March 21, 2007
Mobiles set to play the game
The BBC explains why mobile phone gaming has yet to reach it's fulll potential and that difficulties it faces, with game and handset compatibility a key problem for developers.
According to Robert Tercek, keynote speaker on mobile games at last week's Games Developer Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, mobile content publishing is "an exercise in managing chaos"
"Consoles usually have a lifetime of five to six years, giving games publishers a period of stability in which to develop titles and franchises.
... Games need to be developed to run on hundreds of different handsets supported by a number of platforms ranging from Java (J2ME) to Windows Mobile, Brew and Symbian S60.
This fragmentation of technologies creates difficulties for developers in deploying, or porting, their games to many different handsets.
... Mobile gaming is still waiting for the "killer application", that single game that redefines what a mobile game is.
For mobile gaming to reach its predicted levels of profitability, operators need a solid revenue stream, and developers need to recover development costs.
The most likely business model is the subscription method dominant in Japan, the world's most advanced market for mobile gaming. "
The Permanent Link to this page is: http://www.textually.org/textually/archives/2007/03/015380.htm
