March 24, 2006
Troubled times for mobile game
Game designers interested in making games for mobiles have been told that the industry is facing stagnation, reports the BBC.
Highlights:
"... In the US, consumption has flattened out with less than 4% of mobile phone users downloading games each month.
In Europe, the average price of a title has fallen but costs to games developers and publishers are rising. Moreover, some mobile networks are planning to take a greater share of game revenue.
... There are too just many poor games available. Some operators, for example, offered almost 300 games to buy and download.
Mobile games should work well on phones, and not be pale imitations of console games.
Good games can be created that only require the player to use a single button.
Furthermore, many of these games were solitary experiences, rather than bringing people together via their mobiles.
And wild:
For a global release across a hundred different networks, a single game can easily exist in as many as 2500 different versions.
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