: Nikhil Hutheesing, Forbes Wireless Stock watch profiles Jamdat Mobile, one of the leading mobile gaming company.
Because it's all wireless, Jamdat doesn't have the typical distribution complexities and costs, such as physically producing games, packaging them, shipping them, handling returns and managing inventory. Jamdat's customers download the games to their mobile phones through their carrier. (If your would like to preview the games Jamdat offers for your cell phone, go to its Web site.) Verizon Wireless, for example, offers the Get It Now service, while Sprint PCS provides Vision and Vodafone offers the game through its service, Live!
Customers are charged a fee for the applications, (a game typically costs $4.00 to $7.50 to buy or $1.50 to $3 per month for a subscription) which appears on their mobile phone bills. The revenue is then shared, according to agreement, between the carrier and Jamdat.
Today, about 78% of Jamdat's revenue come from U.S. subscribers--mostly from Verizon Wireless, which accounts for 40% of revenue and Sprint, which accounts for about 18% of revenue. Others, such Cingular and T-Mobile, have not been aggressively marketing data applications, but are likely to do so this year, providing an opportunity for Jamdat.
: E-Plus adds In-Fusio’s i-mode games to its portal
: Are UK consumers are not interested in 3D and over-the-air multiplayer games? So what games are popular? More here.
…a year after the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (Elspa) began its monthly Java game chart - based on download data from major network portals, including Vodafone live! and the O2 Games Arcade - it is clear that consumers remain conservative and cautious about this new platform.
Brian Baglow, owner of mobile games PR firm Indoctrimat, studied the Elspa charts and presented his findings to the annual Osney Media Mobile Games Forum in London. "What they show is very interesting," he says. "Retro games are by far the most popular titles on the UK market to date, followed by sports titles. Movie-branded games are languishing ... The only game in this category to appear in the charts was 2 Fast 2 Furious from Morpheme. A couple of titles from major movie brands have been awful and so consumers seem to regard them all with suspicion."
So the focus has subtly shifted, with a renewed emphasis on producing simple, but highly polished, titles. Macrospace's Who Wants To Be A Millionaire quiz title has been a huge success, and there is an influx of card sims on the way, such as Gameloft's Midnight Poker, Blackjack Hustler and Player One's Pokermillion. Parlour-type games, such as Mforma's Monopoly Tycoon and Jamdat's Solitaire Deluxe, are also back in vogue.
: Overloaded and InsideGame survey 1000 hardcore gamers from the Netherlands and Belgium. Some of their findings:
20% of mobile phone gamers would be interested in a games subscription when offered by operators or portals. Next to that, mobile phone gamers are not frequent users of other mobile phone content; 58% indicated to never download ringtones and 79% indicated never to download wallpapers.
29% of hard-core gamers download games to their mobile phone on a regular basis
18% of mobile phone gamers are female
72% of mobile phone gamers are between 14 and 25 years old Mobile phone gamers prefer Nokia (41%) and SonyEricsson (17%) phones to play games
52% of mobile phone gamers uses a pre-paid phone
48% of hard-core mobile phone gamers indicated to download on average 1 game every month and 19% indicated to download on average 2 games per month
38% of hard-core mobile phone gamers indicate to download games based on reviews and recommendations from friends
: A look at the Mobile Gaming market in India
According to In-Stat/MDR, a US-based research agency, the wireless gaming market in India will grow to $26 million by 2005 and $336 million by 2009. India constitutes only 5 per cent of the global wireless gaming industry. However, it is poised for growth with GSM and CDMA operators clocking an average of 220,000 downloads per month.
Bharti Tele-Ventures group CMO & director (mobility) Atul Bindal said, “We offer a variety of content through the AirTel Live multi-access entertainment portal. Among the more downloaded content of 2004 are games like Spiderman and Van Helsing.” AirTel crossed the 5-million-GPRS-download mark in July 2004, five months since its launch. Reliance Infocomm, which offers a wide range of downloadable content on R-World, registers one million hits everyday for the 48 games on offer. Reliance had also set the ball rolling with its gaming contest in association with Microsoft.
India is expected to replicate the success of mobile gaming leaders Japan and Korea. The US is also a favoured destination for PC and console gaming. Additionally, with Samsung, Nokia and Sony Ericsson logging in to the gaming mode with game-specific handsets like the N-Gage, the industry is expected to gain momentum.
Jamdat, a US-based mobile gaming company, has recently started operations in Hyderabad. Jamdat Mobile (India) managing director Surya Pulagam said, “The market is still premature. However, with most carriers promoting gaming and a fast-growing cellular subscriber base, India could become a significant market for the global wireless gaming industry in the next five years.” Jamdat is already in the final stages of tying up with major carriers in India and plans to launch some of its games in the first quarter of 2005. “Around 90 games are currently on offer globally,” added Pulagam. “However, we want to enter the Indian market cautiously and slowly penetrate the game-user segment.”
This market has boosted the growth of an entire cycle of game publishers, developers, animators, musicians and content providers. Paradox, Tinfomobile, Gametrix, Dhruva Interactive, India Games and Mobile2Win create content for home and abroad.
: July System launches mobile game tournament on UK mobile content portal Jippii.
: According to Morgan O’Rahilly, CEO of iFone, Console branded mobile games has less mass-market appeal for consumers.
: Airborne Entertainment announces exclusive partnership with Speed Channel to bring array of mobile content such as wall papers, videos, ringtones, games and applications to your phone. The company also has partnership with Maxim Magazine, Activision Value, Cosmopolitain and CosmoGirl, Buzztime, Snapple, Family Guy, Fox Filmed Entertainment, TV Guide, The NHL and MTV Europe.
: TheFeature on Casual Gaming
Casual games are a much better match with mobile phones: typefied by long but shallow learning curves ("a minute to learn, a lifetime to master"), they use easily understood or familiar concepts, and can fit around the lives of their players rather than imposing on them. They're popular precisely because they're the opposite of "immersive" -- their familiarity and non-threatening nature provides an opportunity for games companies to extend their audience out beyond the traditional gamer demographic, and encourage those furthest from the profile of "early adopter" to do more with their mobile.
You'll already be familiar with some forms of casual games: crosswords and puzzles. These are of educational value (for instance, crosswords build on universal language skills, developing vocabulary and spelling), generate revenues through repeated play and appeal to a broad cross-section of society. In the UK, 25 percent of the population plays a puzzle every day, so for many people they are already a part of everyday life. And there's no reason why these formats shouldn't be improved as they're translated to mobile: co-operative or competitive play, or games which determine the skill level of an individual player and continually give them puzzles designed to stretch their abilities to the limit, are all possible.
: Screen Digest has a good analysis on the rise of the Mobile gaming market and why mobile games are so popular in Japan and Korea compared to Europe and the US. Recommended reading.
: From
Adverblog: Nokia's N-Gage
Snakes Outbreak is extremely entertaining with a viral effect, allowing users to text the link to friends.