Preloading will pave the path to mobile games riches

At the Game Developer’s Conference (GDC) in San Francisco last month, it became very clear to me that many gaming companies are struggling to find the path to mobile games riches. The road to monetizing mobile games is even tougher for smaller gaming companies that cannot afford to consistently maintain an on-deck presence on the mobile carrier’s deck. Unfortunately, this is only the tip of the iceberg, here are some other scary stats:

• Only about 5% of mobile users are downloading games according to GDC keynote speaker, Trip Hawkins, CEO of Digital Chocolate.
• Mobile game publishers are being squeezed from both sides - razor thin margins coupled with increasing development costs and dependency on brand names is limiting innovation.
• According to NPD Group, the top mobile games for the 2nd half of 2006 were Tetris, Bejeweled, Tetris Deluxe, Pac-Man, Diner Dash, etc - all brand names.
• 70% of mobile users who download a game never buy a second game. That’s rough!!

So, if you’re a mobile gaming company without the clout to command an on-deck position, your choices are:

1. Go off-deck, build your own website and start selling direct to user
2. Work with mobile game aggregators to get your games to the user

But, there is a fundamental issue with both these strategies - how many people actually use the web to find mobile games? In other words, how will the users, particularly first time/new users find you if they don’t know you exist? Fortunately, there is a solution to this sticky problem - PRELOADING! What’s that? Read on.

Now for the good news. According to a recent press release from Telephia, preloading a game on to devices is a critical merchandizing lever. According to Kanishka Agarwal, VP of Mobile Content, “preloaded game demos provide consumers with easy access and a quick sample of the game title, increasing the likelihood of them purchasing the game and ultimately driving revenues for the publishers. Publishers must focus effort on handset preload decks in addition to carrier download decks as a critical merchandizing tool”.

Infact, our products are presently being used by a major mobile handset manufacturer for high volume content preloading on to portable flash media such as miniSD and microSD cards. For mobile game developers and publishers we can take the preloading concept one step further and open up an alternate distribution channel by preloading not just game demos but complete games on to portable flash media such miniSD and microSD cards. These cards can then be distributed through traditional retail channels and provide an excellent opportunity to promote the games to new users. In addition to the games, the large memory capacity provides new and untapped revenue sources in co-branding, advertising and bundling opportunities! It’s that simple!!

This entry was posted on April 9, 2007 at 11:57 pm and is filed under mobile games, Mobile devices, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.