Nokia N-Series competition

October 4th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Events & Conferences | 2 Comments »

Nokia launched a development contest for its N-Series phones. The contest is about creating a new application (which can be a game) that would revolutionize the way the N-Series devices are being used. Entries are accepted until the 30th of October (which is really close). You can find the contest via this link. Select the US as your country.

I-Play in Tech Track 100 UK

September 26th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Events & Conferences | No Comments »

Our congratulations today go out to I-Play. They reached the 42nd position in the UK Tech Track 100 for their growth in sales between 2003 and 2005.

David Gosen, CEO of I-play, commented, “Being in the top 100 reflects our hard work and dedication to developing and publishing outstanding content for mobile. Our significant headway out in the States and our growing portfolio of mobile game franchises are major contributors to our success. And most recently a move into mobile video demonstrates another way in which we’re continuously looking at ways to leverage our internal technology and brand relationships to further build revenues.”

CTIA: impressions at QB 1

September 13th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Events & Conferences | No Comments »

QB visited CTIA and MECCA yesterday and posted their day one impressions. The first impressions are not overly enthusiastic, but still we envy the guys for being there ;-).

TGS: The Square-Enix Lineup

September 5th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Events & Conferences | No Comments »

Square-Enix has announced it’s mobile games lineup for this year’s Tokyo Gameshow. This year they will show Dragon Quest: Monsters, Dragon Quest: Fushigi na Dungeon, Front Mission 2089, Pokermate and Seiken Densetsu

CTIA will be mobile gaming MECCA

August 31st, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Events & Conferences | No Comments »

CTIA this year will devote itself even more to mobile gaming as “MECCA for games” is planned to take place at the venue on the 11th of September. For a complete listing of the sessions held, please look at the billboard site.

EIEF06: Infospace wins

August 23rd, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Events & Conferences | No Comments »

As announced, the EIEF Edge Mobile Award is given away for the first time at the EIEF. Infospace was the lucky company to scoop up the EIEF Edge Mobile Award with their game entry “Dirty Sanchez: Party Games”. Competition was heavy as Infospace has beaten competitors Gameloft, Digital Chocolate and EA Mobile.

GCDC: Mobile games will outsell console games along 2006

August 22nd, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Events & Conferences | No Comments »

Iplay’s Stephane Labrunie made his keynote speech at GCDC yesterday, announcing that I-Play expects mobile sales to surpass the sales of console games by the end of the year. This, he explains, is possible as Mobile Gaming is a true mass market whereas the console market has a much smaller consumer base. Also the mobile games market is more divided. About half the players are female and about 60% of the mobile gamers, are aged between 18 and 34. Based on this, Labrunie sees a stable growth of the market. He recons in 2010, 1.7 billion paid downloads will take place with a value of 5.9 billion.

However just like Karl Woods yesterday, Labrunie also sees the big problems this industry is facing. He estimates only 5% of the users have downloaded a mobile game. 16% would probably download one, however they think pricing is way to high. Also technical problems cause the downloaders a lot of problems. That’s why Labrunie also put the focus of his speech on how the industry should react to them. Labrunie sees 3G as a new way of working, where connecting to the network is much more easy and the user can be pointed to a more safe download location. Also, he would like designers to focus more on the user. Simplicity, traction and innovation is his message to them for creating good gaming content.

MGC: Trip Hawkins focuses more on the social side of gaming

July 17th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Events & Conferences | No Comments »

Trip Hawkins (current CEO of Digital Chocolate, former founder of EA) held his keynote speech at the Mobile Games Conference in which he addressed the importance of mobile communities. “We’re entering the era of the social computer. I believe phones are actually a greater way to connect individuals socially then PC’s thanks to their ubiquity, their integrated billing, and the general rise of the mobile lifestyle”. This might sound more or less like the same message Trip announced at Games Go Mobile, however Trip went more in detail as he made comparisons with fast-food chains like McDonalds where you basically want to buy your app on the go without any delays. Also Starbucks was used as an example as current technologies allow consumers to specialize their order and even to hang around to socialize.

MGC: The US can learn from Asia

July 17th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Events & Conferences | No Comments »

Following Steve’s article on the differences between the US and the EU mobile games market, Modojo publishes an article about the keynote speech from Square Enix president and COO Daishiro Okada. He talked about the different marketing approach where even stimulating hardware sales due to preinstalled games pop up.

THQ Wireless : THE NEXT GENERATION OF MOBILE ENTERTAINMENT

March 10th, 2005 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Events & Conferences | No Comments »

Tips from a mobile publisher

Notes from this afternoon’s session from the Nice Man From THQ. Quite a tidy set of tips if you’re thinking of entering the hell fray that is developing for zillions of handsets. More …