I'm back! (on xbox360...)

I didn't post anything for ages, but I was working really hard to a whole new projects in a whole new world.
I'm working on the "big integration" between platforms and (mainly) on finding new ways to vehicolate some ideas I had.
Honestly, mobile game publishing/developing has lost its willing of making new things. It is a little frustrating doing new things, working on innovative demo concepts and getting only works based on the same old games or brands.
I was looking for an opportunity of making new things (and make some money from them), Iphone doesn't conviced me at all, I saw the same thing some years ago with Handango and Nokia marketplace or with ad-funded games.
I worked hard on a new tecnology; with this I'm able to make games for a wide range of platform (including Xbox, PC and mobile phones), now I can try to vehicolate new concepts on console and PC's and (if I get a lot of downloads) on mobile phones. I have a long list of concepts to develop, if you're curious and want to see the first, go here. (You need and Xbox with a live account)

My recipe to make money with your own IPs

My rules:

1) Get an idea.
Without good ideas you need an estabilished brand/IP... the refuge for brainless developers.
2) Do not publish your own games for mobile phones.
I spent years trying to convince publishers and operators. The response was (all the time): "Great idea and great game, but without a brand no chanches to get the deck"
3) Go to the pc-casual game market. There are lots of distribution opportunity and you can set your own distribution and payment model too.
4) Distribute free playable demos.
5) Collect money and see your game become an IP. Obviously the idea should be very good.
6) Now try to publish it on the mobile game market, publishers and operators should be more positive now.
7) Collect more money.
You're entered now in a positive feedback cycle, and the two distributions (casual-PC and Mobile) will enforce each other.
8) Get another idea.

How many platforms for a game?

Obviously there is not a single answer, the number grows month after month.
But let's speak about families of platforms: obviously there is the biggest one, j2me, with dozen of implementations and an unresolved huge fragmentation, Brew follows, the younger is IPhone and the newest one is Android, backed up by the giant Google. (edit: I have not mentioned neither Symbian or NGage platforms... a Freudian slip?)
Is that all? (... I should say...) So a poor developer has to develop for 4 (edit: 6) different plarforms, with 3 different programming languages (and I'm not condidering pure j2me as another language), Java (God bless you), C++ and Objective C... well known in the MAC world but a little outdated in my opinion. Hundreds of APIs and environments... it's a bad life the mobile developer life....

the great IPhone hope...

Noticed? Everybody is going to develop for IPhone.
Obviously I'm talking about mobile developers. Lots of them is passing to the "dark side of the moon" and announcing services for IPhone.
The question is... why? Seems like mices leaving the sinking boat. But is this the reason? Is the "traditional" mobile phones development sinking like an old heavy broken ship?
Surely everyone is attracted by the distribution model for IPhone apps and games, escaping from the actual brand-centric and semi-monopolistic j2me/brew games distribution model; but what happens in six months when the IPhone market will be flooded with lots of poor quality contents?

What's next?

There's something in the air, I can feel that.
A revolution in the mobile games industry is coming. I have my opinion on which type of revolution is coming and I'm setting up the weapons to figth the "final battle" and move on.
In the first half of this years a lot of main actors of the industry were ripped off, some of them were giants with millions of dollars of investments. The first two companies in the mobile games industry, you know who I'm talking about, are throwing out all the rest.
With this environment only two kind of fish survives: the big fish and the small (really small) fish. All the rest perish... If you're a medium fish get big faster or die.
There's another way to survive, shake the market! How? I will make my move on the first half of September, my little contribution for the incoming revolution. Stay tuned!

Hello fragmentation my old friend...

I develop mobile games since 2002, someone in the Mobile Games Veterans Group (and in the industry) develops mobile games since the first Nokia has built in Snake.
The first thing I learnt was: "write once runs everywhere" is a lie. A game developed for a Nokia 3510 (to make an example) doesn't run on a Siemens (and viceversa). Screen sizes, APIs, HEAP memory, model specific issues, bugs and implementations are things a good developer learns to fight with.
I can clearly remember that my thoughts in 2004 were: "ok, this is the thing right now, but in the future things should be a little better, one years or two and I can get rid of Nokia S40, Sharp GX series and Siemens phones".
Now we are in the second half of 2008, are the things changed? No at all! Today we develop for powerfull phones with fast processors, decent screen sizes, plenty of heap memory but operators (and publishers) ask us games that have to run on old old old old phones.
I know, the more the compatibility the more the game sells, but... what is today the market share for a 3510i? and for a Sharp GX? and for a Siemes phone?
I see dozen of download reports every week, and these phones doesn't download games! From my point of view, these ports are costs that have no returns at all. Why, then, operators/publishers continues to include these phones in their compatibility lists? Looks like, to make an example, EA ports the last FIFA game for a C64 or a 486 PC; but these platform doesn't sell then EA doesn't develop for them!
What I'm asking is: cut off old (and not selling) phones! Look at the reports, and see wich phones do not download at all, if they do not download, why continue to develop for them?

iPhone - cost or opportunity?

Well, actually there is a sort of race to develop something (really any sort of things and stuffs should be called "game") for this "new" platform. Lots of small developers, new aggregators and publisher are racing to put in the box something for this phone.
These market actors hopes that the rules of the game are supposed to be different for the iPhone games market.
Ok, distribution model is different with a no operator-centric model but at the end of the day the thing is the same: when the offer will be huge (and it is growing really fast) the client/gamer/iPhone owner chooses what he can easily recognize, so the things won't change, brands and ties in continue to win.
But there's another thing to consider. How many iPhones there are actually in the market? What's the sell forecast? What's the gamers share?
Nowdays I thinks that developing for iPhone is a cost rather than oppurtunity, port to this platform costs and takes time, and I'm not convinced that we will see huge sells.
What we will see for more than a year are just a few good ports of succesfull games, and lots of badly realized revamps of old games attempting to squeeze out the last penny from an unsucessful project or poor realized Tetris, Arkanoid and Zuma clones "iPhone version".