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"

Re:No market

[Amouth]

all you need is edge and a terminal/telnet client.. i use my pda in wifi areas to muck around on muds while i wait.. kinda fun and not to bad with the thumb keyboard attachment.. as for cell phone.. i still have an old analog phone so i don't think i can get games other than "lets see how far we can throw it" or the clasic "what happens when a car runs it over"

Re:No market

[Radres]

The best game that I found for the cell phone is a version of Texas Hold 'Em. Once you figure out the computer's betting patterns, it gets old, but up until that point it's a good tool for getting used to how conservative players play the game.

It's amazing how complex they try to make the graphics for a simple card game. Why couldn't they just display the cards and bets in a way that I could see them? I really don't need pictures of the people I'm "playing" against.

I also tried chess, and I'm not a great chess player and was able to beat the phone at chess even at 2 minutes per turn, and I wasn't willing to play a longer game than that.

These days, Tetris is about the only thing worth playing on the phone when I'm waiting somewhere and have nothing else to do.