Author Archive

Bollywood Calling

October 25th, 2004 by Ashu Mathura Posted in Games, Research & Stats | 1 Comment »

Arre o Samba, phone utha nahin toh main aa rahan hoon! If that’s the kind of prompting you need to answer your cellphone instead of a regular ringtone, Sholay has come to your rescue. And if you are a Bollywood fan, you can expect more interesting things on your mobile in the days to come.

Cellular service providers who have been offering games and ringtones for a while now have realised the huge potential of the craze for Bollywood. Says Rajiv Hiranandani, country head, Mobile2Win, “Almost 600,000 games, ringtones etc are downloaded by mobile users every month, out of which 50,000 to 60,000 belong to Bollywood. Bollywood content is still a fraction of the entire mobile gaming industry since the trend caught on some months ago. But it’s growing at a rate of 20% annually. It also depends on the number of releases every month. Producers are slowly waking up to this method of publicity for their films.” More …

Celador signs deal on “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” One on One Multi-Player Mobile Game

August 24th, 2004 by Ashu Mathura Posted in Games | No Comments »

Celador International, licensor and distributor of some of the world’s most popular television programmes and CMate, the connected mobile gaming specialist, announced today an agreement under which CMate will develop and launch a connected one-on-one version of “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?”

Under the terms of the agreement CMate will exclusively develop and operate “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” connected mobile multiplayer games. By integrating with mobile operators, CMate’s unique gaming technology allows users to challenge each other to a real-time game of “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” for either points or real money. Mobile users will be able to play against each other using JAVA or WAP. More …

Interview with Chinese game developer BBFM CEO Han Lian

August 24th, 2004 by Ashu Mathura Posted in Companies & M&A | No Comments »

With a new Japanese investor and new strategy, BBMF’s Han Lian talks about the games revolution on mobile phones.

Merging Japanese content with a cheap Chinese labour force seems like a wise strategy. At least that is what BBMF is banking on. The company makes games for mobile phones and was founded by Antony Yip (founder of Myrice) and Han Lian (founder of Inphomatch Asia). Here the CEO, Han Lian, talks about the company’s new Japanese investor, its Nasdaq listing and its strategic change of direction. More …

New game targets lonely wireless subscribers

August 24th, 2004 by Ashu Mathura Posted in Games | No Comments »

Artificial Life Inc. announced the upcoming release of Virtual Girlfriend, a J2ME-based mobile game featuring animated three-dimensional characters. Users can interact with their “girlfriends” via text or multimedia messages and can send virtual gifts to move on to higher game levels.

The characters follow daily and weekly schedules, taking trips to the mall or going out to restaurants, and their behavior is “based on scientific principles and algorithms,” according to a press release. More …. More … (2)

Enpocket’s Mobile Media Monitor Finds Mobile Ownership and Sophistication Growing Fast in US

August 23rd, 2004 by Ashu Mathura Posted in Research & Stats | No Comments »

The Mobile Media Monitor also indicates increased sophistication of usage in the US market. The fastest growing media downloads are Java and BREW games, which show a 75% increase quarter over quarter. In Q2 there were 4.4 million adults downloading games to their phones – this has risen to 7.7 million in Q3. This growth is particularly dramatic in the 18-25 year age group. In Q2 11% (or 2 million) of 18-25 year-old phone owners were downloading games – rising to 22% (4 million) by Q3 2004. More …. More …(2)

Caveman Arts signs first games contract

August 23rd, 2004 by Ashu Mathura Posted in Companies & M&A | No Comments »

Mobile games specialist Caveman Arts has signed an agreement for the supply of its Climber-X title in a move that will bring first revenues to the Dundee-based start-up.

Assuming all of these games achieve sales of no more than 1% of the UK mobile games market

Cell phones and kids: Do they mix?

August 23rd, 2004 by Ashu Mathura Posted in Trends | No Comments »

It wasn’t so long ago that parents asked their teenagers to double-check that they had a quarter so they could call home, if need be. Then came cell phones.

In 2000, just 5 percent of 13- to 17-year olds had cell phones. Today, 56 percent do, according to Linda Barrabee, wireless market analyst for The Yankee Group.

Teens aren’t just using their phones to talk. From rapid-fire “texting” to full-fledged Web browsing to videos and video games, cell phones have become portable computers. And that’s opened up a whole new set of concerns. More …

Mobile gaming market set for `big growth’

August 23rd, 2004 by Ashu Mathura Posted in Games, Research & Stats | No Comments »

GAMING is emerging as big business in India coinciding with the growth of mobile and PC use and is expected to get a further thrust with broadband rolling out shortly.

According to Mr Gondal, last month 29 per cent of the downloads on AirTel were for Spiderman and 20 per cent for Van Helsing; the rest from existing 400 products. This clearly indicates the consumer shift to Hollywood-based gaming properties. More …

MFORMA Acquires FingerTwitch

August 19th, 2004 by Ashu Mathura Posted in Companies & M&A | No Comments »

MFORMA has acquired FingerTwitch, Inc. of San Francisco, a pioneering developer of advanced porting and quality assurance processes for the mobile entertainment industry. FingerTwitch is an industry leader in porting mobile applications to multiple devices and platforms and has developed proven technologies and methodologies for enabling mobile applications to play on both Java and BREW platforms and virtually every wireless handset. More …

Capcom and Nokia Announces Catan for N-Gage

August 19th, 2004 by Ashu Mathura Posted in Games | No Comments »

Nokia announced today Catan, a strategy game for the N-Gage based on the popular German board game. The first Capcom title for the handheld, players will compete with each other to build roads, settlements and cities, occupying new lands to squeeze out competitors. More …