Unplugged Games Inc. officially released its MobileStage gaming product, a wireless video game platform for carriers designed to increase revenues through multiplayer games and specialized billing systems.
“It, in many ways, is the core of our business,” said Eric Goldberg, founder and president of Unplugged Games. “It includes functionality for just about everything.”
The platform focuses on multiplayer games, which will eventually become the most important feature of mobile gaming, Goldberg said.
“It enables multi-user applications,” he said. “Games that allow you to play with other people are the ones that people play.”
While the platform is designed for gaming, it also is appropriate for a variety of wireless Internet applications. Goldberg said the system supports basic- and premium-style billing functions, which would let users upgrade basic wireless service to more advanced services that would include games and other wireless Internet applications.
While no MobileStage customers have been officially announced, Goldberg said in May at a conference in New York that Verizon Wireless and Sprint PCS were using a “limited version” of the platform.
“We offered a limited version because Sprint and Verizon said they wanted it,” he said at the conference.
Sprint and Verizon currently offer Unplugged Games’ line of content products, which include: Void Raider, a space combat and adventure game; Word Trader, a word poker game; and Rags2Riches, a fashion industry game. Goldberg also hinted that the company would soon announce gaming deals on branded sports and music properties.
Unplugged Games’ MobileStage is the company’s attempt to become the standard in the lucrative mobile gaming market. Industry researcher Datamonitor pegs the wireless gaming industry at $6 billion by 2005, while Bear Sterns echoes the sentiment with a projection of $8.8 billion by 2006.
“We’re not saying it’s the only solution, but something like this has to exist to extract maximum revenues from wireless games,” Goldberg said of MobileStage.
The company’s platform offers a variety of features for carriers and consumers. For carriers, the platform tracks and analyzes user patterns, providing information on which applications are used, by which users and for how long. Most wireless carriers aren’t yet privy to this type of detailed information, Goldberg said. The platform also offers provisioning and permissions services, as well as customer relationship management and billing systems.
For the billing function, “we use a pre-existing back door in the infrastructure that’s currently in place,” Goldberg said.
For the user, MobileStage offers a multiplayer experience and community function, allowing users to create buddy lists and challenge friends to multi-user games. Goldberg said more than 90 percent of all wired Internet games are multiplayer and the popularity should translate to the wireless world as well.
Multiplayer games are “what people have indicated that they will pay the most for,” he said.
Unplugged Games was founded last year with $2 million in venture financing. It has deals with AT&T Wireless Services Inc. for the carrier’s Digital PocketNet customers and Motorola Inc. for the manufacturer’s J2ME wireless handsets. The company hopes to raise an additional $60 million in private equity investment this year and plans to launch its service in Europe.
