i-Play has released the results of a survey into the barriers for people downloading mobile games onto their handsets. The survey — carried out by SKOPOS — covered more than 2,500 respondents across the US, UK, Italy, Spain and Germany. The main result is that most people don’t know how to download a game to their handsets, and about a third don’t know whether their handsets can play games. The problems cited by respondents include the number of clicks needed to access content and downloads being saved on a handset in a place where consumers are unlikely to find it. Plus my personal favorite, the appearence of “confusing messages such as ‘source unknown, continue?’ prior to downloading games on some handsets and networks”.
The survey found that people would be more encouraged to download games if they were cheaper (51%), if they have free trials available (49%), and if they had been recommended by a friend (30%).
It was also suggested that being able to download games from the web and transfer them to the handset would get more people using games, which makes a lot of sense. As the capabilities of mobile handsets improve, the size of the games will get bigger and download charges could become a serious burden.
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