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Cellphone Gaming Market Lacks Pull
The Washington Post reports that, despite the best wishes of executives, the cellphone market has not yet taken off the way companies like Jamdat may have hoped for. From the article: "McAteer said the phone interface that consumers access when downloading games -- which usually lists only game titles -- is one of the biggest reasons behind the slow growth. As a result, the games that tend to sell best are those with instant name recognition among consumers, such as Pac-Man or Tetris"
I've got news for the game makers for the cell phone industry. Your market is probably close to saturated at 3%. Playing games on cell phones is a diversion, not an avocation. Users and potential buyers of games comprise a tiny fraction of the cell-phone audience. Almost any game at all, especially simple ones, will do to kill that 10 minutes wait at the train station. Anything more than a click away to add to the existing suite of games with the phone is no temptation.
I think the cell phone industry greatly overestimates any appetite for the cell phone to be the ultimate phone, pda, gaming machine, pc, soda fountain, reference, ad nauseum. Our wallets are finite (well, mine is), and we're not going to pay and spend time managing a suite of games to play on a cell phone where
Maybe the strategy is to find the endpoint of the consuming public's collective appetite for pay-for gaming on cell phones. I think they're close.
Could it possibly be because, when you 'buy' a game, you don't get it forever at that price? You're just leasing it in x-month intervals that automatically renew and you keep getting charged.
IF you have money to buy cell games, you also have money for a "real" portable game console.
IF you can have a real game console, why bother playing on something that can, at best, recreate the experience of a C64?
Seriously, I was pondering getting into the cell game market. But the devices simply don't have the necessary hardware to create current game. A halfway decent game fills your available memory, you have a display the size of a stamp and a resolution that makes you wonder if that what you're shooting at is supposed to be a plane or a donkey.
Now add that half of the games won't work on YOUR cellphone, and if, your display will probably not match the one the programmer used (i.e. you'll either be missing some vital information which gets cut off or you have some black bars), i.e. a lack of interface standards to work with, add that more often than not the programmers used to create those games aren't quite the creme of game creators (most cell games are hacked together by recently graduated students, it's for most their first job ever) and you have a clean picture why the market doesn't take off:
After the first game, you never buy one again.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
A friend of mine has the razr, and he has Star Wars Battlefront on it. I'm thinking nice, but... what exactly am I going to play on a phone for a game like that.
It was worse than I imagined. You used your arrow keys to move the crosshair to shot enemies that popped up like a cheesy carnival game. Absolutely horrible.
I remember the days when a cellphone was just a cellphone.
It's not the format for buying games that keeps me from buying games on my cell phone. It's three things:
1) Battery life. I'm not going to waste charge on gaming. I need my cell phone too much, and spend too much time without access to a charger.
2) Cost. Considering that my Verizon game service charges something like $6-8 per game, why would I bother? Chances are I'll feel like I wasted that money -- I have better gaming experiences with stuff we wrote in BASIC and Pascal in grade school.
3) Suckage. Besides the fact that so many games available for cell phones suck, the phone itself sucks for gaming. From screen size to processor speed to control issues, a cell phone is a sub-par mobile gaming device. If I'm going to spend $400 on a phone that handles games well, I'd just as soon buy a PSP or a DS, thank you.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Or, maybe, developers are missing their mark. Some of the games are simply too complex to be fully enjoyed in a cell phone, particularly with the often whacky control layouts. I have Call of Duty on my Motorola V262, and it's a pain to play. The controls are cramped, and its just too complex to be easily enjoyed on a cell phone. Dodging bullets and shooting bad guys just wasn't meant to be on a cell phone.
That's the reason, IMO, that Pac-Man and Tetris do so well. The controls are easy, straight forward, and the games are easy to get a hold on. Let's keep in mind that the average cell phone user probably isn't a gamer, and is looking for an easy-to-play distraction in a game on the cell phone. They don't want something complex. Pac-Man requires use of the little D-Pad (at least on my phone), and that's it. Tetris works with the D-Pad and OK button. Easy! Enjoyable! Sold!
Cell phone developers should look at ways to take games, simplify them to work on the control layouts available for cell phones, and keep things simple. Of course, the people interested in games on cell phones will primarily be gamers, but cell phones just can't handle complex games, and they really shouldn't try to port games like CoD, Splinter Cell, or any of the other kinds. Keep it simple. I'm sure some people would even enjoy Pong, or a simplified top-down shooter like 1942. I would certainly buy one of those games. In short, cell phone developers should K.I.S.S.
That market won't take off because gaming is the wrong application for cell phones.
Phones are mainly aimed to personal mobile communication.
