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Businesses Entertainment Games

Cell Phone Games - Market or Mirage? 82

Posted by Zonk from the big-market dept.
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.
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Cell Phone Games - Market or Mirage? More

Cell Phone Games - Market or Mirage?

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  • While games on cell phones are alright as timewasters, 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. Anyone who wanted a really good portable game would probably buy a handheld device made specifically for that. Why would anyone think that there would be a big market here? I'd expect some hobbyist developer communities, but people actually trying to make big money off of it?
    • Mine 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. This is not uncommon for newer phones, the 9300i which I believe is expected in about 2 months will be even more powerful, with 54M wifi, in only 11cm x 4cm x 1.8cm form factor, ssh (via putty) making it possibly the most useful device in the known universe

      • [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 Am

        • 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?

          If you have a decent provider, you can do all that. For example, I have T-Mobile and they didn't lock any functionality worth mentioning out of my phone. Motorola's website will provide you with the Java App Loader program, and a tool that activates

          • It's not even that much more expensive. In the case of T-Mobile, you basically get a $100 discount if you get a T-Mobile phone at the same time as a one-year contract for a plan that costs at least $40 a month, and a one-time autonomy tax of $100 isn't that much for most of us that lust after such gadgets.

            I just bought myself an unlocked Nokia 6682, available from as pedestrian a place as CompUSA for $400, which is at least as cheap as I could find it from online retailers where I would have had to wait fo
            • AFAIK you can't lock a phone to a network without the IMEI number and the subsidy code, so IMO that's a bullshit story. There's lots I don't know about cellphones, though. Also, last I looked, T-Mo offered the data-only plan for like $24.95/mo.

          • If you have a decent provider, you can do all that.

            Most mobile phone carriers in the United States are not decent, and if I want to sell to the customers that the article mentions, I have to deal with such carriers.

            Manufacturers do sell their phones on the open market.

            Not in brick-and-mortar retail stores in the United States.

            • Manufacturers do sell their phones on the open market.

              Not in brick-and-mortar retail stores in the United States.

              Depends on the phone. A lot of 'smartphones' are sold without contract if you poke around, I believe one of the responses to me talked about buying one at best buy. Also, there is this little thing called mail order - anyone who can actually afford one of these phones without the provider discount probably knows a thing or two about it.

        • Go GSM and get the phone you want and not the phone the carriers want you to have.

          I recon the first company to combine the coverage of a carrier like Verizon with no "feature locking" and an acceptable price tag will make a MINT.

          • Go GSM and get the phone you want

            If I want people other than myself to play the game that I develop, how can I convince potential customers to spend $200 or more to do this? A $10 game that requires a $200 phone is in effect a $210 game.

            • Except that phone is useful for more than just that one game and you can sell the game in Europe where everybody has at least GSM.

              • Except that phone is useful for more than just that one game

                Not if the user was satisfied with his or her previous phone, and not if the user is currently in a 24-month commitment with one of those cdma networks.

                and you can sell the game in Europe where everybody has at least GSM.

                But then I would have to pay people to translate the game into several languages of continental Europe.

                • You don't have to release it Europe-wide and many arcade-like games are released untranslated here, "Press Start" and "Game Over" aren't hard to understand even for people who don't speak English.

                  And hell, if you don't think a market would be significant (e.g. the US GSM phone market) then don't bother serving it.
        • I used centimetres, which indicates I'm not from North America, also the 9300i and in fact most smart phones are behind in N.A. compared to the rest of the world so that was the 2nd clue :)

          I was born in Britain, however the phone has 11meg wireless, USB (2 I think), bluetooth, IrDA, removable MMC card so obviously getting data on the phone isn't hard (well I say that, I don't(/won't) use MS Windows, so that made life especially hard*).

          It'll run any symbian binary, I've even hacked up one of my own, to use m

          • I used centimetres, which indicates I'm not from North America

            Doesn't Canada use centimetres too? Anyway, do you know of any solution to the problem of a developer's potential customers' phones being locked into carriers' own stores?

    • 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

      • well, the tetris clones all run fine when coded in ASM

        • You must have missed my other comment [slashdot.org] as to why assembly language does not count in the context of Pantero Blanco's comment. If you want to make a game in asm, you have to do so on your own time at home on a PC, not during slow time in class on the calculator's keypad.

  • Let's relive the 80's (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 88NoSoup4U88 ( 721233 ) on Monday February 13, 2006 @06:09PM (#14711829)
    From a gamedesigner's view I think the mobile platform makes it possible to relive the 80's: A game can once again be made by one person, or very small teams.
    With this, and the shorter development time, it makes it less risky to try out experimental concepts, and the limitations of the platform itself can also lead to some very original games: I've seen some great one/two button games out there, that are easy to be played on a mobile.
    • How much could someone make selling those, though? Especially when there are hobbyists cloning them and giving them away for free. As you said, development time is very short for simple games.
      • I've seen software around that enables you very easily to host your ringtones/mobile games from your own website, and sends it to them once they pay.

