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?

People that are really into gaming will pay premium rates for high quality games to play on their mobile phones - and from what I've seen, those games with the high price tags do work well and have been totally tested.

For the more casual game that is pullling free games from getjar there are other options out there, like the ad-supported free games you can play from sites like HOVR (www.Hovr.com). The games there work, have been tested for each phone they list that they are compatible with, and there is no risk for the game player, since if they don't like the game, or it doesn't live up to their expectations, they can just move on to the next one from the list of hundreds of games (no cost at all to them).

I think these figures and statements regarding QA testing are tripe.

Being a QA manager for a mobile games publisher and aggregator I’ve worked with big named developers such as Glu, EA, Gameloft etc and I can confirm that the level's of testing they/we do is extensive. Of course, there is always an element of "cost effectiveness" when dealing with "wild carriers" that support every device ever made; including handsets that don't support java, are mono chrome.... there's even a carrier that has the Sony PSP in its device list!! Obviously, we, the developer/publisher cannot create or QA every device on these lists, nor should we as nearly 2/3 of them are so old they’re not in circulation anymore. But yet we still get some carriers that insist we support such devices and so we try and make our titles work on such poor handsets and the end product is exactly that, poor. To say this is a QA or testing issue is inaccurate.

My personal point of view is that it’s the carriers that cause the most issues. Carriers should not have so many supported or live firmware’s. The firmware releases should be made by the manufacturer only and then carriers provide optional downloadable content that is specific to their network (3UK having Skype software etc)... or at least something like this to standardise the industry a bit more. Everyone seems to want to go in their own direction making it extremely hard to make content for everyone, and make sure this content works perfectly.

Being QA manager in my company I’m always having issues with firmware’s more than anything else. Crashes, hangs and download/install issues are always dealt with before deployment to the carriers is made. The only time I receive an error report is when a consumer who has a device with the release version firmware or similar and there's a confliction with our MIDlet. I seldom receive issues regarding functionality of our MIDlet. To try and counter these firmware issues we test on 3-4 firmware’s. However as mentioned above some devices and even carriers have 10+. So covering all these for a single handset in a sku group of say 10 devices, for a title that has anywhere between 60-160 skus is a near impossible task as the man hours and cost for this would never be made up in download revenue. Hence, occasionally an unfortunate user may try to OTA a game on to a firmware that couldn't be tested and it might not work. As mentioned above nearly all carriers understand these issues are will nearly always refund the user without question if a title doesn’t work, you just need to ask.

Personally I think part of the problem is there are too many links in the chain between the game creator and the buyer, particularly on carrier portals.

There is not a lot of background info, commentary or rating options available to users of carrier decks when getting games. So making an informed choice about a game is a challenge.

On the flip side not a lot of this information/feedback makes it back to the creators, as game consumers get lost in the customer support abyss of their operator. So while the carrier may refund the customer that doesn't fix the underlying problems nor prevent the next person from having the same problem.

And I agree with previous sentiments on SKUs. Enforcing a 'one size fits all' policy means up to 2/3 of a games budget is put towards porting towards useless devices with a user base unlikely to bother buying, rather than perfecting it on just a few devices that likely have the user base which will actually play the game.

When you end up with a quantity over quality environment don't be surprised if bugs etc slip through.

Many factors have an impact on the ability of games to work on mobile handsets, including:
1. Handset compatibility issues
2. How well the test process is managed
3. The capabilities of individual games testers
4. The quality of test tools used to detect bugs

In my experience of testing applications there is a problem of managing customer expectations. Customers expect games they have been able to download to work (without bugs) on their handset, especially if they have paid money upfront. What seems so difficult to do, but can be achieved, is to warn users if the application has not been previously tested on their handset. It is difficult for all handsets to be tested, especially with new models being released almost weekly.

Maybe this is not riight forum to ask, but something else I am interested to know is: how many games users request a refund if they are not satisfied with the product (covering both the cost of the game and the cost to download)? How many do actually get a refund compared with the number of disappointed customers?

Those GetJar arguments are total false!

However if you want quality mobile games for free the only place I have found is 123play.com service, open at least in the UK. Browse directly to m.123play.com and start loading, no questions asked.

I love mobile games.