Will Gaming Go Mainstream?

Mobile phones look set to bring gaming to a wider audience.

Plain Words reports

The video game industry likes to describe itself as being "bigger than Hollywood." It has some justification too: worldwide sales of games software hit the $21 billion mark last year, while global box office takings amounted to only $19 billion.

Despite its success, gaming is not a truly mainstream pursuit - for one thing, gamers are mainly young men. But this looks set to change thanks to the new generation of smart mobile phones, which are increasingly being used to play video games.

Around 450 million mobile phones are sold every year. Most people upgrade their handset every two years. This means more and more people are using smart mobile phones, capable of downloading and running small pieces of software, like games.

Indeed, the number of people playing games on their handsets has doubled over the past year to 6% of the world's 1.3 billion mobile subscribers, according to a study by consultancy A.T. Kearney. This figure will soon outstrip the number of people gaming on consoles.

Hybrid mobile

In response to the growing interest in mobile gaming, Nokia recently launched the N-Gage, a hybrid mobile phone and gaming handset. It delivers a credible 3-D gaming experience, with rich graphics that approach the quality of desktop monitors - which means it will do a good job of running games like "Tomb Raider" (first designed for Sony's PlayStation console).

With built-in wireless Bluetooth networking, N-Gage gamers can play against each other in the same room. If they get bored with gaming, the N-Gage's built-in FM radio provides entertainment; or a memory chip can be added that plays MP3 music files. And, of course, they can simply make a phone call.

The question is, will the device attract the new, wider audience of mobile gamers or will it appeal more to the "hardcore" users who want to play complex games on the move?

Time filler

Ben Ward of the Gartner Consultancy doesn't think it will catch on with a wider audience: "New gamers want something different to existing players. They don't want to immerse themselves in the complexity of thematic games like Tomb Raider," he says. "They simply want a time filler - something on a par with a crossword."

Early trends show this is particularly true now that women and the middle-aged are beginning to play games on their mobile phones.

Ilkka Raiskinen, who runs the N-Gage project, is confident that the new product will catch on both with gamers and a broader audience. He insists that Nokia has a unique advantage in the mobile gaming marketplace - its understanding of mobile communications. "Mobile and online gaming are the key trends in this industry," he says.

Mobile gaming boom

If the Asian market is anything to go by, Raiskinen's confidence that N-Gage will appeal to a wider audience may well prove justified. South Korea and Japan, for example, have the most developed mobile markets in the world.

Handsets that support downloadable games have been available for two or three years. And the proportion of users who play games on their handsets has risen to 15% in South Korea and 35% in Japan, spreading gaming well beyond its traditional user base.

If this trend is replicated in Europe and the U.S., it will be a sign that people increasingly want their entertainment on the move.

Many mobile phones, after all, already provide news, financial data, and sports content. So dipping into a video game to kill time in a traffic jam, on the underground, or in a taxi is a good way of escaping the tedium. Once people catch on to that, mobile gaming is likely to take off.

Dec 16th Plain Words editorial