All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.
SAN FRANCISCO – In order to see the future of the American wireless gaming market, said a presenter at the Game Developers Conference here Tuesday, all one has to do is look at Japan for a preview of the devices and mobile games that will hit the United States in about three years.
The line was a joke, referring to Japan's traditional leadership on wireless technology, but it had more than just a hint of truth to it. And nowhere is that more clear than at GDC, where two days of panel discussions and presentations have probed the possibilities of wireless gaming. General sessions at the conference begin Wednesday.
The consensus at the conference is that a lot is falling into place in the U.S. market, and one reason is that, unlike most other gaming platforms, wireless gaming is attractive to men and women.
"It's a different platform," said Amy Jo Kim, an expert on mobile gaming who focuses on creating games aimed at women. "It's not boy-centric and didn't start out as boy-centric. It's not women-centric, either. It's people-centric.... It's an open area for game designers."
Already, wireless gaming is a substantial business. In a talk Tuesday, Robert Tercek, co-chairman of GDC Mobile, said 6 million people download games to their mobile devices each month, and 18 million Americans play wireless games. Worldwide, he said, there are 170 million wireless gamers.
In the United States, all the major carriers feature wireless games, with those involving cards, puzzles and other simple premises proving particularly popular.
Verizon Wireless has just rolled out a 3G, high-speed network in many areas of the country that enables downloading more-complex games.
"Now, we're seeing a very significant step ahead," said Aaron Bernstein, senior product manager at Qualcomm Internet Services, which helped develop Verizon's 3G network. "The emergence of 3-D games and faster downloads ... it's like ISPs going from dialup to broadband."
Even without widespread 3G networks, many at the conference celebrated advances in handset technology that have resulted in games they say approach the quality of those for the original Sony PlayStation. Mike Yuen, director of the gaming group at Qualcomm Internet Services, told a GDC audience Tuesday that he soon expects to see wireless games for cheap handsets comparable to those on Sony's new PSP handheld gaming device.
But some see several significant factors holding back the emergence of wireless games in the United States. First and foremost is a lack of easy integration between game publishers and wireless carriers' billing systems, a particular worry for those selling multiplayer games.
"Subscription billing is key to multiplayer success," said Brent Brookler, president of games and entertainment at Mobliss, a wireless game publisher. "We just need the carriers to keep pushing it for us."
Another problem, Brookler explained, is that developers who want to create wireless games are constrained by the fact that most carriers only trust brand-name publishers. Thus, an independent game developer faces an almost impenetrable barrier to getting its games out to the public.
"You can't just build a game," Brookler said. "You have to submit it to carriers, and they don't want anything non-branded."
While most of the people at the mobile conference believe wireless gaming is about to explode into a serious business, they also are quite sober about what's happening today.
The common wisdom is that the market is being held back by the difficulties of developing and launching mobile games without a common wireless platform. And, Tercek said, there is no prospect of any such common platform anytime soon.
That manifests itself in no single convention that consumers can count on for finding wireless games. Tercek pointed out that a Jeopardy game based on the popular TV quiz show is found under Cingular's puzzle section, Sprint PCS' TV and movies section, AT&T Wireless' words-and-trivia section and Verizon's classic games section.
"If we can't get the taxonomy right," said Tercek, "we're not going to attract customers."
