Where is mobile gaming heading in a turbulent 2009? People's Daily Online headlines highlight China's mobile gaming market up by 62% in 2008. In contrast Jaakko Kaidesoja, head of Nokia's gaming operations predicts more gloom for the overall gaming market, referring to hiccups in Western Europe and North America [quoted in Helsinki, Reuters, October 2008].....so where is mobile gaming,....exactly?
Distribution – One of the challenges for mobile developer is how exactly to get your apps out there, how to raise awareness of your apps, how to engage with carriers? What best practices can anyone out there share from their own experience? Are there carriers reading this that are wondering where to find the next generation apps?
Pros & Cons of Application Stores – in the iPhone app store, initial uptake of mobile games was phenomenal. Now, the market is saturated and so many vendors have been undercutting one another that it’s near impossible to get traction unless you sell the game for $0.99 or free. How do you deal with this battle for the bottom? How do you still make quality games when the margins are so small?
According to Gamasutra in the iPast, many games started life at $9.99 but quickly retreated to $0.99 territory. Revenue per unit sold is very low, and this could potentially create a glass ceiling for content quality. What are your thoughts? Can you see any cracks in this ceiling? Another good point raised by Gamasutra is will it be profitable for larger publishers to support the iPlatform at $9.99, or will they need more money to support the iPlatform in addition to the DS and PSP platforms?
Multiple skews and a fractured market – how do you handle making so many different versions of your app for so many different devices running so many different platforms(BlackBerry OS, Palm OS, Palm Pre, Windows Mobile, Android, Symbian, iPhone, etc)? If you’ve got 20 games, supporting 20 devices, and 5 languages, that’s 20 x 20 x 5 = 2000 skews. Yikes??
Cost of development – developing for high definition 3D consoles like Xbox 360 and PS3 is becoming so expensive that many developers are finding it impossible to even enter the marketplace. Mobile gaming presents a nice alternative since mobile devices today are roughly comparable to the consoles of 10 years ago like the PlayStation 1 and Super Nintendo (some of the more advanced mobile devices are about on par with PlayStation 2 and Nintendo 64). The result is that development shops can re-use a lot of the work they’d done 5-10 years ago, giving new life to old games and getting more bang for the buck on those R&D dollars. What's your experience?
Links:
Interview with head of Nokia’s Gaming operations 29 Oct. 2008. Sees no growth in overall gaming market (though certain areas e.g. N-Gage and iPhone will grow):
GamaSutra feature on developing games for the iPhone and iPod Touch.
2009 Predictions for mobile gaming
Distribution – One of the challenges for mobile developer is how exactly to get your apps out there, how to raise awareness of your apps, how to engage with carriers? What best practices can anyone out there share from their own experience? Are there carriers reading this that are wondering where to find the next generation apps?
Pros & Cons of Application Stores – in the iPhone app store, initial uptake of mobile games was phenomenal. Now, the market is saturated and so many vendors have been undercutting one another that it’s near impossible to get traction unless you sell the game for $0.99 or free. How do you deal with this battle for the bottom? How do you still make quality games when the margins are so small?
According to Gamasutra in the iPast, many games started life at $9.99 but quickly retreated to $0.99 territory. Revenue per unit sold is very low, and this could potentially create a glass ceiling for content quality. What are your thoughts? Can you see any cracks in this ceiling? Another good point raised by Gamasutra is will it be profitable for larger publishers to support the iPlatform at $9.99, or will they need more money to support the iPlatform in addition to the DS and PSP platforms?
Multiple skews and a fractured market – how do you handle making so many different versions of your app for so many different devices running so many different platforms(BlackBerry OS, Palm OS, Palm Pre, Windows Mobile, Android, Symbian, iPhone, etc)? If you’ve got 20 games, supporting 20 devices, and 5 languages, that’s 20 x 20 x 5 = 2000 skews. Yikes??
Cost of development – developing for high definition 3D consoles like Xbox 360 and PS3 is becoming so expensive that many developers are finding it impossible to even enter the marketplace. Mobile gaming presents a nice alternative since mobile devices today are roughly comparable to the consoles of 10 years ago like the PlayStation 1 and Super Nintendo (some of the more advanced mobile devices are about on par with PlayStation 2 and Nintendo 64). The result is that development shops can re-use a lot of the work they’d done 5-10 years ago, giving new life to old games and getting more bang for the buck on those R&D dollars. What's your experience?
Links:
Interview with head of Nokia’s Gaming operations 29 Oct. 2008. Sees no growth in overall gaming market (though certain areas e.g. N-Gage and iPhone will grow):
GamaSutra feature on developing games for the iPhone and iPod Touch.
2009 Predictions for mobile gaming
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1 comment:
The $0.99 devaluation problem in the App Store is very much the iPresent, not the iPast. It has us wondering if we'll be able to make any iMoney whatsoever with our upcoming App Store venture.
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