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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?
we have dedicated systems for on the go gaming. And a cellphone pad makes a really lousy conroller for the most part my phone came with some games and they a pain in the ass to control.
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?
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
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.
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
It was a little while back but Docomo brought out the new 3G phones (FOMA 900) and one of the models came pre-installed with Final Fantasy. For the price of $150 give or take it is a pretty good deal.
Havin' it large, livin' the life, Welcome to the land of the rising sun.
- 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.
If you are on Verizon Wireless, the largest US carrier with around 35m subscribers you can see further examples of stupidity. They have a fantastic infrastructure and you can do data at 150kbps (max, typical is 70-115kps, I always have 115). They will be rolling out EVDO later this year which maxes at 3MBPS, typical speed of 500kbps.
On their phones they chose to do Brew which is a binary based environment. You compile up your C/C++ apps against the API and they will run on any Brew phone (in theory). However Qualcomm, the purveyor of Brew, decided they didn't want just anyone to write Brew apps. You have to get a dev kit from them (with a license that makes Microsoft look like good guys), you have to have the app certified, and you have to have it approved by the carrier. Finally it gets distributed by the carrier for a fee to subscribers - the carrier gets 10%, Qualcomm gets 10% and the developer gets 80%. You cannot make free applications for this platform - it costs around $6000 a year just to have an app and they can only be distributed by the carrier.
And of course binaries are not portable between phones even if that is the intention as there are enough phone specific differences and quirks.
So as a customer you can download apps really quickly (just a few seconds), but you get to pay $3 to $5 per month to subscribe to each app, or you can buy them outright for $8 to $10 each. Most do not have free previews, and those that do are largely terrible. I assume the rest are just as bad as their descriptions are useless. The games are also tied to your phone. If you get a new phone you cannot transfer them, you have to buy them all again.
It is a shame to see so much potential wasted just because the carrier and their technology provider decided to erect barriers and impose such ridiculous costs when they have such a lead in network infrastructure.
Colin Fahey has an excellent page about J2ME vs Brew and how restrictive all the carriers are.
Just to give you an idea, here are some of the items showing up when I browse. Note that none of them have a free preview so you have no idea what they actually do without paying.
Maybe the games aren't just "furtive" enough?
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.
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?
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