mobile gaming research

Filed in archive Technology on July 10, 2004

Diebold features a pretty good free research report (free registration required) about mobile gaming. It analyzes the state of mobile gaming in Europe especially in Germany.

"The potential for Mobile Gaming is promising: with European revenues forecasted to exceed $6 billion in 2006, Mobile Games will deliver a solid revenue source for mobile operators, portals, game developers and publishers. Almost 75% of the forecasted revenues derive from download games (as opposed to online games) and this is therefore the primary focus of this report."

"There are some major barriers to mass-market acceptance and the success of mobile gaming. From a technical point-of-view, we believe that the device related barriers, such as screen size, graphics, processing power and the problematic in-terface control will be solved within the next 18-24 months. The network related is-sues, i.e. synchronisation of devices in the network will be resolved in a similar time frame. We believe that the issues related to technical standardisation will be solved by market mechanisms, but this will not preclude the existence and success of different standards in different regions. Non-technical barriers such as the poor quality of some games, the uneven revenue sharing between the involved parties (including the opaque pricing which include payments for the game and the trans-mission) must be solved quickly by the relevant parties. Despite these challenges, mobile Gaming demonstrated some promising developments in 2003 and gener-ated revenues in excess of $800 million in Europe alone."

"The revenues of the gaming industry in Germany have been in decline since the 2000, dropping almost 12.5% within 2 years from 1.6bn to 1.4 bn. Euro. This downturn in revenues was not equally shared among all gaming segments: while PC entertainment and PC Info & Edutainment are declining, the market for Video console games rose by 7% in 2003 but still has not reached the revenues achieved in the industries heyday of 2000. Therefore, the gaming industry is also urgently seeking promis-ing new market opportunities."