Author Archive

Avoid console mistakes warns I-Play

October 4th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Analysis & Editorial | 1 Comment »

David Gosen, CEO of I-Play warned the mobile industry in an article at gameindustry.biz. He pointed out that the mobile industry is already advancing in the way of user acceptance as the console market can only dream of numbers like a 50% female audience. He still sees a lot of potential in this market as in the last 25 years, 250 million consoles where sold whereas on a yearly basis, 800 million phones end up in the hands of consumers. He explains that the mobile developers must create a broad offering to avoid turning the market in a niche industry where growth is slow. The mobile industry must do whatever is needed to remain open to all consumers.

"What the mobile developer has to do is make sure it does not create barriers for entry for consumers. We’re starting to see that carriers understand that mobile phone decks are in effect retail stores, so they need to be merchandised and able to help consumers to the right content for them." said David Gosen.

Widsets officially launched BETA

October 4th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Other news | No Comments »

Nokia yesterday officially launched the Widsets.com website. Widsets are widgets for your mobile. Nokia didn’t really put their name on the service and that appears to be a wise move as they are targeting more then just Nokia handsets as they also target handsets from device manufacturers like HTC, Motorola and Samsung.

Since widget services are known for often supporting simple games, my fear directly was this service could seriously target that five minutes of fun we are all aiming at. Installing the service was easy. I filled in my mobile number and received a download link via sms push. After downloading it allowed me to easily select widgets on both PC and mobile. The PC selection was much better though as it allowed me to fine-tune much more about the widgets.

Widsets indeed supports small mobile games, but at this moment development is not open to the public which means there is only Sudoku for now. The public at this moment is only allowed to build widgets based on RSS readers. Also, there are plans to make available commercial widgets in the near future.

Of course, we couldn’t finish this article without at least releasing a widget ourselves. It’s still a bit simple and not at all where we want it to be on a design level, but here you can get our RSS reader. Along the week we will dive into the XML of the application and release a definitive version just before the weekend.

Nokia has released a lot of products in the last year to broaden the consumer’s use of the mobile phone and its many capabilities. However, initiatives like Nokia Sensor and Nokia Flier never really took off. Even at Nokia events, until now I discovered only one person using such a service. Nevertheless, the fact that this service is not Nokia branded and aimed at multiple devices might make it really interesting for consumers.

Nokia N-Series competition

October 4th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Events & Conferences | 2 Comments »

Nokia launched a development contest for its N-Series phones. The contest is about creating a new application (which can be a game) that would revolutionize the way the N-Series devices are being used. Entries are accepted until the 30th of October (which is really close). You can find the contest via this link. Select the US as your country.

SE content to enter retail

October 4th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in 1 | No Comments »

SonyEricsson will open a content aimed retail store in the center of London later this year. The store will be mainly selling and sampling music and movies for their mobile phones, but gaming is only one logical step away.

From Mobile to X-Box

October 3rd, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in 1 | No Comments »

We found a post from Mark Ripley about his switch from pure J2me development to Microsoft’s XNA platform. At this moment, the market for smaller developers is really thin and as Mark explains, there are too many people ripping off the small developer which makes XNA a good transition. Expect more coverage about this soon

Deal Or No Deal licensing

October 3rd, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Brand Licensing | No Comments »

Though Overloaded, which was previously owned by Endemol, started selling the first Deal or no Deal games in several countries, the license now seems to get spread amongst several companies. Earlier this week, Gameloft announced their purchase of the license from Endemol UK, which restricted them to the UK. Today, Mobliss announced to also have the license, but from Endemol USA. This possitiones Mobliss to operate the license in probably the biggest market and makes me curious about the results compared to Glu‘s “Who wants to be a millionaire”.

Gameloft’s Q4 lineup

October 3rd, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Games | No Comments »

Gameloft will bring the following titles to the market in Q4; Miami Nights: Singles In The City, Dogz, Brain Challenge, Naval Battle, Deal or no Deal (UK) (previously released by Overloaded), Asphalt 3, Christmas Midnight Pool, Bubble Bash, King Kong Pinball, Gangstar: Crime City, Real Golf 2007, Special Crime Unit, Real Tennis 2007, Rayman Raving Rabbits, Rainbow Six: Vegas, Horse Riding Academy, Meteos and Dominos Fever (working title).

Looking at the list, we are sure to see a lot of safe bets as Gameloft pulls out a lot of licenses which performed well before. Also we see Gameloft is going to catch the ride of brain training, doggy and naval board games. We wonder if they are still in time though with every big (and a lot of smaller) publishers already having their titles out there. Needless to say though, the overall expectations are really high yet again.

Player One into mobile gambling

October 3rd, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Gambling | No Comments »

Just in time for the US ban on internet based gambling, Player One starts its mobile gambling service, aimed at the

Gameloft’s H1 possitive

October 3rd, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Companies & M&A | No Comments »

Gameloft did well in the first half year of 2006 with an increase in revenue of 50% which translates to 10.1 million on top of the 20.4 last year. 90% of these revenues are purely based on downloads. The net profit is 14.7 million. For a more extensive overview of the figures, please check QB’s report on it.

Carnival of the Mobilists #47

October 2nd, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Analysis & Editorial | No Comments »

Another week has passed, and this time the honors for creating another excellent compilation for the Carnival of the Mobilists go out to Tomi. Tomi runs the Communities Dominate Brands blog and actually earns money as a professional writer. Thanks mate!