Cellphone Gaming Market Lacks Pull

The Washington Post reports that, despite the best wishes of executives, the cellphone market has not yet taken off the way companies like Jamdat may have hoped for. From the article: "McAteer said the phone interface that consumers access when downloading games -- which usually lists only game titles -- is one of the biggest reasons behind the slow growth. As a result, the games that tend to sell best are those with instant name recognition among consumers, such as Pac-Man or Tetris"

market saturated at 3% (or close)

[yagu]

I've got news for the game makers for the cell phone industry. Your market is probably close to saturated at 3%. Playing games on cell phones is a diversion, not an avocation. Users and potential buyers of games comprise a tiny fraction of the cell-phone audience. Almost any game at all, especially simple ones, will do to kill that 10 minutes wait at the train station. Anything more than a click away to add to the existing suite of games with the phone is no temptation.

I think the cell phone industry greatly overestimates any appetite for the cell phone to be the ultimate phone, pda, gaming machine, pc, soda fountain, reference, ad nauseum. Our wallets are finite (well, mine is), and we're not going to pay and spend time managing a suite of games to play on a cell phone where

• screen resolution sucks
• battery life sucked up by games subtracts from cell phone availability
• games are redundant additions to consumers existing collection on other devices

Maybe the strategy is to find the endpoint of the consuming public's collective appetite for pay-for gaming on cell phones. I think they're close.

because you don't own the game?

[lucky130]

Could it possibly be because, when you 'buy' a game, you don't get it forever at that price? You're just leasing it in x-month intervals that automatically renew and you keep getting charged.

No market

[Opportunist]

IF you have money to buy cell games, you also have money for a "real" portable game console.

IF you can have a real game console, why bother playing on something that can, at best, recreate the experience of a C64?

Seriously, I was pondering getting into the cell game market. But the devices simply don't have the necessary hardware to create current game. A halfway decent game fills your available memory, you have a display the size of a stamp and a resolution that makes you wonder if that what you're shooting at is supposed to be a plane or a donkey.

Now add that half of the games won't work on YOUR cellphone, and if, your display will probably not match the one the programmer used (i.e. you'll either be missing some vital information which gets cut off or you have some black bars), i.e. a lack of interface standards to work with, add that more often than not the programmers used to create those games aren't quite the creme of game creators (most cell games are hacked together by recently graduated students, it's for most their first job ever) and you have a clean picture why the market doesn't take off:

After the first game, you never buy one again.

Re:market saturated at 3% (or close)

[Radres]

I agree with just about everything you said, however I disagree with this point:

"battery life sucked up by games subtracts from cell phone availability"

I use my phone for playing games, and I since I charge my phone every day, I don't really notice the battery life running out as being a problem. I realize I'm not everyone, but it can be done.

Why's that, again?

[Red Flayer]

It's not the format for buying games that keeps me from buying games on my cell phone. It's three things:

1) Battery life. I'm not going to waste charge on gaming. I need my cell phone too much, and spend too much time without access to a charger.

2) Cost. Considering that my Verizon game service charges something like $6-8 per game, why would I bother? Chances are I'll feel like I wasted that money -- I have better gaming experiences with stuff we wrote in BASIC and Pascal in grade school.

3) Suckage. Besides the fact that so many games available for cell phones suck, the phone itself sucks for gaming. From screen size to processor speed to control issues, a cell phone is a sub-par mobile gaming device. If I'm going to spend $400 on a phone that handles games well, I'd just as soon buy a PSP or a DS, thank you.

Too Complex

[outSource]

Or, maybe, developers are missing their mark. Some of the games are simply too complex to be fully enjoyed in a cell phone, particularly with the often whacky control layouts. I have Call of Duty on my Motorola V262, and it's a pain to play. The controls are cramped, and its just too complex to be easily enjoyed on a cell phone. Dodging bullets and shooting bad guys just wasn't meant to be on a cell phone.

That's the reason, IMO, that Pac-Man and Tetris do so well. The controls are easy, straight forward, and the games are easy to get a hold on. Let's keep in mind that the average cell phone user probably isn't a gamer, and is looking for an easy-to-play distraction in a game on the cell phone. They don't want something complex. Pac-Man requires use of the little D-Pad (at least on my phone), and that's it. Tetris works with the D-Pad and OK button. Easy! Enjoyable! Sold!

Cell phone developers should look at ways to take games, simplify them to work on the control layouts available for cell phones, and keep things simple. Of course, the people interested in games on cell phones will primarily be gamers, but cell phones just can't handle complex games, and they really shouldn't try to port games like CoD, Splinter Cell, or any of the other kinds. Keep it simple. I'm sure some people would even enjoy Pong, or a simplified top-down shooter like 1942. I would certainly buy one of those games. In short, cell phone developers should K.I.S.S.

Another reason

[jgoemat]

I don't want to pay $4 for a game that I will only play on my cellphone (and therefore won't be very fun) and that will expire in 90 days so I'll have to pay again. Ridiculous...

How hard would it be to have trial versions that only give you a couple of levels or that expire after a few days?

I totally agree

[Jtheletter]

Just this week I was looking for a cellphone game to waste some time while waiting around, and the interface was almost completely useless. For reference this is the Verizon Get-It-Now network. The categories - and there are many of them - aren't what you see at online gaming stores or sites, plus if a game falls into two categories it's still only listed in one place. There is no search feature to find out if the game you want is even offered, forcing you to look through every catergory since it might be in a different one than you expect.

Plus who is writing the descriptions for these games? They tell you almost nothing about them, and since the trial version is usually $2 to $4 it's a pretty big expense just to see if you even like the game. A screenshot at the very least would be extremely helpful, but perhaps a 5 second demo clip, or even a [gasp!] free 10 minute trial would entice people to buy more games since it wouldn't be such a shot in the dark.

Also I don't know about what other carriers offer but I just don't understand how the widely popular PopCap games aren't offered. I believe they license to Microsoft, but either way someone is missing out on a lucrative phone game market on that end. I think popcap games would be perfect for a phone - quick, colorful, insanely addictive, and completely a temporary distraction, easy to pick up and no need to desperately save your place.

Who knows? Maybe all of those games and more ARE available right now, but I'll never know because I'm never going to pay $4 just to find out if SuperUltraMegaShapeBlaster is something I'd like to play.

Re:because you don't own the game?

[trogdor8667]

I'd consider it if my $5 for the cellular version of the internet included the games in its price and let me play what I want. But right now, I have to pay $5 a month for the wireless internet service, and then pay a monthly fee for a game I may play for five minutes and decide I hate.

Which leads me to another point. I'm not going to pay [insert carrier here] $5 to play a game which I may hate, but still have to pay $5 for. Not to mention that when I switch phones, I have to pay for it again for the same month. If decent trials were provided (more than 5 minutes), I guarantee I'd buy at least one game on my cell phone, if its for a lifetime subscription. Otherwise, forget it. You're not getting that business from me.

Idiot companies

[Lord_Dweomer]

The cellphone companies need to realize that people don't want to pay $5 per game. That is an ABSURD price for what amounts to a free Flash game. Top that off with the fact that they expect you to plop down money on the game when all you know about it is the title and a brief uninformative description if you're lucky.

In the information age, people making game purchasing decisions where they are actually expected to pay money (and $5 is not insignificant) expect to have reviews, screenshots, possibly even videos at their fingertips to educate them before they make their purchasing decision.

Of course I'm sure the cell companies are reluctant to supply that otherwise everybody would know what utter crap 99.9% of those games are.