Cell Phone Games - Market or Mirage?

Rimbo writes "One popular view of the cellphone gaming industry is that it's the place where they exile people who couldn't cut it in the console and PC game industry. The other popular point of view is that with the huge volume of handsets everywhere, it's a market primed to explode. Today's Hit from the Wireless Pipe takes a look at some little-noticed details of the buyout that suggest that this is not the sign of the market maturing that many want it to be." Relatedly, that buyout was finally approved by the Jamdat Shareholders this past weekend.

Comments

Opinion

[AKAImBatman]

One popular view of the cellphone gaming industry is that it's the place where they exile people who couldn't cut it in the console and PC game industry.

Ouch, that's harsh. Did anyone ever consider that the skills necessary for phone programming are just different than the skills required for PC and console game programming? I mean, the latter categories have gobs of memory and CPU to play with. The former has to fit as much as possible in anywhere from 4 to 64 kilobytes. The gaming market hasn't seen requirements that harsh since Atari was king. (Even the NES regularly went beyond those limits.)

The other popular point of view is that with the huge volume of handsets everywhere, it's a market primed to explode.

Uhh, no. That view doesn't fly either.

Let me explain the market:

- Millions (billions?) of people have handsets.
- A large percentage of those have "downtime" that they want to fill with something interesting. (e.g. The bus, train, long car trips, etc.)
- To fill that downtime, a percentage of those people turn to quick games that they can play for a few minutes.

And that, my friends, is the market in a nutshell. The part that handheld game makers seem to keep missing is that players don't want immersive, long lasting gaming. They want to pull out Pacman, Solitare, Space Invaders, or some other quick game to pass the time. The moment that niche of time is completed, the game gets turned off. Thus the following information has been percolating to the market:

- "Classic" games sell best.
- Price points must be low because players don't want to spend much money to fill a little time.
- Consumers don't buy new handsets just for the games. They buy games for the handsets.

Or in other words, phone gaming is the ultimate in "Casual" gaming. (Please read up on what casual gaming is before you reply that you're a casual gamer. Thank you.) Anyone who bets their company on the idea that phone players want more than a casual gaming experience is bound to lose. Period, end of story.

Re:Opinion

[brkello]

I really don't see how you counter his argument. Sure, the skills are different. But simpler games can be made for this platform. If they can't keep up with the big dogs...why not try making games for cell phones. They are not trying to squeeze doom3 on to your cell, so it isn't so much an issue. Think games like pacman. People find (or found) it fun, addicting, and it isn't hard to keep it small even if you aren't very competant.

Your next argument is dumb. Let me explain how markets work. The potential market for cell phones are people who can hear, hold things to there ears, and are in range of the cellular providers. The potential market for cell phone games are people who own cell phones. Since this is a large number, it is an attractive market. No one is so stupid to think that everyone who has a cell phone will get a game.

Lockout on cell phones

[tepples]

[My phone] has 640x200x24 screen 200Mhz cpu, 32M SDRAM, 2G mmc capable storage with 90M flash built in and the ability to play ogg/aac/mp3 with high quality stereo. It already has SDL libraries and has doom and other major graphical platforming games ported.

So how did you convince your carrier to let you download programs to your phone instead of locking you into the limited selection of the carrier's online store? Or were you fortunate enough to have been born in Europe or east Asia instead of North America?

Lockout chip business model

[tepples]

I don't see any way that they're superior to the games kids write on their TI-83s when they get bored in high school.

I tried to make a Tetris clone on a TI-83 but it ran dog slow because of the limitations of the built-in programming language's interpreter.

Anyone who wanted a really good portable game would probably buy a handheld device made specifically for that.

Because of the lockout chip business model, there is no way to sell shareware or donation-supported free software for Nintendo or Sony handheld video game systems. Which device sold in the United States were you talking about?

Re:Let's relive the 80's

[DZign]

The number of people who are smart enough to download a game from a website and install it (through a specially bought bluetooth adaptor or cable to their pc) is very small.

The market of 'dumb' people who are just consumers and will pay to download a game is much, much bigger. Most of these games (together with ringtones, wallpapers, ..) are marketed through ads in magazines.

Cell phone games are definitely a business. I know someone who has a company doing it, he employs a few developers and it seems they're doing well (at least I think so, he just 'upgraded' his office and has a nice bmw x5..)