Even the camera and the limited PIM features are used very rarely and usually only if there's no other option.
We all hope that manufacturer will focus on better communication features, capabilities and performances instead of wondering about stupid questions!
Mobile gaming can be accomplished with, say, a PSP. And if you need multi plyer gaming, link it to your mobile phone!
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
Other reasons why cell-phone gaming sucks:
* A cell phone has a lousy interface for gaming.
* The LCD screens on most phones have horribly high latency, making action games hard to play.
* The low horsepower of most phones prevent development of complex games.
I admit, I used to be big on cell phone games when I got my first phone that supported them. But after getting burned with a half-dozen asstastic titles, I realized that a PDA or a Gameboy would be far better for gaming, and broke the habit. The only person in our home who plays cell phone games these days is my son, and even he's tired of the simplistic action and other shortcomings.
--R.J.
Electric-Escape.net
Perhaps instead of trying to import complex games to the cellphone, which at best is only frustrating, the game developers should try a different approach. Simple games that you compete against other people in real time. COmpetitive Tetris, baseball, etc. Most cellphone games that I've quit, have had annoying interfaces, the ones that I've kept have been simple - Solitaire, freecell, block pushing games. Real time shooters just won't appeal to me - maybe a MUD might be a better approach.
..........FULL STOP.
Many providers/vendors offer games for a one off payment that you then own forever.
The fact that you typically can't transfer the games to your new handset if/when you upgrade is another matter...
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Once you have the cell phone version of tetris and break out. Those are the only two you need.
The only time I find myself playing cell phone games is when I am waiting in a lobby, waiting on someone, or just need to kill time if I arrive for an appointment early.
If I fly or go on a road trip, I'm probaly going to bring the DS though and won't think twice about opening the cell phone to kill time.
My cell phone is just clunky and slow for anything advances like a Gameboy.
One of my earlier cell phones had a copy cat of Nethack. It was kind of fun, but I wouldn't pay $3.00, but since it came with the phone... Might as well play it.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
How hard would it be to have trial versions that only give you a couple of levels or that expire after a few days?
Expand on games that already exist! For instance, all the cool stuff added to tetris DS, that could probably in one form or another be added to the cellphone version of it, use the known brand names to sell new products. You might get hit with a few fees for lisencing, but you'd probably market alot more that way. Don't go crazy tho, don't sell Pac Man Chess or anything like that. Also, keep the games simple, one of the best selling series of PC games are the simple shockwave games. If you try to make complex games for phones, no one will buy them. There are several big neat games for my ppc phone, but I stick to the card game suites, and puzzle games. I don't want to have to save my game every few minutes because I have to move, and then pick it up again.
I am full of goo... black evil goo
Plus who is writing the descriptions for these games? They tell you almost nothing about them, and since the trial version is usually $2 to $4 it's a pretty big expense just to see if you even like the game. A screenshot at the very least would be extremely helpful, but perhaps a 5 second demo clip, or even a [gasp!] free 10 minute trial would entice people to buy more games since it wouldn't be such a shot in the dark.
Also I don't know about what other carriers offer but I just don't understand how the widely popular PopCap games aren't offered. I believe they license to Microsoft, but either way someone is missing out on a lucrative phone game market on that end. I think popcap games would be perfect for a phone - quick, colorful, insanely addictive, and completely a temporary distraction, easy to pick up and no need to desperately save your place.
Who knows? Maybe all of those games and more ARE available right now, but I'll never know because I'm never going to pay $4 just to find out if SuperUltraMegaShapeBlaster is something I'd like to play.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
You are obviously young and inexperienced. Frogger is by far the best game for mobile phones,
However, you look at it, a cell phone with the compuing power and graphics capability of a 1980s computer is probably only suitable for running the kind of games that were designed and developed on computers with similar power and graphics. And they have almost all been done, and are available for free. But let me know if I can get the "Leasure suit Larry" series to run on a Motorola V3x - I _might_ pay EUR5 for each one. I am pretty sure we played them in 320x240 with 16 colours No, not 16 bit colour - that is 16 colours - ie 4-bits !?!
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Dude, I said the exact same thing three months ago.
> the cellphone market has not yet taken off the way
> companies like Jamdat may have hoped for
I can't imagine why paying $3.99 to download a game that looks like something from the Atari 2600 days and plays on a tiny little screen with clumsy buttons, that self-destructs after one month, where I'd have to pay another $3.99 to get it again.
Nope, I can't see anything in any of those issues that might be harming the spread of the concept.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
In the information age, people making game purchasing decisions where they are actually expected to pay money (and $5 is not insignificant) expect to have reviews, screenshots, possibly even videos at their fingertips to educate them before they make their purchasing decision.
