Tricia Duryee is with paidContent.org and I had the pleasure of meeting her at a Glu press event in San Francisco. In any case, she interviewed Gonzague de Vallois of Gameloft about the state of mobile gaming and he had some interesting things to say.
Back when QuicklyBored first started, we were 100% mobile gaming. The industry was in a terrible state. The industry was bogged down with heavy royalty payments, inefficient distribution and seemingly never ending porting.
This is starting to change. The industry is now blessed with perfect distribution models such as the iPhone App Store, as well as innovative technologies such as Google’s Android. On top of that, there are platforms such as N-Gage which are developing graphically intense games to match the high power hardware they’re putting out. Continue reading about the current state of the mobile gaming industry
Qualcomm announced at BREW this week a huge partnership with Adobe and unveiled their Plaza initiative. Now, you could read the press releases, wait for me to regurgitate them for you, or listen to Mike Yuen, Qualcomm’s Senior Director of Gaming, break down why they’re important to you, the average mobile user. I recommend the latter.
If you like fun mobile games, chances are you play titles made by the house that Pac-Man built. Jason Ford is the VP of Strategy and Planning for Namco Networks, so consider him the Big P’s proprietor. Join tr0n as he and Jason talk about Namco’s platform strategy, Qualcomm’s BREW 08 announcements and the industry’s newfound willingness to address the problem of game discovery.
Glu Mobile is one of the top mobile game publishers, period (Super KO anyone?). So when Kyle and I ran into Jill Braff, Glu’s senior VP of Global Publishing, in the elevator after we arrived at Hyatt, we knew we had to get her on an interview podcast. So we promptly kidnapped her and forced her to talk about Glu’s global strategy, the realities of being a public company, how great the iPhone is, and when Super KO 2 is coming out. Enjoy.
Doug and I showed up to this session a little late and came in during Anders Evju of I-Play talking about casual games versus hard core games. We walked in while he was showing some well-known stats including the fact that girls dominate casual games and boys hardcore games. Continue reading ‘Are We Making Games The Right Size for the Right People?’
Today we are speaking with Stephen Cheng, CEO of Innaworks. Innaworks is a specialist development tool vendor dedicated to solving critical industry wide issues for the mobile game and application industry. Stephen and I spoke about the benefits of using Innaworks to port your J2ME applications and games to BREW.
Something you may not have known: Having a machine do your porting is not only more efficient and cost effective, but you may also see fringe benefits such as higher frame rates on games.
MocoNews got the skinny on a report from Jupiter Research that says people aren’t buying mobile music and don’t really want to. Just 5% of of mobile users put songs on their phone, and a vanishingly small 2% actually download songs over the air. Pricing was the biggest reason for the lack of interest, followed by discovery, UI, DRM, lack of storage, and the fact that many users already have a portable music player. Fully two thirds of those surveyed said that nothing could motivate them to start buying music on their mobile phone, and the 14% who want to download music over the air want it to be under 99 cents. It’s a very tough market to break into, especially with the dominance of the iPod and the iTunes store, plus the bevy of other music players out there.
cellular-news posted about a report from Juniper Research that suggests that mobile entertainment — including games, TV, and music — will generate $47.5 billion in revenue by 2010. The report cautions, however, that the rate of adoption could be slowed if improvements aren’t made in some areas. User interfaces, coverage, and high data rates were the biggest killers, but they noted that government legislation based on the growing number of gambling and adult oriented games could also slow growth.
The Multimedia Research Consultancy has put together a report that looks at the state of mobile gaming 10 years after Snake was first embedded into Nokia’s 6110. According to the report, 1,968 actively trading mobile games enterprises have sprung up in the decade following Snake, spanning over 90 countries. 53% of these companies have been trading for over 5 years, and 17% have been trading for over 7. The report also talks about development platforms — with Java been the clear winner, followed by BREW — and the geographical locations of enterprise, with Europe leading the pack by a wide margin.
Zeemote has announced the launch of the Zeemote JS1, a standalone wireless controller for mobile gaming.