Opinions on The Future of Mobile

Gamasutra's usual weekly Q&A has industry responses about the future of mobile gaming. From the article: "The interesting thing about the prospects for cell phone gaming is that we as an industry do not yet exist in the hearts and minds of the consumer. When asked about mobile games, the average person on the street does not yet know they can play games on their phone, and the ones that do confess to playing 'a few card games or something like that'. There have been early successes and anomalous successes in mobile, but hardly anyone has done anything of sustainable consequence to the consumer, or the marketplace. -John Szeder, Mofactor, Inc"

Comments

Aware But Don't Care

[AcheronHades]

I know I may be the minority but I am very aware of they types of games that are available to me on my cell phone. I am just not interested. I am an avid gamer and have been for the past 15 years, but when I am at home I'd rather play my PS2 or XBox, and when I'm out, if I am by myself and bored, I'd sooner read a book or a newspaper than play a game on my cell phone. It may sound shallow but as a working professional, I think I'd actually be embaressed to whip out my Gameboy Advanced on my lunch break.

Re:Aware But Don't Care

[NanoGator]

Frankly, I wouldn't mind in the slightest if my cell phone offered a better gaming experience. Thing is, though, I'm not looking to replace my DS. Rather, my phone is with me at times when the rest of my toys aren't. Sometimes I find myself in a position with time to kill. It's for that reason I'm grateful that my phone has a net connection. Yeah, okay, it's not the same as a $4,000 laptop running a 10 gigabit internet connection, but it also doesn't cost me a ton of pocket space either.

That said, I at least agree that gaming isn't really the direction to go with these things. As much as I love for phones to 'do more', I wish they'd go in the PDA direction instead of the Game Boy direction. One of the things I loved about my 3650 is that it effectively killed my desire to use a PocketPC. More more more.

Not "if," but "when?"

[MiceHead]

We used to develop primarily for PDAs during the dot-com era, and judging from how enthusiastic PDA owners were about their gaming fix, I believe that mobile (cellphone) gaming will take up where the PDAs left off. The only question I have is, "when?"

• Will it take that killer game to bring awareness to millions who already own phones more powerful than early personal computers?
• Will it be a killer non-game application, like when soccer moms can browse the Web and message their kids wthout hvng 2 tlk lke ths lol, followed by a realization that, "hey, this thing can play games!"? Soccer moms like to play video games too -- it's that whole casual games nut that industry folk are currently trying to crack.
• Or when there's more convergence between desktop/laptop/mobile systems? Laptops used to be poor substitutes for desktops, but they're pretty useful these days. Presumably tomorrow's pocket computers will be even cooler than today's.

I stopped developing for PDAs for the love of the larger games that could be written for desktop systems. Some smart folks will develop a decent games-accessible interface for mobile systems. So, what happens when we can start writing the big games for tiny systems?
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