ME's Tim Green wonders whether the whole mobile games ecosystem needs to be torn down and rebuilt...
Last month I was listening to the News Quiz on BBC Radio 4. It’s very funny, if you have a taste for lefty, middle class comedians.So you can imagine how surprised I was when the host, Sandy Toksvig, started talking about the fun she was having on her Wii.
You expect Radio 4 panellists to sneer at video games, not eulogise about them. But that’s the wonder of Wii isn’t it? By sheer power of gameplay and that ‘everyone join in’ UI, it’s even charmed fiftysomething satirists.
I say this with wistfulness. After all, this inclusiveness was supposed to be the destiny of Java mobile gaming – the sector with 100 per cent penetration, a ready made payment system and universal connectivity.
But no. Instead, we wonder what to make of a space that still can’t get more than four per cent of users to download.
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Make for the exit, in the case of Vivendi and the now significantly downsized and high-end focused THQ Wireless.
Their abandonment and restructuring, respectively, leaves on-deck Java game publishing as a virtual duopoly comprising Gameloft and EA, with Glu kind of hanging on in third.
Very depressing. Off the record, games execs will tell you the Java game sector’s problems are systemic: a 400 million euro market in the hands of a dozen or so operator product managers – some of whom (let’s be honest) don’t really care that much about gaming. Too many barriers to going live, crappy portals. Must I say more?
It’s boring to bang on about the Apple App Store. But, for all its faults, it’s a product manager-free route to market for anyone with a good idea and native programming expertise.
The BlackBerry app store, Android Market, N-Gage, Windows Mobile Marketplace… bring them all on, I say. As fast as possible. And let’s see what happens with those operator widget storefronts too.
Operators get a lot of stick, not all of it deserved. But surely anyone can see that, in games, the whole carrier-oriented system needs to be torn down and re-built somewhere else.
