Author Archive

Blade Interactive goes BIG

January 18th, 2007 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Companies & M&A | No Comments »

Blade Interactive (website not working currently) announced the set-up of BIG, a dedicated division for their mobile games. BIG clearly has been set up to convert Blade’s console and PC games into the mobile space. At the same time, they announced to have made a distribution deal on their first snooker game with I-Play. BIG has announced it expects to deliver at least 3 games this year of which World Snooker Championship will be the first and hopes to raise the bar in mobile gaming.

Wmode acquires Provision X from Glu

January 17th, 2007 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Companies & M&A | No Comments »

An interesting purchase happened as Wmode bought the Provision X platform from Glu. Provision X was one of the strategic services developed by MacroSpace many years ago to market their collection of mobile games. MacroSpace, based in the UK, was bought by US based publisher Sorrent in 2004 to be rebranded to Glu a few months later in 2005. After the rebranding, the focuss of Glu was not really at selling platform services and with the upcoming IPO, the sale of it is a good way to clear the company strategy to a pure publisher. For Wmode, the platform means expansion to new carriers on which Provision X operates.

Whitepaper: The Small Screen Challenge

January 17th, 2007 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Games | No Comments »

Thanks to the guys at Biskero, we noticed Nokia has released a new whitepaper on how to overcome the small screen challenge. This whitepaper has all to do with developing graphics for the many devices we have to cope with in this still fragmented industry. It’s a must read for most people involved.

Darren Newnham, from SEGA to TelcoGames

January 15th, 2007 by Arjan Olsder Posted in People | No Comments »

Darren Newnham, from SEGA to TelcoGames

Darran Newnham, has made a new careermove and switched to take control of international licensing activities at Telcogames. Darren has a long track record in mobile as prior to his work for setting up SEGA Mobile, he worked at O2, T-Mobile, Hutchinson and BT.

Amob December Chart

January 15th, 2007 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Games | 1 Comment »

This is the overview of most downloaded games from the Amob channel which covers a big part of Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philipines.

Read the rest of this entry »

Buongiorno buys itself into China

January 15th, 2007 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Companies & M&A | No Comments »

The Italian aggregator giant Buongiorno has acquired China based competitor DongAsia trough its JV Buongiorno Hong Kong (which Buongiorno italy owns for 49%). Buongionro purchased 80% of the shares for $ 2.7 million. Buongiorno hopes to start offering the Blinko B2C services to Asian consumers soon.

Pantech: Play with a smile or a wink

January 15th, 2007 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Smartphones & Tablets | No Comments »

Pantech has announced the IM-U170, a mobile phone which uses the face camera not only for video calls, but also for navigation. The camera recognizes facial movements and from what we understand expressions and makes the data available to applications. This system allows you to play games without touching any buttons. As usual, we don’t know if we will ever see the device outside of Korea, but it sure sounds great for innovative play to me.

Vivendi shows off their marketing synergy

January 15th, 2007 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Games | No Comments »

Mobile Entertainment Magazine has put online an editorial about the marketing synergy within Vivendi when they launched their Eragon game series. All game studios who where developing the game for several platforms, released their games at the moment the movie entered the cinemas. The mobile division of Vivendi went even further for promoting their Eragon mobile game. SFR (which according to the post is owned by Vivendi) did a huge marketing campaign directly after the console/pc advertisements. Together with Telefonica in Spain, the company even filed complete billboards to promote the mobile and console games. In Greece, they teamed up with Vodafone and Overloaded to promote the game in the cinemas where the cinema bars where transformed into billboards promoting the game at Vodafone. Vodafone Greece also broadcasted commercials both in the cinema and on key slots at the most popular Greek TV stations.

The iPhone, a black box to remain closed

January 14th, 2007 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Smartphones & Tablets | 3 Comments »

We covered the iPhone before and already announced the chance of Apple making available an SDK would be slim. Steve Jobs now confirmed Apple will not allow any third party software as they want full control over the consumer experience. This means we can only expect current iPod mobile game developers to have a go at this great looking device. Steve even seems to have announced full control over other mobile content like ringtones as well. We know a lot of you really got their hopes up for developing on this great piece of mobile hardware which makes this bad news for the most of yours.

Orange France plays with ad-funded mobile games

January 13th, 2007 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Ad Funded Gaming | No Comments »

Orange France is entering into a 2 month trial of providing ad-funded games to consumers. The deal is made with mobile advertising company amobee who teamed up with Filao Mobile. During the trial period, consumers can get Filao’s mobile games at discount or even for free by accepting adverts on their device. Adverts will come from partners like Coca-Cola and Saab. When the adverts are on the screen, consumers can click to a dedicated wap site or make a direct call to the partner. After the two months, Orange will evaluate the success.