Of course I'm sure the cell companies are reluctant to supply that otherwise everybody would know what utter crap 99.9% of those games are.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
If memory serves Lesuire suit larry had a text based command input system. It might be able to be ported to a PDA with a keyboard but not a cell phone.
You had to tell Larry what to do. Open Door, walk left, Screw the hooker, put ice on your face, pay cabbie.
Of course I was 12 at that time and I didn't play those kinds of games, or hid them on my fathers computer where he couldn't find them. I didn't have specially designed boot disks to load up specfic games with advanced memory requirements.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
I work for one of the top cellphone game developers, and I have a different perspective on this than you guys. It's amazing how many nay-sayers there are here, despite the fact that the cellphone gaming market is one of the most fastest-growing gaming industries today. My company, for example, has operated for several years and in just the last year had increased their profits by several hundred percent. In just the first quarter of THIS year, we've just announced that our revenue is up by another 50%, and right now the sky's the limit.
Yes, many games aren't ideally suited for the cell phone's controls, but considering that many of our games are 3D and have the graphical levels equivalent to a PS1, to say that the games look like "Atari" or whatever some of you guys have been saying is ridiculous. All I'm saying is that citing technical limitations when commenting against the cell phone game industry is ridiculous and shows just how out of touch you are with the technology that is already out there and owned by millions of people RIGHT NOW. Just because you or your friends are stuck with something like a Samsung A620 or an old Razr model doesn't mean that many other people own better devices.
The days of slowly-refreshing LCD displays and pitiful resolutions are over. Yes, those phones still come out, and they're given out like candy to the lowest-paying customers, but many people already have extremely high-performing phones (LG 8100 is one of my favorites). The resolution is very high (considering the size of the screen) and with recent announcements by some graphics hardware manufacturers of increasing their cell phone presense, expect cell phones to become exponentially more powerful in the very near future.
As far as controls go, we're now seeing ergonomically-designed phones like the LG 9800 (look this beauty up) that are the size of normal phones but, when flipped open, have a full QWERTY keyboard and directional pads that work great for gaming. The number of models that work like this is, again, going to increase, just like the hardware performance has been increasing at an astronomical pace in just the last 3 years. So yes, maybe some games aren't suited for SOME current phone models yet, but there are already devices out there that ARE, and the number of these models will only increase.
Now, I grant you that the pricing scheme of "renting" games, and the fact that cell phone carriers do a piss-poor job of marketing the content, stands in the way of wider availability. But to say that there's no market out there (when it's growth has yet to slow down) or that the games suck (read the reviews, many of these games are critically-acclaimed), or that the hardware isn't suited for gaming (look at all the MODERN phones coming out now, and all the phones that will be out in a year or two) is RIDICULOUS and shows nothing but ignorance on your part.
Mobile gaming isn't for everyone, and the best sellers will likely always be quick puzzle games and 2D platformers, but that doesn't mean that millions of people don't want to buy them (they do, and more will in the future), or that these games can't be wonderfully-designed, or that they all have to look like Pong.
UNIX: A computer user is defined as a programmer. WINDOWS: A computer user is defined as a consumer.
No shit.
Who wants to play games on a small, crappy screen with small, crappy, hard buttons
There's really some good cell phone games. My Sanyo 8300 has some 3D games for it that look and play good, a Zelda clone that's good, etc. They won't replace a handheld gaming system but they have come a long way from the old days of cell phone games. I use my phone most for reading ebooks and GPS navigation.
If you just take the free phones your provider offers, then games won't be that great. But if you get a decent phone and have a decent provider there are plenty of free games. There are ports of Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, and Frozen Bubble. There are also free or cheap emulators for the Genesis, the NES, and the SNES.
IF you can have a real game console, why bother playing on something that can, at best, recreate the experience of a C64?
Because if you have an unlocked system, you can legitimately play independently developed freeware on it. Many phones and handheld video game systems use the lockout chip business model, but phones are less likely to be locked than Nintendo or Sony handheld video game systems. Many people who post to Slashdot prefer to buy a phone on the open market which has not been locked, get the cheapest subsidized GSM phone that the phone company offers, move its SIM card to the unlocked phone, and then play free games on the unlocked phone.
In order to run freeware on a handheld video game system, you need to buy special hardware to join the "homebrew scene", which may not be legal in some jurisdictions due to side effects of copyright and patent legislation. As of this writing, such hardware costs roughly $70 for a Game Boy Advance or $120 for a Nintendo DS. Sony's latest PSP firmware is entirely uncracked. The only handheld video game system that comes unlocked out of the box is the GP2X, and that isn't sold in brick-and-mortar stores in North America.