 | Issue: | Asia-Pacific I 2001 |
| Article no.: | 3 | |
| Topic: | We Want Fun with Mobile Gaming | |
| Author: | Gilles Raymond | |
| Title: | CEO & President | |
| Organisation: | In-Fusio, France | |
| PDF size: | 32KB |
About author
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Article abstract
Unknown 50 years ago, Entertainment is definitely a high growth industry with a 480 billion USD revenue. There are already some 420 million regular players around the world.
Full Article
The world video game market today. Standing at the crossroads between games, the Internet and mobile phones, Connected Mobile Gaming, or using a mobile phone to play with or against other players, should generate an opportunity of over 1.4 billion euros of sales in 2003. Figure 3 confirms the analysis of ARC Group, a subsidiary of IDC, who is forecasting a market of 775 million users of entertainment services via mobile phones by 2005. The extent of that explosion is due to the convergence of 2 main factors, including the increasingly widespread use of the Internet by the public at large, and the ageing of the player population. Teenagers are no longer the only fans of “Tomb raiderTM” or “DoomTM”, 25-35 year-olds are also taking up games as entertainment with more comfortable means at their disposal. Mobile phones and game terminals Dataquest, IDC, Gartner Group and Ovum – to mention but a few of the major market survey firms – all agree that portable PC equipment and cell phones will see exponential growth over the coming years. A recent survey by Dataquest, for instance, forecasts 560 million cell phone subscribers worldwide at the end of 2000. The analysts also bank on a high-speed turnaround of the installed telephone base with 360 million phones sold each year by 2002. Games: a new source of profit and subscriber support According to a market survey done by ARC Group, the number of entertainment subscribers should explode over the 2001-2005 period generating increasing levels of revenue for the mobile industry as a whole. Customers are volatile, moving from one supplier to another as fast as their rates changes and with each launch of a new telephone. Facing this loyalty problem, operators have to renew their offers by focusing on new services with high added value. The first experiments in connected mobile gaming show that games are an efficient way for operators to keep their subscriber support, and in the coming years will be an additional source of revenue. The attraction of the concept should be widespread as was demonstrated in a recent survey by the analysts of the ARC Group, who estimate that the global mobile entertainment market should rise from 19 million users in 1999 to 776 million in 2005. The Players and their Motivations Before wanting to create, develop and launch a connected game for mobile, we need to understand social customs through four questions Who are the players and what are they playing at? Games attract anyone, are universal, and many supports can be used today for them on the market. The lottery and betting market is large. The top 5 European lotteries generate more than 35 billion US$ revenue. The Hong Kong Jockey Club is a US$20 billion revenue and Hong Kong is only 6 million inhabitants! This market is definitely a huge one. Lottery players are adult male as well as female. A majority are more than 35 years old. The board games and card games market is highly segmented. It makes it very difficult to analyse it. It shows that games are played by everyone, all over the world. Based on age, social status, sex… we have, and will spend time playing games. Today it is a real challenge to find someone who has never spent money on playing. Everybody plays on targeted games. As a new game, the only rule to respect is “be simple and easy”. By respecting this rule Snake, by Nokia, was a basic but successful game; not so the two others games available on Nokia. There are many markets supporting games: – Video games: a market generating 20 billions US$ per year. Videogames market is increasing by 30% per year with 4 main trends. Players are becoming older, showing their continuous satisfaction. Girls share is increasing by 50% per year. – Personal Computers (PC): the main motivation to buy a PC is to educate children but games occupy 80% of the usage time. This demonstrates the gap between the initial motivation and the real usage. 70% of the PC players are male, mostly under 35 years old, and prefer adventure, strategic and simulation games. – Consoles: using the 120 million portable consoles and 80 million other consoles, players are aged between 12 to 25 years old, 92% are male. On the product side, lifetime is around 3 months. The market is highly segmented as the top 20 in sales terms represent 30% of the total. Two major trends are relevant and must be underlined for all mobile phone industry actors. The first one is that portable consoles are becoming increasingly successful, as the Tamagoshi and Pokemon successes have shown. The second trend is that all PC games offer on-line interactivity and all the new consoles are on-line. This shows the demand for interactivity and multi-player products. Why play on mobiles? The player’s motivation is a mix between the need to escape from the real world (in other words to have fun), the will to win something (key motivation for casino, lotteries…), the motivation to compete and the fact that time is available. Playing on connected games is more fun, either playing alone or competing with other players. In addition, players want to have the freedom either to stay faithful to a specific game or to change at any time and to have access to any available games in the operator’s portfolio. How to make Successful Games Different technologies are available to offer games on mobile WAP games – WAP games mean that the players have access to a wide range of products and can compete with other players. But this technology is limited by fixed graphics and slow interactivity. In addition to these points, it represents a certain cost without GPRS. Embedded games – After embedded games with no connections, like Snake on Nokia, arrived on the market the connected embedded games, such as for France Telecom Mobile, with the possibility to compete against other players, and to participate in contests to win prizes. By developing and integrating a game inside the mobile, real videogames with animated graphics, music and sound are offered. All the connectivity is done through SMS channel. It gives opportunity for players to download new levels, send in high scores etc… However, the player is dependant on mobile connections. Generic Virtual machine – This tech-nology uses available data channels, on which players download various software applications such as: bank account management, maps, games. The game is embedded in the terminal, the game play is low and requires a lot of memory room. However, the games are of video game quality with animated graphics and music, and the player can play off-line with an unlimited choice of applications ExEn games – ExEn (Executive Engine) is an innovative technology for down-loading games onto mobile phones. Communicating terminals enter a new era. This new game execution engine will give players 24-hour access to a full library of games directly from their mobile phones. With ExEn, games like PileUp, 3D Maze and Wata Raider, which contain both rich graphics and interactivity, can now be played on mobile phones, something which would have been impossible in WAP mode. The experience over the last few months confirms the potential for games. Entertainment (games) service has reached a penetration rate of 25%. The fact that mobile phones are always available to the user makes them useful portable consoles, possibly used to offer fun while killing time. Thanks to the connection, the mobile phone is a starting tool to animate player-subscribers through competition and imitative behaviour. Through the GPRS and UMTS, offering larger colour screens and better refreshment rates, games will be more and more user friendly. Despite the technical constraints, the mobile phone is a powerful tool to offer games to a mass market. Connected games answer subscribers as well as operator’s needs and objectives. Most operators understand that games are opportunities. By providing fun, games bring satisfaction and improve loyalty. The main point is the In-Fusio nine full deployments with mobile phone operators in Europe and Asia highlight that games can generate 20 to 25% of value added.
