The mobile games panel at CTIA covered the normal things…device fragmentation and so on. There was an interesting exchange following the question from the moderator of “what’s the best selling mobile game of Q4 2008, it’s genre and key features”.
—Mike Yuen, senior director of the Gaming group at QUALCOMM Internet Services: “Tetris, multiplayer.”
—Jill Braff, SVP, Glu Mobile: “I hope it’s something more exciting than tetris, I hope it’s tied in with something that’s more mobile. I’m going to say it’s an action game”.
—Gonzague de Vallois, VP Publishing at Gameloft: “I hope it will be a newer game than maybe the regular Tetris. I think there is hope to create some original IP in our business.”
—Gregg Sauter, Director of games publishing, Nokia: “Hoping that by the end of 2008 we’ll have really good viral marketing… and we’ll find a cool little game that we’re passing around and people say you have to play this because it’s fun”.
Am I the only one who noticed that everyone who didn’t say “Tetris” prefaced it with “I hope”?
Sauter also did a small presentation with some Nokia stats. “Some research comes out that sales are flat, revenues are flat…Don’t get hung up on the research. We are a global market…depending on where you ask that and what you ask you’ll get completely different answers.”
Nokia multimedia device owners that play a few times a week or more
India 55%
UK 20%
Italy 34%
China 28%
US 11%
Also…
85% of S60 multimedia playing preinstalled games (includes Ngage)
54% playing preinstalled games a few times a week or more
45% are playing downloadable games a few times a week or more
33% list gaming as a function that influences their purchase decision
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