Activating the remaining 90% with pets?

September 5th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Smartphones & Tablets | No Comments »

Ok, let’s not start by saying this is typical a American thing and this story can even be considered a bit off topic, but still I think it’s nice to mention that we have a new consumer in our market. It’s our beloved pet according to PetsCell! These guys made mobile phones so people can talk to their dogs over a larger distance. Also handy, it has a GPS unit so you know where the little critter hangs out. Now that last thing might sound handy to find it back, but what about a nice real life hunting game!

TGS: The Square-Enix Lineup

September 5th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Events & Conferences | No Comments »

Square-Enix has announced it’s mobile games lineup for this year’s Tokyo Gameshow. This year they will show Dragon Quest: Monsters, Dragon Quest: Fushigi na Dungeon, Front Mission 2089, Pokermate and Seiken Densetsu

Player X polishes US team with new VP

September 5th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in People | No Comments »

Player X is boosting it’s US salesforce by adding Scott Meyer to the team. Scot, who has previously worked at companies like In-Fusio and Real Networks, will operate in the team as the new VP.

"I look forward to being part of the team that expands Player X’s success into this market place." Said Scott Meyer.

Nokia N-Gage to sponsor BAFTA Gameplay Award

September 4th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Game Awards | No Comments »

Nokia announced their sponsorship to the gameplay award at the BAFTA awards this year. The gameplay award is the only award handed out by public voted while all others are chosen by a professional jury.

Mobile Casino afloat on LSE

September 4th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Companies & M&A | No Comments »

Mobile gambling technology company Probability Games (founded in 2003) has been successfully floated on the London Stock Exchange last week. Probability Games is the first mobile gambling company to hit the LSE. They raised GBP 4.1 million at 76p per share. Their stock symbol is PBTY.

Sennari and Hasbro into skill-with-prize games

September 4th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Brand Licensing | No Comments »

Sennari has signed an agreement with Hasbro to bring some of their titles to mobile on the skill-with-prize platform. The platform allows users to collect points which they can trade in for downloads or real items. The games will support product catalogues. The first titles to be released are Monopoly, Battleship and Clue.

“Partnering with Hasbro to deliver some of the best known brands in family entertainment on mobile phones will take skill-with-prize mobile gaming to the next level,” said Bill Barhydt, CEO of Sennari. “Our expertise in developing and distributing prize-based games and CRM applications for mobile phones makes this a compelling opportunity for companies, like Hasbro, that want to reach new audiences.”

“Together, with Sennari and their gaming and distribution partners, we will make these classic titles available to loyal fans of Hasbro’s games, as well as to a new generation of mobile phone users,” said Jane Ritson-Parsons, president of Hasbro Properties Group. “The ability to turn our popular games into mobile games with prizes generates a whole new level of excitement and opportunity for the company. PrizePlay games represents one of the most compelling ways to take advantage of new technology and to promote our games worldwide, that we’ve seen.”

Karl Woods: Think of it like the crack cocaine model

September 4th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Analysis & Editorial | No Comments »

MobileIndustry.biz has posted their part 2 of the interview with Karl Woods from Kiloo. Karl and Paul go into a deeper discussion on new ways to bring games to the public and activate the 90% of non-downloader’s. Now I am sure that my granny who owns a K700i, will never download a game, but as Karl said, there are plenty possibilities to grow the market with new ideas.

Jamdat’s main 3 to leave

September 4th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in People | No Comments »

Moconews reports that all three co-founders of Jamdat (now EA Mobile) are leaving the company. Scott Lahman, Zack Norman and Austin Murray already left. Mitch Lasky, former CEO of Jamdat, now CEO of EA Mobile will stay however. The news is not official yet, but knowing MoCoNews, it will soon.

Company Spotlight #1: Codeglue

September 1st, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Interviews | 1 Comment »

Welcome to our first company spotlight. We will try to highlight an innovative mobile games developer every month. This month we kicked off with Codeglue. Codeglue is a company based in Holland and has a focus on developing games for publishers like iFone (Glu). We spoke to their CEO Peter de Jong.

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Upstart sold to China

September 1st, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Companies & M&A | No Comments »

Irish based developer Upstart Games has been acquired by China’s second largest privately owned media company Sun TV Shops. Under the terms of the acquisition, Upstart will be fully owned by Sun Media Investment Holdings. Though initial plans where to start a VC between upstart and STVS, Upstart will now be used by STVS as a distribution arm into Europe.

"We’ve been working with Sun TV trying to extend our distribution into the Chinese market," O’Neill told ENN. "When we started working closer with them, we saw the library of media assets which they control and saw that it could be of benefit to form close links with the company.” said Brian O’Neill, "We have developed a number of tools and technologies which are primarily used in games but can actually be very easily applied to other content. What the deal means for us is that we can now extend our content offering. This doesn’t mean that we’re giving up games because that’s obviously our core business but it means that we’re branching out into other areas."

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