High prices and long download times over slow connections, games that some analysts say have been poorly designed and bad retailing approaches have been the chief reasons the industry has not grown as fast as some had hoped. But as mobile phone carriers in Europe lower prices for the transfer of data and companies like Apple, Google and Nokia develop software platforms that promise easier download experiences, 2008 is looking decidedly more promising.
“I think it was a case where the mobile industry got over-excited about a new sector, but did not make a huge investment in it,” said Paul Goode, senior analyst at M:Metrics, a company based in Seattle that analyzes the mobile phone market. “The industry is starting to circle back and mature.”
Though cellphones featuring Java software necessary to run quality video games have been on the market for several years, analysts say users have stopped short of paying extra to download games. M:Metrics reported that though around one quarter of mobile phone users in Europe and the United States had played games on their phones, they tended to be the preset puzzle and driving games available with all new cellphones.
Less than 5 percent of users in the United States and major markets in Europe actually use their phone’s browser or go to the Web site of game publishers like Gameloft, Electronic Arts or Glu to pay money to download games, according to M:Metrics. Paul Jackson, who follows the industry for the technology consulting company Forrester Research, said the games were to blame.
“The games have been truly atrocious,” he said. “They’ve been cut-down, poorly functional versions of what you would see” on smaller game-only consoles like Sony’s PSP.
Publishers, on the other hand, blame the high prices mobile phone carriers charge for slow data transfer rates. “You would end up paying much more for the download than for the game itself,” said Michel Guillemot, chief executive of the mobile-game publisher Gameloft, based in Paris.
But Mr. Guillemot, whose company surpassed EA last week to become the world’s top publisher of mobile games, said he expected a breakthrough year in 2008. Mobile phone networks that will be able to carry more data — and more complex games — at a faster rate and lower cost, as well as software platforms like N-Gage, Google’s much-anticipated Android and one being developed for Apple’s iPhone, will make it easier on the consumer.
“All the barriers we had up until now in improving the experience are falling in 2008,” he said