June 19, 2007
Why Cellphone games aren't ringing up sales
Fewer than 8 percent of all Americans with cellphones played a game on them last year. This in a country where about 60 percent of us routinely play electronic games of one kind or another. Plainly, something's not working. The Boston Globe explains why.
"The game developers are doing their part. You'll find plenty of games available for most phone handsets. The world's leading digital game company, Electronic Arts Inc., makes dozens of phone games.
On reason may be that multiplayer phone gaming lacks the community spirit you find among PC and console gamers. There are no online forums where phone gamers hang out, no gaming "clans" that team up for weekly digital battles.
In principle, though, phone gamers worldwide should be able to meet and compete. In practice, there are major barriers. Really good multiplayer gaming requires a fair amount of data bandwidth. But data travels slowly over the standard cellular network, and relatively few people will pay an extra $15 a month or more for a high-speed data plan upgrade.
Also, there are thousands of phone handsets, each containing an array of processor chips of varying power, as well as differing amounts of memory. So games that work fine on one brand of phone can't be installed on another, even if both phones are sold by the same wireless carrier.
... And speaking of carriers, creating games for Verizon Wireless phones presents a particular challenge. That's because the company uses a proprietary programming system called BREW, while other cell companies use the more common Java programming system."
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