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"

Comments

Have you seen some of the game offerings?

[Alpha27]

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.

Re:market saturated at 3% (or close)

[fistfullast33l]

I completely agree. I am a Verizon subscriber (commence hate posts) and I refuse to have anything to do with their download network at $4 a pop for stuff like ringtones, games, and whatever. Plus, they charge you airtime during the day so you end up getting screwed coming and going. Until the price of content decreases somewhat ($15 a month for their music service plus $4 a song is insane) I am not going to even think about using it. Of course, Verizon takes the tactic of removing any game from your phone, essentially forcing you to buy if you want any.

However, they have great service when it comes to their network (free calls to any Verizon Wireless subscriber) and I have very few complaints about service outage and dropped calls. My parents, brother, and fiance are on Verizon and since they're really the only people I call a lot, I rarely go over the 400 minutes a month I pay for.

Until the price of content goes down, it'll be the lowest priority on my list when it comes to cellphone costs.

Yes you do.

[fondue]

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...

And now, a different perspective...

[ilyaaohell]

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.