        As for how much you would be asking is totally your own decision: Yet another advantage of the platform.

        • Pretty much everyone's ecommerce modules these days support digital downloads. For instance I'm fiddling with drupal right now and there's an ecommerce module that has a whole bunch of payment modules (including paypal, which is what I'm using) and a bunch of product modules including digital downloads, subscriptions, et cetera. For Java/MIDP games, all you have to do is put together the JAR file, then make a corresponding JAD that points to it, and prevent people from making the download of the JAR until t
      • Uh, the same if not much more than people make from the whole ringtones rackett... huge market, almost non-existant developement time and costs compared to games for consoles, extremly accessible... so yeah, a good wad of cash or two.

      • Re:Let's relive the 80's (Score:4, Insightful)

        by DZign ( 200479 ) <averhe AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday February 14, 2006 @03:32AM (#14714317) Homepage
        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..)

    • Code signing? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by tepples ( 727027 )

      A game can once again be made by one person

      How is this feasible for hobbyists if the major carriers require that one have a code signing license from a CA trusted by the carrier in order to test a program, and such licenses cost at least $500 per year?

      • Re:Code signing? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by jonwil ( 467024 ) on Monday February 13, 2006 @08:10PM (#14712739)
        My Motorola e378i phone has no such requirements.
        I can make whatever java applets I like and download them to the phone (although being an i-mode phone, I have to write the applets with the DoJa SDK and put them on a web page somewhere instead of writing them with the normal SDK and uploading them with MIDWay)

        Even if you live in america, you can still get a phone (either one that doesnt require signing or one that can be modified to not require signing). Some carriers (generally GSM carriers) dont require signing. Plus, you can always buy an unlocked non-carrier GSM phone and a GSM sim cart from the carrier of your choice and use that. Or you can buy a phone (from a carrier or otherwise) and modify or replace the software (either hacking it to remove the signature check or replacing the whole phone software with something that doesnt check signatures). Motorolas are particularly good when it comes to modifications (I should know, I own one :)

        • Plus, you can always buy an unlocked non-carrier GSM phone

          How many Americans who would be considered part of the alleged market of people who might want to play games on mobile phones know that? If you already have a cellphone and a service contract, but you need to buy a $200 unlocked phone to play a given game, the $10 game you are buying now costs $210.

          • Well maybe those people are not part of the market then. There are plenty of people outside the US willing to pay for cell phone games.

            • There are plenty of people outside the US willing to pay for cell phone games.

              Enough to hire a translator to localize the game's text into each of several languages of East Asia and continental Europe?

              • Even if they were localized, it's not like these games are epic literary works. Most games' translatable text is pretty much "Move with directional keys, jump with "5" key. Collect gold, avoid bad guys" "Level complete" "Game over".

                And besides your point is moot anyway, since there are several companies making games for cell phones and apparently they're doing pretty well. There are literally dozens of downloadable games advertised in every gaming magazine and gossip rag where I live (Finland). I doubt they
      • A game can once again be made by one person

        How is this feasible for hobbyists if the major carriers require that one have a code signing license from a CA trusted by the carrier in order to test a program, and such licenses cost at least $500 per year?

        If you think that $500/year is a high startup cost for a business, then I just don't know what to tell you.

  • The only time I play cell phone games... (Score:5, Funny)

    by RingDev ( 879105 ) on Monday February 13, 2006 @06:12PM (#14711873) Homepage Journal
    is on the crapper.

    -Rick

  • Opinion (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) <akaimbatman@gmaiBLUEl.com minus berry> on Monday February 13, 2006 @06:13PM (#14711882) Homepage Journal
    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 (Score:2, Insightful)

      by brkello ( 642429 )
      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 pote
      • Sure, the skills are different. But simpler games can be made for this platform. Think games like pacman.

        1. Pacman was larger than 4K.

        2. If you think that fitting a full game in so little space is easy, then I invite you to try your hand at the Java 4K Contest [javaunlimited.net]. We'll see how you do. (Here's a hint: It's not easy. It takes an exceptional understanding of computer technology.)

        Your next argument is dumb.

        No sir, your argument is dumb. I never claimed it was a small market, but I did claim that only a percentag
      • I thing that for the incompetent developer (or not yet competent) it would be far easier to fall back on little java applet/flash game on the web than try the mobile phone.

        On PC, if you are lasy or simply learning you can bet that most user of your game will use IE on a Windows machine that display at least 800*600 and that you have enough horse power and memory not to worry too much ( ie if you test on a common machine you can be confident other will be able to play )

        That's not the case on a Mobile:
        Mobile
    • 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.)

