RobertoOrtiz
04-02-2004, 10:09 PM
Quote:
" As anticipated, mobile gaming has been charging ahead, with revenues over $1.5 billion last year (by comparison, in 2000 they were almost negligible). The compound growth is expected to be around 60% per year, according to the ARC Group, with revenues of around $7.4 billion by 2007 (a large part of the total of the $25 billion in mobile entertainment expected by then). Although this is very respectable (even spectacular), some had expected even faster growth a year ago; this was somewhat slowed by expensive telephone company pricing plans and the lack of rich media capability on many mobile platforms. With the rollout of better telco pricing and quantum increases in graphics and audio, the industry now seems positioned for major gains. So what’s new? First, let’s get an overview.
Mobile gaming encompasses several categories of hardware, including cell phones (both online and voice-based), PDAs (which may also have phone capabilities) and mobile game platforms such as the GameBoy Advanced and the upcoming Sony PSP.
Gaming on the Small Screen
The largest of these categories by far is cell phones, with an installed base of over 1.3 billion worldwide; almost all new phones can play games. The various standards and Operating Systems for cell phones (BREW, Java, etc.) were covered in a previous article, which also covered the basics of game creation for this market (see Small Screen, Big Possibilities, AWN, July 31, 2003). Not much has changed in that area in the past year – there are still several non-compatible standards that game developers have to design for and games still have to be “tweaked” for individual models of phones. The good news is that this remains a fertile area for “apartment animators” – although there has been some consolidation in the industry (and the big dogs are edging into the market a lot more), it is still possible for a creative group to produce and distribute a cell phone game on a shoestring budget of around $10,000 to 20,000 dollars in three months (as compared to a mainstream PlayStation game budget of $5 million plus and a two to three year development schedule). "
>>link<< (http://mag.awn.com/index.php?ltype=pageone&article_no=2051)
-R
" As anticipated, mobile gaming has been charging ahead, with revenues over $1.5 billion last year (by comparison, in 2000 they were almost negligible). The compound growth is expected to be around 60% per year, according to the ARC Group, with revenues of around $7.4 billion by 2007 (a large part of the total of the $25 billion in mobile entertainment expected by then). Although this is very respectable (even spectacular), some had expected even faster growth a year ago; this was somewhat slowed by expensive telephone company pricing plans and the lack of rich media capability on many mobile platforms. With the rollout of better telco pricing and quantum increases in graphics and audio, the industry now seems positioned for major gains. So what’s new? First, let’s get an overview.
Mobile gaming encompasses several categories of hardware, including cell phones (both online and voice-based), PDAs (which may also have phone capabilities) and mobile game platforms such as the GameBoy Advanced and the upcoming Sony PSP.
Gaming on the Small Screen
The largest of these categories by far is cell phones, with an installed base of over 1.3 billion worldwide; almost all new phones can play games. The various standards and Operating Systems for cell phones (BREW, Java, etc.) were covered in a previous article, which also covered the basics of game creation for this market (see Small Screen, Big Possibilities, AWN, July 31, 2003). Not much has changed in that area in the past year – there are still several non-compatible standards that game developers have to design for and games still have to be “tweaked” for individual models of phones. The good news is that this remains a fertile area for “apartment animators” – although there has been some consolidation in the industry (and the big dogs are edging into the market a lot more), it is still possible for a creative group to produce and distribute a cell phone game on a shoestring budget of around $10,000 to 20,000 dollars in three months (as compared to a mainstream PlayStation game budget of $5 million plus and a two to three year development schedule). "
>>link<< (http://mag.awn.com/index.php?ltype=pageone&article_no=2051)
-R