Mobile gaming is getting big, with subsequent consequences and repercussions. One is that it is a lot harder to get onto the carrier decks — the article give access to Jamdat’s carrier relationships as one reason why EA bought the mobile game giant. There’s still hope for the little players though…”I think there’s still room for smaller developers to bring innovation to the industry. Not if all they have is another version of solitaire or another bowling game. But if it’s really innovative, they will find a publisher to take their product to market,” said Eric Albert, head of GameLoft North America.
Mike Yuen, senior director of Qualcomm’s Gaming Group in San Diego, said that “cross-platform design” is another reason EA bought Jamdat. “That doesn’t mean just taking EA’s ‘Madden NFL 06′ and making a mobile version of it. I think there’s going to be a much deeper integration … perhaps giving gamers the ability to transfer a player from ‘Madden’ on their PC or console to their cell phone, enabling them to do some drills to perhaps improve the player’s skills and boost his scoring accuracy by, say, 3%, and then return the player to the PC or console game with better stats. I think that kind of cross-platform interaction is going to be key to videogaming’s success in the near future.” I would hope so — it’s one of the best uses of mobile gaming and something that pretty much no-one is doing at the moment…which leads back into competition.
If you’re making a mobile game as part of a successful game franchise (rather than just selling a stripped down version of the popular game) then you don’t need to get it onto carriers decks. If Blizzard made a mobile game that allowed people to train their characters for World of Warcraft do you think it would need to get the game on carriers’ portals? Of course not, it just needs to put up a note on the game site and have an instant hit. People would download it over WAP or figure out how to transfer it from their computer or whatever else it took. If they tried to replicate World of Warcraft for mobiles they would fail, and they would need carrier placement and a strong advertising campaign. So why are so many companies ignoring the low-hanging fruit? C’mon guys…it’s low-hanging because it’s big and juicy…
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