NEW YORK-Unplugged Games Inc., founded last year with $2 million in venture financing, made public May 15 an agreement reached last month to supply AT&T Wireless Services Inc.’s Digital PocketNet customers with interactive games for multiple players.
The New York-based start-up began offering “a limited version” of its “MultiStage” Version 1.0 platform to Verizon Wireless and Sprint PCS in January, said Eric Goldberg, president. In December, Motorola Inc. contracted for use of the Unplugged Games technology in development of its J2ME wireless handsets.
“MobileStage 1.0 deploys at the end of June, but we offered a limited version because Sprint and Verizon said they wanted it,” he said at New York New Media Association’s “Venture Downtown 2001” meeting.
“One carrier customer told us it has generated 10 million gaming minutes from paying customers in the first three months, and another said a third of its data use is from games alone. Sprint said the average player spends 30 minutes per game. To help carriers generate revenues without clogging up their networks, Unplugged Games designed its platform “to support applications that are turn-based to minimize the number of packets,” Goldberg added.
The company, which hopes to raise an additional $60 million in private equity investment this year, continues to develop its technology for personal digital assistants and new generations of wireless communicators. It also plans to launch its service in Europe late this year.
“By the third quarter, we expect to announce two more carrier customers, two more equipment vendor partners and the first two game developers that will deliver their games through our scalable, multi-user platforms,” Goldberg said.
Unplugged Games has its own suite of content products, including: Void Raider, a space combat and adventure game; Word Trader, a word poker game; Rags2Riches, a fashion industry game.
“Except for AT&T’s PocketNet, most data goes through circuit-switched networks, so carriers can’t track wireless data usage. Our patent-pending billing procedure allows for micro-billing and translates information into a data stream for billing, especially for carriers like Verizon, which has legacy infrastructure from its many incompatible roll-ups (i.e., acquisitions),” Goldberg said.
“We integrate with their CRM systems. All they need to get is one call asking, `Where is my magic sword?’ and they are glad to integrate their CRM with us.”
Unplugged Games counts among its potential competitors Cash-U of Israel and Nokia Corp.’s planned Mobile Entertainment Service, both of which so far offer or plan to provide “static content,” Goldberg said. Digital Bridges of Sweden and JamDat of the United States, which he described as “pure-play game publishers,” also have indicated plans to enter the company’s niche.
“We offer the community feature, which is scalable to a large numbers of players, and the carrier-facing side, which is difficult though not impossible to duplicate. At best, we have a 12-month window. At worst, six months,” he said.
Unplugged Games sees its revenue opportunities in portal services, billing aggregation and translation for carriers and third-party applications hosting.
“As carriers get more comfortable with this, they will want to license it and bring it in-house. We will then also get revenues from upgrades, using a basic and premium cable TV model,” Goldberg said.
