QuicklyBored

Mike Yuen is the Senior Director of the Qualcomm Gaming Group. He wrote an editorial for Modojo who has given Gamasutra the priviledge of being able to take their mobile gaming content.

The GEC - A Global Platform
Mike’s editorial brings up the valid point that mobile gaming will seriously profit from mobile’s platform penetration. “Some believe that the future of the global gaming market lies with a wireless device due to its near ubiquitous accessibility.”

According to Goldman Sachs, in the next decade, more than 800 million people in China, India, Russia, and Brazil will qualify as middle class - that’s more than the combined population of the United States, Western Europe, and Japan. These consumers aspire to own American brands and other high-quality imports. The advanced technology of wireless devices as a good enough console (or GEC) will allow it to function as the gaming/multimedia hub of homes in these emerging markets, and more broadly, as a good enough computing platform as well.

With such a high number of consumers, technology will also become more advanced quicker. Old phones will become obsolete and today’s most expensive phones will become the giveaway phones. “This continual higher resetting of the minimum baseline of technology in phones is what will fundamentally drive these devices to become the mass market computer of the future, as well as a viable GEC in emerging markets.”

Considering the fact that mobile gaming already supercedes console gaming, there is a large amount of momentum within the industry. “With this momentum in place, it’s up to the wireless industry to ensure that the GEC device, not consoles from the big three, becomes the consumer gaming/multimedia hub in the digital living rooms of emerging markets. Because it addresses the critical issues of affordability, distribution and piracy, the GEC device has the potential to introduce interactive entertainment to people that otherwise could not purchase dedicated gaming platforms.”

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