Sorry for the very late reply, Nik,
Thank you very much for taking the time to provide
a great explanation and description of the state
of play (oops, that wasn't intentional) in Japan :)
The billing model seems to be a real barrier to entry
for the Ngage platform (it works out quite expensive
as the humorous article by Peter Lewis recently in Fortune
points out
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/peterlewis/0,15704,548310,00.html)
so it's good to hear about more adventurous (and imho,
'fair') billing mechanisms.
>I would say that the newer 3-D games, however, stand
>on their own as quite good games. Recently there have
>been some quite entertaining baseball and soccer
>games, as well as a 3-D mobile version of Biohazard.
Just wondering, are their any online demos of such games ?
(not necessarily interactive). Am particularly interested
in the state of 3D rendering on mobiles.
>There are also a host of RPG (role playing games),
>which are among the most popular game segments in the
>Japanese market.
This has been proven to be a great revenue generator
in Korea for PC/online games - can I ask what the billing
model is for RPGs on the mobile platform ?
>In Japan, where a large percentage of
>the population commutes by train, often quite crowded
>train, having games on your mobile during an hour
>commute is in itself a killer thing.
Utterly agree. Only times I've ever used the crap games
on my mobile are whilst commuting and having a dump (...
but that's another thing completely :)
>There are certain
>must-have games--On the Vodafone side it would be Real
>Tennis or Ridge Racer, which were the two marquee
>games that were released at the same time as the SH-53
>phone that suports 3-D graphics and 256kb
>applications.
That's precisely the angle I was coming from... and it's
good to hear.
>Some people would consider Mobile Post Pet a must-have
>application, though I beg to differ.
:-)
>I think that is the challenge--having a home run
>killer app is not easy, but having a great game that
>sells well is within the realm of possible. The big
>change is that with the new 3-D graphics, bigger app
>sizes, and more demanding players, a much higher
>degreee of sophistication is required.
And when it gets too sophisticated, you exile a large
segment of the market I would imagine. Personally, I
don't want America's Army on my mobile.
> Todays mobile
>games are much more sophisticated than the arcade
>games of my day, which took thousands of man-hours to
>complete. The tools today are better, but producing a
>great game is still a time-intensive thing.
>Don't know if any of this helps.
It helps a lot. Thank you very much, Nik,
chas
Received on Tue Dec 16 08:31:07 2003