Free mobile game

Now industry analyst M:Metrics has released figures that appear to support his view. The company says that while more people are playing mobile games, the number of people actually downloading new titles has remained flat over the last year.Specifically, M:Metrics says that in the UK 28.7 per cent of mobile users played a mobile game in December – compared to, er, 29.1 per cent in December 2006.

In the same time period the percentage of users who played games they’d previously downloaded stayed flat at 10.6 per cent in December.Worse still (if you’re a publisher), M:Metrics reckons that in December 2007, 4.6 per cent of UK mobile users downloaded a game, compared to 4.9 per cent in December 2006.

There are bright spots. Take the 22.9 per cent of UK users who played a native or preloaded game in December 2007, indicating that free trials embedded on handsets might provide a source of new sales if they include links to download the full thing.Meanwhile, the evidence suggests smartphone owners are more likely to play downloaded games – although this is balanced out by the fact that smartphone games are more easily pirateable online.

“While these devices lend themselves to mobile media consumption, the openness of smart platforms opens up the internet and frees consumers from the operator deck,” says M:Metrics’ Seamus McAteer.”To succeed in such a market game publishers will have to foster new models that may include subscriptions to online gaming communities, ad-funded or subsidised gaming, and physical distribution.”

You’ll play through several chapters as different characters, as the game takes on different personalities / genres.

When playing as Niki, the game is a beat-em-up like Street Fighter / Streets of Rage / Double Dragon. Fun part is you can also pick up weapons and use them, as well as picking up objects and throwing them. Tables can be trashed. Cabinets can be thrown. Niki also has her special “extreme attack” that just kills everybody onscreen… if you can fill up her special power meter.

The first game demonstrated for iPhone, titled ‘Touch Fighter,’ is the brainchild of several companies invited by Apple to send software architects to work on a single project.

SEGA also took the stage, calling Apple’s iPhone SDK “flexible and powerful.” The game company announced a demo version of Super Monkey Ball for iPhone, using the handset’s Accelerometer to move the monkey around the screen. SEGA also said Super Monkey Ball for iPhone is the full console game, not a trimmed-down cellphone version common in the mobile arena.

They were a bit rubbish, to be honest. Not least because to the price of the game in the shop, you had to add data download charges. And because nobody walks into Carphone Warehouse browsing for mobile games.

So the idea died a death.However, EA Mobile, Gameloft and Glu have been testing it again, on the quiet. We met French firm PNY at Mobile World Congress this week, and it was showing off a range of Micro SD memory cards, bundled with free mobile games from those three publishers.

The example in the photo above is a 1GB memory card which comes with Rayman Kart. PNY didn’t talk pricing as such, but it told us a card with game(s) generally costs the same as a card without – the idea is a promotion to get people buying the memory cards.

But here’s the weird thing: the games aren’t actually preloaded on the memory card. Instead, on the back of the pack are instructions to download the game from a WAP site (in the pack we’ve got, it directs you to Gameloft’s own WAP site).

Presumably, this is because it isn’t possible to include every single port of a game on the memory card, given that they’re not sold in handset-specific versions.The packaging does make it clear that you’re downloading the game onto your mobile, which has to be WAP-enabled, so it’s not misleading. But it does mean users may still fall foul of data charges.

Anyway, it’s interesting that the Big Three mobile players are investigating high-street retail again, although it seems the initiative comes from PNY rather than being a big push from the publishers themselves.

The games are featured under various categories such as Action, Adventure, Sports, Racing, Word games, Puzzles and Strategy.The interactive features at Indyarocks will allow the community to rate, review and share the games in an intuitive way.

“Members can submit their own games and solicit feedback from the community and this enables Independent game developers and game development companies to reach out to a large community of avid gamers. Soon we will add downloadable and multi-player games in partnership with major game development companies,” said Vishnu Manyam, Head of strategy.

Kalyan Manyam, Head of operations said: “This is our first step towards addressing the fast growing online gaming market in India. The increase in Internet penetration has made online gaming one of the most important forms of entertainment for the young Indians.

“Considering the fact that the majority of our users are in the age group of 18-25 we have now enhanced our entertainment portfolio with a large collection of casual games,” he added.