future expansions to its gaming platform.

One of Resolute’s new projects includes an application aimed at marketing a film produced by Memphis-based True South Studios.

The application provides users an interface to view video clips, photos, music and theater information on True South’s new production, “Sole of a Hustla.”

“It is the essence of viral marketing,” Przybyszewski says. “It allows a customer to interact with the company willingly and have something that they can use and pass on to a friend and use their own network. That is what the iPhone does at its core.”

The success of the iPhone and the App Store — App Store downloads hit 300 million in December, about 2.2 million a day — have more local companies looking to take advantage of the platform’s success.

“(Resolute) is very strong at programming and they’ve asked us to market to not only local but national companies interested in utilizing the unique capabilities of the iPhone,” says Dale Cox, president of Good Advertising. “Marketing today is becoming much more unique and we see technology as a way to reach target audiences that have been hard to reach in the past.”

Despite the new marketing business, Przybyszewski says Resolute remains focused on its gaming business. The company’s first title, Thumstruck, has already been downloaded by around 60,000 iPhone users and is one of the top 10 music applications on the App Store. Resolute has also launched an expanded version of the game, which sells for $2.99.

For 2009, the company plans to begin production on seven to eight new games and expand its titles beyond the iPhone to Google, Inc.’s Android and Research in Motion’s Blackberry Storefront platforms.

Google’s Android platform is currently limited to only one device, T-Mobile’s G1, but that list is expected to grow dramatically in 2009.

RIM’s Blackberry Storefront is set to open in March, and should Resolute expand its games and marketing applications to the platform, Resolute would own applications on the two most popular devices in the U.S. Blackberry and iPhone devices combined make up more than 60% of all smartphones sold in the U.S.

James Ruffer III, chief technology officer at Resolute, says the company’s expansion into the Blackberry market — the largest smartphone provider with 41% of U.S. market share — will allow the company to target more business professionals.

“The Blackberry is the business tool and it only makes sense to port it because a lot of these $.99, $1.99 application purchases are coming from people sitting at the airport who have nothing to do and are bored,” he says. “The Blackberry is going to be huge for us because it is the business person that will be waiting around.”

Resolute Games Corp. CEO: Chris Przybyszewski
Phone: (901) 490 5857
Web site: www.resolutegames.com

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