EA’s Q3, up again for mobile

November 6th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Analysis & Editorial | No Comments »

We can almost say that nothing exciting happens at EA as they just continue growing and releasing hot IP’s to the mobile games platform. Their latest numbers show their revenue grew with 2 million to a staggering 35 million dollar.

Glu, not the biggest, but the best?

November 6th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Analysis & Editorial | No Comments »

Our friends at QB have put an article online to honor Glu in their quest for glory. The article shows statistics that where send out by Glu on who creates the best mobile games. Personally I wonder which sources have been used to compile the figure, as that might influence the value of their research.

NPD: Why do you buy?

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

Our friends at QB found in one of the latest NDP Group studies, the results of why certain age groups are triggered into buying a mobile game.

“Those aged 13-17 cited free trials as the biggest factor, 18 to 24 year olds said they were influenced by game title, adults in the 25 to 34 category cited positive reviews, and consumers 35 and older cited price as their top rationale.”

Mobile fighting games can be fun

October 30th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Analysis & Editorial | No Comments »

I have been working as a content manager for almost three years now at Overloaded and in that time I have seen dozens of fighting games coming into my inbox. Fighting games for consoles have always been a huge success with famous fighting series like Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Tekken and many more, so it makes sense.

As a collector of (handheld) game consoles, a few months back I managed to get my hands on an old almost worn down Neo Geo Pocket from arcade legend SNK. I got attached to the little thing in no time and spend many hours playing games like Metal Slug and even BaseBall Stars. As the Neo Geo Pocket pretty much failed big-time in Europe against the GameBoy, it’s pretty hard to get games. However my friend Ping Fang in the USA mentioned it was easier to get some good games over there. After a few weeks he managed to get hold of the most famous fighter games for the console like Fatal Fury and SNK vs. Capcom. While playing those games with their limited use of colours and pixels, not even to speak about the limitation of just 2 action buttons, I started looking back at some of the mobile fighters I tested.

Why did most of them fail to attract my attention while they where technically more advanced then those SNK games? The answer is probably simple. Just about all of them try to create a fighting game with complex moves that need a lot of button pushing as we are used to on the current consoles. With the limited device input capabilities, that is a pure nightmare! This while a SNK game like King of Fighters bases it’s choice of moves mainly on the position of the characters. So while you for example normally punch with the A button when standing in front of your opponent, it can turn into a shoulder throw when standing at the same spot as your opponent. Now that is smart thinking as the game suddenly offers many more moves. Also systems like the build up of power for causing even more damage to your opponent really help in creating a better experience.

So what would be the ideal configuration of a fighter game? I recon using the D-Pad for moving of course where a D-Pad with 8 directions is perfect. The 3 and 6 button could be used for punching and kicking for right handed people, while the 1 and 4 would do the same for left handed gameplay. Even more ideal would probably be a device where you can play horizontal. The D-Pad under one finger and the other ones on the softbuttons on the other side of the device. The SonyEricsson models like the W550i would be great for that (though the D-Pad is not the best one). But what if the device would not support an 8 directional D-pad? Well, who presses down and left or down and right at the same time? So you can move to the normal replacement buttons like using 1 for a jump to the left side, 2 for jumping up etc. and use the 0 and # or 7 and * as action buttons.

I’m not a programmer, so I cannot evaluate the possibilities to implement this on let’s say 80% of the devices on the market. However what I do hope is that game developers try to pay more attention to the user interaction instead of pumping up their games with to many possibilities. At the same time, I hope device vendors will put more attention to implementing good D-Pads that allow fluid play. Face it, the Gizmondo and N-Gage showed us that nobody want’s to use a console for calling, but the consumer does want to use it’s mobile phone for gaming!

What makes the consumer tick

October 30th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Analysis & Editorial | No Comments »

Compete has released a study to the behaviour of consumers on mobile networks in relation to content. The study kicks off with the question how important certain aspects are to the consumer when choosing it’s mobile network. 31.3% of the consumers noted down that the content offering does count in their choice of network. However pricing models, coverage (this must be a US study) and devices are still by far more important. This also shows probably why MVNO’s like Amp’d and Helio still appear to have problems getting huge numbers of consumers into their networks. The study also shows that from the consumers they questioned, 13% in interested in mobile entertainment like gaming, and 9% is already using it. So that 4% should be the easiest part to activate into buying mobile entertainment/games. Another interesting figure shows that from people who are already shopping for mobile games, 38% is interested in receiving free games in exchange for advertising. From the consumers that didn’t really use mobile entertainment, 15% would be interested in this offer. This means the potential for ad subsidized gaming is really good. You can read the full study here.

Greystripe shows the numbers

October 24th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Analysis & Editorial | No Comments »

We have heard a lot of news from Greystripe and their Gamejump platform, but never any results until today as QB shows us. Greystripe has sent out some interesting numbers about their ad subsidized mobile games portal.

Top 10 downloads

01 Texas Hold’em – Ozura
02 Adventure Boy in Zooloo Land – HandyGames
03 BlackJack – Ozura
04 Aqualife – Bogee Interactive
05 SuDoKu – Greystripe
06 Baja Buggy – Fugu Mobile
07 Ghost Hunter RPG – Ozura
08 Townsmen 3

Dave Bell: Accessibility is the holdback !UPDATED!

October 24th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Analysis & Editorial | No Comments »

Dave Bell from Playphone has disclosed his feelings about the mobile games market to MocoNews. He explains that he feels the main holdback for the industry is not the content itself, but the accessibility. Dave sees big opportunities for D2C business, specially with branded games where you can promote the mobile game trough the already available marketing space surrounding the brand.

Update: Please find the full, excellent interview at Gamasutra

Carnival of the Mobilists #49

October 23rd, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Analysis & Editorial | No Comments »

Yet another carnival has been released by mobile opportunity. Starting off with an excellent boring story about the boring number 49, the excitement still manages to hit off. Good writing and we’re looking forward to the next one!

IdeaWorks 3D releases Airplay 3.0

October 17th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Analysis & Editorial | No Comments »

IdeaWorks announced version 3.0 of their SDK called Airplay. Airplay is a toolkit that helps developers to create high performance mobile 3D games for mobile phones. Also the middleware will take care of problems related to handset fragmentation to enable cheap porting and deployment.

"Ideaworks3D has long been known for its mastery of 3D and connected game development, delivering to market some of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful franchises in the industry," said AlexCaccia, CEO, Ideaworks3D. "Now, our Labs team is bringing to market the tool sand middleware that will help scale the market opportunity for both developers and publishers, and ultimately deliver better games to a broader consumer base."

The whole SDK consists of three parts. Starting off with the Airplay Studio, it brings you the key development tools needed for building your games. Airplay System holds a platform optimized execution environment. And last but not least, the Airplay Online module which is an SDK for connected and multiplayer gaming.

Airplay 3.0 is expected to be ready for commercial licensing along Q1 2007.

Qpass crushes the numbers

October 17th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Analysis & Editorial | No Comments »

Amdocs (DOX), the company that created Qpass announced it has processed a massive 590 million transactions translating to a $ 1.5 billion turnover. Since its start in 2003, the Qpass platform has been deployed at big operator decks like T-Mobile, but also it provides digital download services for Skype.

Amdocs also announced they still see their platform growing really fast. The first six months of this year alone brought in $ 0.5 billion and they grow 12% each quarter. The average spend per download went up from $ 2.54 last year to $ 3.17 these days.

Mobile games represent the biggest stake after ringtones by accounting for 19% and are one of the fastest growing segments.