Wireless Entertainment: The State of Play

Content and Games

Cell phones are massmarket items and the cell phone massmarket consists of casual gamers, not hardcore gamers. Think of the average office employee who works in a Windows environment, more than likely he's played a quick fix of Solitaire and Scrabble. While he could try out something far cooler, he more than likely isn't all that interested in more complex games.

The same could very well apply to the massmarket cell phone user, they are very content with Snake and Solitaire and might not want to play anything else or use other services. In a way this is a good thing, as it's far easier (and cheaper) to cater for this market than it is for hardcore gamers. The much maligned hardcore gamer doesn't really exist in the console market anymore, but with general gamers having enough to choose from it's the massmarket that's gonna be playing games on their cell phones.

It's an obvious fact to state, but cell phones are being bought by everyone from kids to grandmothers, In Europe and Japan cell phones have achieved true massmarket penetration and you have to take that into account when developing. Forcing the latest action epic or complex games on the massmarket consumer who aren't that much into games probably isn't a very good idea at all. Tetris is a good example. It's a game that everyone, universally got into as it was simple and addictive.

Currently most PDA's offer far more processing power than even Nokia's hefty Communicator and there's some rather nifty games available in full color, but if you look at the amount of downloads made on the net for this kind of software it's nowhere near enough to sustain a business.

Into the Future
WAP bombed in spectacular fashion, and while it's clearly an transitional phase the basis of WAP will be what far better things will be built on. iMode is successful but it's only available in Japan via Docomo, everyone else in the world is working on WAP and it's variants.

The fact that the new iMode (iAppli to be exact) phones have color displays takes cell phone gaming to a new level which the Japanese have been enjoying for a while now. The effect of playing in full color instead of a monochromatic screen is tremendous and not to be under estimated even if the few games in high-end, color-supporting, cell phones are mediocre at best.

3G and GPRS are getting closer for consumers but the networks are far from being finished anywhere in the world. When the next-generation of cell phones and other wireless devices get here, they'll offer far more speed and processing power which translates into full-color screens, downloadable video and more multimedia capabilities. This'll bring a whole new level of problems to solve from payment to cross-platform issues -- but more about that later.

Nokia's latest version of the Communicator offers a full-color screen and online capabilities and while the snowboarding game it offers runs in full color, it really isn't much better than the monochromatic efforts…not just yet.

	Nokia's latest version of the Communicator offers a full-color screen and online capabilities.

It's interesting to note that with 3G the expectations in Europe are that there will be an all encompassing cell phone supporting all that 3G can offer: video, color, far higher connection speeds. In the United States, a collection of task-specific 3G devices is anticipated. The technologies that are already implemented or on the horizon are Java, EMS (Extended Text Messaging), Brew, and whatever WAP will evolve into. Obviously Java is a very important development on wireless machines, allowing easier cross-platform development, but for consumers it's more than likely going to be EMS that they are going to be taking advantage of at first. Java is still slow and the performance loss on various platforms is still, according to some developers, too great.

With the advent of more sophisticated phones and services, users will slowly but surely get into more complex games and features. There will be persistent game worlds and multiplayer gaming, but perhaps communication will be far more prevalent (i.e. SMS text messaging) than blasting others in Quake.

As for videogame developers, both Sony and Nintendo have taken notice of Docomo's success but have yet to take advantage of it. Both the PSone and well as the PS2 can be linked up to a cell phone which will then connect to iMode, but so far this is more of a novelty feature than anything else. Similar plans are afoot in Europe to allow Playstation users to access the Internet via their phones, but no details have been released and with the current staggering speed of 9,600bps the isn't much practical use available for the connection.