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

Gaming mobile?

[Sneeka2]

I don't know about the States, but even though here in Europe people do have phones they could play games on, I hardly know anybody that does so. Say you enjoyed Tony Hawks on your [PS2/XBox/PC/whatever], then you'll most likely go rolling on the floor laughing when you see the phone version...

Are there any games that are worth buying an expensive phone for?

That's one reason...

[idiot900]

Here are some reasons why mobile gaming hasn't taken off yet in the US. I speak from experience with my Sony-Ericsson T610 with T-Mobile service with unlimited GPRS data. It's not a smartphone, but it does have a Java VM and Mophun support.

• Phone hardware not optimized for gaming. Lack of sprite/tile/3D hardware support. Keypad buttons specifically designed to be hard to press (to avoid inadvertent keypresses).
• Myriad different phones. This means two major games platforms, Mophun and Java, are based on slower interpreted bytecode. (On a real computer nowadays algorithmic design determines speed - i.e. an O(n) algorithm in Java will run significantly faster than an O(n^2) one in C - but phones are so slow that coding on the bare metal is justified.) This means that the same game must run on various different phones. Imagine how crappy GBA games would be if there were 20 different GBAs, all with different screen sizes and key layouts.
• Not enough memory on the phone to store many games. The 1MB flash RAM on my T610 would be plenty if it were dedicated to games but the phone's firmware keeps a bunch of crap in it too. And sometimes I use the shitty onboard camera because I forgot to bring a real one, so those pictures need to be stored.
• It's a pain to put games on the phone, which is pathetic when the device is specifically designed to download data off the air.
• Should be easy to pause and resume games without state loss - so you can take phone calls while playing, or stop playing when you reach your subway stop. This should be instantaneous.
• Don't even talk about WAP games. They suck - slow and hard to use.
• No hype machine in the press for phone games.
• I don't think the quality of the games themselves has much to do with it - hell, Mary Kate and Ashley games sell.

Re:That's one reason...

[Echnin]

BREW is a standard supporting C, C++ and Java. Supported by cheap phones here in Japan, and it's an American-developed standard, so you can get it in the US as well. There's also a content-delivery platform with a cathegorized, searchable catalog where you can buy and download games instantly. The free phone I've got has 2 MB allocated to applications, which I guess isn't that much. Also pauses and resumes instantly with the press of a butoon, though the state is erased if the phone is turned off. This is a Sony Ericsson, sold in Japan by au as A1402S. So some of the points you bring up are taken care of. I've noticed many of my friends with DoCoMo have the exact same version of Tetris as I do. The keypad still sucks, though.

Games difficult to get by design

[cgenman]

You forgot a major one, that games are difficult by design to get. Wireless carriers realize that their power is one of a gatekeeper, that their best interests are served if people are limited to a few high-priced games that they choose to sell, that way they can extract the maximum amount of money from both the customer and the developer. Compare this to the console model, where the console provider is best served as a bouncer, or the PC model where it is a free-for-all.

Phone game development most closely resembles Shareware on the PC, in that it takes place without the support and help of a publisher or 1st party advisors. But on the other hand, unlike Shareware, you need to go begging to the phone companies after the fact to get your title published. It's a feudal system, in other words. Someone wants you to commit to spending tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars and months of time, and once you are done will decide from on high if they approve or not.

You didn't think there was so few games available for your phone because they just weren't getting made, did you?