Mobile Entertainment

yep, ive been stung by this more than once. its a joke. thats why i wouldnt bother buying a mobile game any more. plus because theyre built to work on so many handsets theres no way of optomising games to work on specific phones, so more often than not they play really badly.

This is truly disheartening to hear. However, I must say that game are indeed optimized for specific handsets. There is not just one build or a few created, there are new builds created specifically for each carrier and handset. I hope to see these errors cut back and wonder what the actual cause may be.

how pathetic and ignorant is that? getjar is the site doing the greatest damage to the industry with illegal downloads. They should be accountable to pay for every single illegal download instead of throwing dirt at developers and publishers!

Kalador allows you to download a trial before you buy. You then purchase and the trial is activated automatically - no second download required.

But if you truly want free games, go to Mobilerated and get legally free games there. These games are often ad-supported, but some are totally free.

As someone who has submitted content on getjar I find it incredible that they have the nerve to criticise developers when thier own recommended system for setting compatibily by MIDP version and Jar size etc. is full of so many inaccurracies it is unusable.

I suspect this explains the high failure - not the lack of testing.

But I found getjar do not respond to emails from developers, they come back as unread, so they probably don't know just how bad thier system is.

It become pointless submitting content to get jar anyway when the setting of genres is so openly abused and all the categorys are so full o***ames making it impossible for anyone to find your content!

It should say adult games above, filtered out my original version.

Such a generalisation on this is rather out of context. Working as a carrier, I can assure you that failure rates are lower than you suggest and to quote a figure of £29m is such an exaggeration. The bulk of failures (suggested at 80%) comes from off-portal sites who do not provide backfuill for devices and source games in on ther cheap thereby re-using old ports for a device that may or may not work all just to make a quick buck.

Having worked with the publishers for many years we do see some problems, but the level of QA is of a very high standard and we receive ports for most builds, ports are only re-used if the device offers the same experience. If it does not, more often than not it is refused.

This report is creating more confusion than clarity. Both developers, publishers as operators and off deck portals are spending huge amounts of money to cope with the fragmentation of the handsets. Gameloft recently claimed to produce 50000 SKU'*****onth. I think the article is lacking precise information and is not contributing to understanding whatsoever about mobile games at all.
The games I acquire from operators and off deck portals are all working properly, the only problem I have ever had was a billing issue with my operator, but that was easilly solved.
The real problem in the industry is the fragmentation of handsets and the lack o***ood, consumer oriented shop front with a wide choice of games for your mobile.

This is also the fault of Sun and handset makers. They push J2ME as "write once, run anywhere" when in fact we've had as many as 70 SKUs for a single title because of JVM incompatibilities. Sun, handset makers, and the Java community refuse to accept reality and solve this problem. They just stick their head in the sand and point at the JVM.

I downloaded a very big name game a few months back. It looked fantastic but then the main character dissapeared from the screen on (what I assume was...) the last level (I never got any further!). I assumed it was a problem with my phone or an error with the download process but I was never going to find out. I'm sure I could have got a refund but it's user experience that counts. I'm reluctanct to go through a customer service centre for £5 (even on my wages).

I would echo much of the above.

The other major issue are incompatible firmware versions - the same handset on the same operator can have 3 - 10 live firmware versions - and with some manufacturers in particular differences here can break games. Its impossible for developers and publishers to actually test on every f/w version - and impractical for operators to check every f/w version.

Most operators though are very good about looking after their customers and will refund broken content.

getjar is a place to download free and beta games so it's normal for most games to do not work..

The solution is Flash for mobile, no more developing many variations of same game for hundreds of different phones..

The majority of the games on this site are garbage and I doubt any of the developers have a clue about porting to over 1000 devices. People should download from reputable mobile development companies like I-play, Glu, Gameloft, EA they have very strict QA standards and you're Guaranteed it will run on your device because they own them.

you forgot to mention microforum, superscape, capcom mobile ... there are many good mobile software houses out there

I have also been stung in the past – as a gamer for many years I have never embraced mobile gaming but have always been interested. A few downloads met in disaster though I do regularly timesnack on titles that came free with the handset.
All indications are this industry will boom – but I don’t know who is regularly downloading new games onto their phones? Does anyone know the demographic or can point me to a forum or linkedin type industry group where people swap views on this?