Free mobile game

For those who don’t know, Slingbox is a TV streaming device that allows users full control of your TV set at home through the internet. It’s basically a combination of technological prowess and fairy dust that enables this VERY sweet product to “just work”. Meaning if you’re a Dodgers Fan on a business trip in the East Coast, you can watch their games as if you were in your own living room. If you saved the season finale of Lost to your PVR, you can watch that too.

Now that convenience is coming to your iPhone. Which is fitting since SlingPlayer Mobile has been available for WinMob, Palm, and Symbian for some time now and we all know none of those platforms offer a screen quite like the iPhone. Though it’s still very, very early in development, Sling has a proof-of-concept version of SlingPlayer Mobile running on jailbroken iPhones.

SlingMedia will also be holding live demonstrations of SlingPlayer Mobile on the iPhone and iPod Touch for those attending WWDC. Their Product Manager Vicky Shum will be at the Starbucks at 120 4th Street, San Francisco (across from the Metreon) between 10am and 4pm Pacific Time on Monday, June 9th. The demo is open to everybody, so if you’re in the bay area for WWDC feel free to check it out!

A recent post on Kotaku raised concern, citing a quote from mobile developer LemonQuest’s CEO, Ignacio Cavero. Cavero told the website Pocketgamer that Apple will be selling iPhone games for 17-18 Euros, which comes out to around $25.

“We’re going to see a new generation of [mobile] games,” Cavero said. “Instead of being sold for 5 Euros in Europe, they’ll be closer to 10 or 12 Euros. Take a look at what Apple is preparing for iPhone. Their games will be sold in iTunes for 17-18 Euros.”

The way Cavero phrased this statement, it sounded to some like Apple is the one setting the price. But back in March, Apple announced that applications sold through iPhone 2.0 software, including games, will be priced by their developers. At the time, Apple said, “developers set the price for their applications–including free — and retain 70 percent of all sales revenues.”

Currently, games for the iPod are sold through iTunes and only cost $5 each. In some cases, this can be a great bargain, like in the fully featured edition of Popcap’s Peggle. With iPhone 2.0 software, iPhone games will appear on a third-party “App Store” that is likely to be similar to iTunes. We hope to have more information on iPhone’s upcoming games, including hands-on impressions, later this month.

In 2006, mobile game platform Greystripe launched GameJump.com, a distribution site for free, ad-supported cellphone games; since then, consumers have downloaded over 65 million copies of Greystripe’s hundreds of titles. The company will publish an extended report of their user data later this week, but were nice enough to give me an advance peek. I’m looking at a lot of surprising numbers, but the most striking one to me is how gamers interact with the ads that appear before and after gameplay.

According to Greystripe, 10.1 percent of them click on the ads, a CTR that far outstrips web ads, which average some 1 percent to 2 percent. I strongly suspect at least some of these are accidental, fumble-thumb click-throughs, but even then, from the advertisers’ perspective, that’s not a bug, but a feature. And while mobile games are almost by definition casual, the demographic breakdown is markedly different from the web-based casual space, which is dominated by older women.

By contrast, 69 percent of the site’s U.S. users are aged 18-34, and 60 percent are male — roughly the same percent that own a PS3/360/Wii game console. So unsurprisingly, the top 20 titles are not just puzzle games, but arcade-flavored titles like Rollercoaster Rush and Bikini Pool Summer, from a studio called, appropriately enough, Guy Games. With data like this, I think we’re going to see a lot more money moving to mobile.

Remember back in the day, when Sonic appeared on the Megadrive for the first time? I bought the game, as did a lot of other people (!), and were amazed by the super-fast graphics and multitude of eye-mashing colours. How things have come on - the same game is now doing the rounds on a lot of Mobile devices!

SEGA Mobile plans to build on the success of the Sonic brand with the introduction of three new titles this year, including Sonic at the Olympic Games, Sonic Spinball and Sonic the Hedgehog 2.

We’ve seen ad-funded games before, in Nokia’s own MOSH Sponsored Games, but these are of higher quality and greater currency, even if they’re not quite up to cutting edge titles from the really big mobile game publishers.

As with Nokia’s MOSH effort, the idea is that you are forced to click through a couple of static image advertisements before and after each game session. The game ‘in the middle’ is totally free, but unless you’re guaranteed to be on Wi-Fi or flat rate data, then there may be data charges to take into account because the ads themselves are loaded from the 123play.com servers. One ray of light is that the ads seem to be cached, so you don’t have to keep paying and waiting for the same ads over and over again.

“Counter Smash on mobile delivers nostalgic, engaging and addictive game play that mobile gamers can have in the palm of their hand. This game provides hours of entertainment and will make a great companion piece for anyone passionate about badminton game.” Said H.E. Mah, Ozura’s Vice President of Marketing.

Counter Smash is one of the greatest global sport leagues with tremendous popularity spanning from Europe to Asia, and Ozura is thrilled to have the opportunity to develop badminton mobile games. It is an exhilarating sport game featuring Lin Done, embodied with darkness has turned the World Cup Badminton into a reign of anarchy. Many have been injured during the tournament. Players will take on the role of Max Morales to counter smash and fight his way through Lin Done’s followers to put an end to the abusive tournament.

“Our game is aiming to be the pinnacle of mobile badminton game, the game promises to bring the most extravagant experience that have never before been seen on mobile phone devices.” As stated by Mah.

Look for Counter Smash in June! Counter Smash will be launched simultaneously on Maxis’ MaxGames mobile gaming community portal with the tournament expected to run for a period of two consecutive months. To download and play this new tournament game, visit MaxGames.

The program was established amid concerns that elementary and junior high school students are spending long hours exchanging mobile email, surfing the Web and even being lured into cyber crimes, said Masaharu Kuba, who leads the program.   
 
The Japanese education ministry says about one in three Japanese sixth graders have mobile phones, while 60 percent of ninth graders have them. Most mobile phones in Japan are sophisticated devices that provide high-speed Internet access called 3G, for “third-generation”.”Japanese parents are giving cell phones to their children without giving it enough thought,” he told the Associated Press

“In Japan, cell phones have become an expensive toy.”The recommendations were established by an education reform panel, and then submitted to Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda’s administration, which approved the measures this week.

The panel is also requesting Japanese cell phone makers to develop mobile devices with only the talking function and global positioning system (GPS), a satellite-navigation feature with safety applications.  The panel also said better Internet filtering is required to protect children.

Some children spend hours each day emailing their friends. Indeed, a current trend among children is the “30 minute rule”, in which children who don’t reply to e-mail within 30 minutes are targeted for ridicule by classmates.

And although Japan has a relatively low crime rate compared to other industrialized nations, Kuba said other children have become the victims of cyber crimes.   He recalled one case in which children had sent pictures of themselves to a Web site and later received threats for money.

Cell phones tend to be more personal tools than computers, Kuba said, and parents increasingly struggle to monitor how their children are using the devices. Typically, parents pay about 4,000 yen ($39) per child each month for mobile phone service. Some parents rely on cell phones to keep in constant communication with their children as they commute long distances to school by bus or train.