      Yeah, or the Gameboy, which had 8k less than ten years ago, or the Gameboy Color, which had 32k less than 6 years ago. Don't pat them on the backs too hard; writing tetris in 64k just isn't very difficult.

      Oh, and by the way, cellular phones with more than 4 megabytes of RAM available to the application rea
  • on my Motorola A1000, that I bought from my provider during a sale for £1.

    I guess I got my value out of it, but the phone controls are inadequate for platform games. However they're good enough to play Heretic with, less fine tuning required I guess.

    For part time projects for programmers though, they're a great industry to get into. You don't have to learn complex 3D APIs, or spend months writing a bare game. You can do the bare game in a few evenings, create a few useful libraries for 2D gaming, writ
  • is it just me or does there not seem to be the delivery methods in place to facilitate such an "explosion" in the market? i used to use a contract phone, which was fine for getting games, if i wanted to wait ages while it downloaded. paying all the while not only for the game itself, but the connection time while it was downloading. i now use a prepay phone (i dont use the phone that much and the contract was just useless) and it seems my options are limited. the only way i know of to get games without a
  • IMO here are some good pocket PC games (I have a pocket PC phone, the samsung i730).

    Emulators:
    Morphgear (tg-16 module) for devil's crush pinball (highly recommended)
    PocketSNES: FF2+3
    PocketNES

    PocketPC Games:
    4 pinball
    Bounty Hunter pinball
    GameBox Classics and GameBox Gems
    Links
    Mummy Maze
    Age of Empires
    Skyforce
    Warfare Inc
    Zuma
    Baseball Addict
    Soccer Addict

    not on par with GBA games, but adequate and fun while you are waiting for anything, such as a passanger in a car, at a doctor's office, etc. I could bring my GBA w
  • 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.

    Tell that to John Romero.

  • When I worked for a mobile game company, I read the Jamdat S-1 (an SEC filing that goes with an IPO) because it was one of the few sources of hard numbers about the mobile game industry. I blogged my comments here: http://jamdats1blog.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]

    It comes down to that mobile games are a niche, but they are a niche in a stupendously huge market. Big enough that the first-tier mobile game publishers are on track to become as big as some console and PC game publishers.

    Nobody has broken out of the niche yet, b
  • Mirage.
  • Games I've got on my treo (purchased on sprint vision, autobilled to my phone bill)
    - Bejeweled
    - Pac man
    - Ace Poker
    - Galaga

    I paid 15-20 for each, and they're all worth it (Sprint gives you like $15 a month in vision credits to blow on shit like this). The games are fun time wasters, and equally important, a great icebreaker. See an attractive lady next to you who looks as bored as you do? Bring up pac man with all the sounds and music. It'll get a smile.

    On a more serious note, cell phone games are also

  • If you want to know anything more about the game, you're out six bucks. If you want to download a lot of games to find the gem, you're going to be dirt poor and playing a lot of crappy games.

    Now take a look at some of Jamdat's top sellers: Bejeweled, Tetris, Bowling, Solitaire, Doom RPG. All of them existing properties. All of them known games.

    Amen, it's a money sink. DO NOT buy the unlimted version (usually 3x monthly cost). You won't be playing it more than 3 months. On my current phone I tried "

    • You're correct that games that try to be console games will fail for current cell phones. As for a game that provides you with 10 hours of gameplay for $10, that's not a bad deal.

      Is Tetris worth a lot of money? It is if you figure out how many people worldwide have a cell-phone, how many of them play video games on it, how many of them are willing to pay a few dollars for it, and how many of them like Tetris. Each filter brings the number smaller, but you're starting with an enormous base. Worth $700
  • There are many things that are different in making a cell phone game from a pc game. As the article says there are many different types of handsets, made by many different companies, on different platforms, to different specifications. Every game that is made for the cell phone has to be ported to each phone that it wants to target and that is a huge task in itself since the cell phone market has no specifications that they all have to follow like the pc market. When it comes right down to it, it becomes

  • The market in Japan is huge (Score:3, Interesting)

    by KNicolson ( 147698 ) on Monday February 13, 2006 @06:40PM (#14712119) Homepage

    According to a survey I translated [whatjapanthinks.com] a couple of months back, in Japan amongst the people surveyed (who would tend to be heavy phone users, due to the survey methodology) almost 40% played games regularly, and amongst these gamers, over 40% paid to download games, and over 40% downloaded at least one game a month.

  • Really, where do we get the insistence that phones, a perfectly utilitarian item, need to incorporate video players (which they do really poorly), games (which they also don't do very well), web browsers (oh, the pain), cameras (OK in a pinch, but still inferior) and music players...?

    In the meantime I can't even make my Moto ring like a phone instead of playing some dreadful music.

