Ever since Pong ushered video games into U.S. homes three decades ago, the video-game industry has leaned on a handful of blockbuster titles to open new gaming genres and drive sales of new platforms.
Gamers got out from behind the console with Nintendo’s GameBoy thanks largely to the Super Mario franchise. The legendary Doom took PC gamers from cumbersome, text-based adventure games to engrossing first-person shooters. Halo, which sold a staggering 5 million units, drove sales of Microsoft’s Xbox as it introduced countless players to a fast-paced, multiplayer arena. And Tetris broke down barriers to nontraditional gamers with an easily accessible, casual offering that was as addictive as it was simple.
The world of wireless, though, is still waiting for a breakthrough game that reaches beyond early adopters to mass-market users.
“On the cell-phone side, we haven’t had a title that’s been a breakout title-one that really captures the essence of the device, including its mobile and communications ability,” noted Justin Siegel, vice president of publishing for SkyZone Entertainment. “I think there needs to be some kind of breakout game or a genre of games that gets everybody excited.”
While there’s little doubt that such a game would help usher mobile gaming from niche market to mass market, some believe the industry may as well be waiting for Godot.
“When you look at the number of titles out there-and there are more than 300 that we track-I’m hesitant to make a statement that title X is the mass-market title,” said Kanishka Agarwal, vice president of mobile content for Telephia, which monitors usage and performance of wireless services.
The fact that cell phones are already ubiquitous, unlike even the most popular video-game platform, likely precludes any single title from bringing wireless gaming into the mass market. “I think it will be a small number of titles driving revenue,” Agarwal added. “But that doesn’t mean big titles will be in the hands of the few who have the market cornered.”
According to Telephia’s latest monthly report, a handful of established titles are generating the lion’s share of revenue among wireless games. The company found that Jamdat’s Tetris was the most lucrative game on U.S. carrier portals in June, garnering 8 percent of all operator-deck gaming revenues.
Indeed, Tetris-for which Jamdat spent $137 million to acquire earlier this year-seems to be a perfect cell-phone game, with its stripped-down controls and easy-to-grasp concept. Other titles in Telephia’s top five feature similar qualities: Penultimate’s Chess 2.0, Sony Pictures Mobile’s Jeopardy! 2005, Jamdat’s Bejeweled, and Zuma from Glu Mobile all offer simple goals and one- or two-button game play that can be enjoyed in a few minutes.
But while casual games are gaining traction early, many believe the real opportunity lies in creating games that exploit a cell phone’s strengths instead of minimizing its weaknesses. Any mass-market game would have to provide a unique experience that consoles or PCs simply can’t offer, they say. Community-based gaming that leverages a phone’s location and communication abilities could be key in bringing nongamers to the mobile playing field.
“These games need to be specifically designed for mobile; that’s a basic starting point,” said Markus Huttunen, business development manager for Snap Mobile, Nokia Corp.’s community-based multiplayer gaming program. “They definitely should use the benefits of mobile phones that none of the other platforms can use, and connectivity is definitely one of those.”
Even the ideal mobile game is unlikely to move the market substantially until other factors are addressed. Analysts noted there’s much work to be done in marketing wireless entertainment and educating users on how to access content.
Consumers said handsets must be more game friendly for the segment to gain traction. A recent study from Ziff Davis Media indicated half of all potential wireless gamers cited their phone’s small screen size as the primary deterrent to buying a game.
But anyone looking for a “magic bullet” to penetrate the market is likely to look for a long time, said Snap Mobile’s Huttunen. Instead of creating a game that could be attractive across demographics, game makers should continue to target each type of mobile user with everything from simple casual games to fast-paced, first-person shooters.
“I think you do have to think about broad things like income and family” when developing and marketing a game, Huttunen said. “I think there is some basic segmentation that is easier to do. … It’s not rocket science.”
