gods wear hats

MJ writes about the iPhone for games:

• The tools for building are readily available and free (though there’s a £50 charge for the certificate)
• Due to the App Store distribution, the customers are accessible and many of them are looking for new software to load
• The hype machine is already built

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I think this outlook on the existing mobile gaming market is misleading. The tools for building games are free and stable (Java Mobile has been out for over five years, and is supported on every modern handset) and virtually every carrier has their own equivalent to the App Store. While in the UK, I downloaded about 10 games from Vodafone Live, because it was simple and built into my phone.

Most of them are quite complex games. Yes, they are not up to the standard that we’re used to from desktop or console gaming, nor even necessarily as good as what I got from my DS Lite, but most of that was because of the form factor of the phone, not limitations of the tools or the publishers. Given the cost of the game was a fraction of what a game costs for any of those platforms (between 1 and 5 GBP as opposed to 30-50) it lowered the barrier of entry for me to buy - having it easily available and categorized made it simpler still.

However, MJ’s second and third points are the critical ones. People with iPhones are early adopters and are keen to try new things, and there is a lot of hype. Someone with a great game has the potential to have a huge following in a very short space of time. Having an entry point at $5 (or something similar) means that for most people they won’t even think about the spend - that’s the same price as a large cappuccino - and given how easy it will be to communicate about how good the games are (you’re using the ultimate communicator after all) I would expect that several games will swiftly become a staple on everyone’s iPhone.

A word of caution: iPhone development is not like any other platform, not even the Mac. Game development is not like developing any other type of software. And this cross-section of markets will likely be very cutthroat.