    We're rapidly reaching the point where manufacturers and cellular providers have stopped considering whether your phone will act

    • In the meantime I can't even make my Moto ring like a phone instead of playing some dreadful music.

      If you don't have bluetooth, you need Motorola Mobile Phonetools (MPT) to load your own ringtones, which can start out as mp3, mid, or wav. They provide a tool that lets you take any of the above and clip a portion out of it. It will produce an mp3 or a shorter mid which you can upload to your phone.

      If you do have bluetooth, a $10 USB bluetooth module will let you drag content to and from your phone.

    • Tell that to all the people who can only get good service in all the places they go to on Verizon because the GSM carriers dont want to invest enough money to get the same coverage area as Verizon.

    • where do we get the insistence that phones, a perfectly utilitarian item, need to incorporate [...] games (which they also don't do very well)

      Because what other handheld video gaming device is there other than one designed to play only games approved by Nintendo and one designed to play only games approved by Sony? Other than phones, what handheld gaming device supports the shareware model?

      • You forgot the "sold in retail stores nationwide" qualifier you usually add so again the answer is Game Park (GP32, GP2X).

        • You forgot the "sold in retail stores nationwide" qualifier you usually add so again the answer is Game Park (GP32, GP2X).

          The point is that I don't want my customers to have to buy a $200 device, be it a mail-order GSM phone or a mail-order imported Korean game system, just to play my $10 game. One solution is to bring in economies of scale by teaming up with other developers so that we could offer several shareware titles for a given platform; how would I start to organize that?

          • Start talking with those developers? If they don't know what you're planning they're not going to help you with it obviously.

            Or make games for PDAs and smartphones (i.e. PocketPC or Palm OS, the platforms aren't as strange as cellphone Java)? That's open and profitable enough to keep quite a few devs alive.
    • Here's a hint for you: they already do those things way better than "not very well".

      The average cell phone, these days, is like a 1993 PC. Games from that time include Dune 2, Doom, Eye of the Beholder, etc.. Sure, they're not Half Life 2, but they're not Snakes or Pong either.

      And if you ever tried Opera Mobile, you'd be sold on mobile web browsing. Another hint: it's not like the WAP you've probably seen a couple of years ago (4 lines of text, no more).

    • I was annoyed by my silly "ring tones" also, and pretty much everyone elses out there. So I recorded a .wav of me saying "ring" in the dullest voice I could muster every three seconds or so and uploaded to my phone as an mp3. Take that The Man!
  • On one hand I have a perfect port of Castlevania {I} on my phone. On the other, I was playing Madden 06, and the Ref calls out a pass interferance call on .... A RUNNING PLAY!!!!

    Need for Speed Underground 2 is a decent port though.

    So, I think the differance really is in the attention to detail. It looks as good or better than many NES games though.

    Oh, the phone is a LG vx8100
  • ... such as Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune, you'd just about shit your pants. They're also cheap to produce. Take one coder, one designer, and one artist, give them two months, and they have another game. Keep that up and license some big names (as my earlier game show examples) and you have one winner after another.

    Another thing to keep in mind: this industry's bread & butter is idiots who keep paying for subscribed cell phone games long after their initial purchase. When a $3 charge is added to an
  • Trying to get a super fantastic MMOG onto a cell phone is probably a pipe dream with current technology but that doesn't mean one can't make cell phone games work.

    Considering how a cell phone has a different human interface than a PSP and a DS, creating a game that is fun to play *and* is sane to control is a challenge but it is possible. This means that games like Battlefield 2 are probably not the best to put on a cell phone. However something more akin to Rub Rabbits, Wario Ware, or even Puzzle Pirates
  • There's a few pretty good games for the cell phones. Fantasy Warrior is a nice Zelda style game with good graphics for a cell game. My mm-8300 is capable of putting out some decent 3D graphics as well.

  • The problem is standards (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The biggest problem with mobile games right now is the huge number of phones out there (we deal with over 100+ models), and the competing technologies (BREW vs. J2ME vs. Symbian), and the fact that no two phones seem to be quite perfectly compatible. Even when two phones do share the same "platform", there are enough selfish and short-sighted implementation details and limitations that they are effectively not compatible.

    This effectively makes mobile the worst of all worlds.

    "One man" 80s-style developm

  • I work for a mobile games company. I will tell you that the market is not a mirage.

    It's completely unsubstantiated to say that people in this industry are people who could not cut it in the console/PC world. Tell that to:
    * Trip Hawkins [forbes.com] (a founder of EA)
    * John Carmack [armadilloaerospace.com] (from Quake fame)
    * All the major publishers who release mobile games along with console counterparts (THQ [thqwireless.com], Electronic Arts [eamobile.com], Ubisoft [bbc.co.uk], etc).
    * All the major publishers who are re-releasing their famous console games (Konami [konamimo.com], Capcom [gamasutra.com], Namco [namcomobile.com],

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