Are Mobile Carriers Slowing Down The Mobile Games Market?

Thanks to Water Cooler Games for its discussion on whether the U.S. mobile carriers' business practices are slowing down the growth of phone gaming. The author discusses a myriad of problems with upgrading his phone through his current carrier within an existing service contract, agreeing: "I understand that the carriers subsidize handset purchases as loss-leaders for service revenue", but going on to argue: "So, why is this a problem for mobile gaming? Because mobile gaming is still undergoing significant growth at the technology base. I can't run Symbian apps on my 6610. I can't run Series 60 apps. I simply need a new phone if I want to get serious about mobile gaming." Are these types of problems the ones stopping mobile phone gaming from taking off in the States?

Comments

The biggest threat to US mobile gaming

[E_elven]

The biggest threat to US mobile gaming is I smacking the mobile gamer on the head for being an idiot. Get a goddamn handheld game and keep it separate from your phone. You know why? Because you end up paying more if you don't. And more importantly, I end up paying more for my just-for-telephone-calls phone.

What about Bluetooth?

[Anonymous Coward]

Phones don't need games - they need Bluetooth.

This way the phone can stick to doing what it does best - as a god-damned communications device. I'm probably going to be dropping SprintPCS in a few months because they have no phones with Bluetooth support. And I'm starting to gradually collect Bluetooth devices that do support it. My notebook computer has it built-in and the next generation of portable game machines (Nintendo DS, Sony PSP) are likely to have Bluetooth support - as PDAs have had for a while now.

I'd upgrade to a new Sprint phone with all the fancy features and probably with the ability to play games simply if it had Bluetooth support. But instead, I'm going to jump networks to one that's sane.

Why Mobile Games aren't Taking Off

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

- The GBA is $99. It has a large screen, game-optimized platform (sprite processing, etc.), and good battery life.
- A good mobile phone (Nokia 3660 - Series 60) runs that much, but you have to sign up for a year of wireless service.
- There's no standardized platform. Different CPU speeds, different resolutions, different controls.
- There's no easy, standard way to get a lot of data quickly. A GBA cart can hold 256Mb (32MB). Try downloading *that* over GPRS.
- Many phones are seriously short on memory.
- Many phones are slow.
- Many phones don't have stereo sound.
- Most phones have an (evil) portrait LCD orientation.
- The GBA has tons of great games.

It's not the carriers. I can walk into the T-Mobile store and buy a 3660 right now for $99. It is a Series 60 phone with lots of memory, a big screen, a fast processor and an SD card slot.

It's the games, stupid! You can't get Mario Kart for a mobile phone. Nor can you pick up the excellent "Kirby's Block Ball" for $5 at the local used games store.

Re:Cry me a river

[Kris_J]

Let's see; you can't easily switch providers because they all use different technologies, if you move outside the area where you bought your phone you can't get a service either because the standards are different or there's no roaming agreement with the service provider in that area.

If our infastructure is so "poor", then why does 50% of the nation have wireless service?

That's a pretty poor coverage rate.

I don't know why you're so defensive. US mobile phone service is simply lagging behind many western (and eastern) countries because that's the way things happened this time. You can't be the world leader in everything.