Seattle, July 14 - An audience of primarily developers listened to a panel of carrier representatives about how they operate. Here are some of the highlights, preceded by the official session description from the program.
Carriers and the Mobile Games Universe
Like the air we breathe, wireless access to the web, email, chat, and entertainment surrounds us everywhere we go. Over the span of 20 years, wireless carriers have changed the way we talk, built a new way of communicating (SMS), and created new channels for distributing and playing games. In this panel, representatives from leading US carriers will discuss how mobile games fit into the overall wireless carrier world, and what that role means for the future of mobile entertainment.
- Paul Nakayama, Sr. Director, Content Programming, Amp'd Mobile
- Andrew Stein, Sr. Product Manager, Cingular
- Matthew Bellows, GM & VP Marketing, Floodgate Entertainment (moderator)
Stein and Nakayama: We don't charge fees for better deck placement.
Stein: Carriers and publishers have regular roadmap chats with each other. They might be every two weeks, every month, or every quarter.
Stein: When I look at game sales, I look at total sales for the game across all phones. I don't look at which phones are performing better. Naturally, games on more platforms are more likely to get my attention.
Nakayama: We devote more marketing resources to games that the developer has put on more phones.
Stein: We're in the midst of a major push to classify all content as safe or restricted. This applies to ringtones, games, wallpaper -- everything.
Anonymous: Why don't you have SMS payment for developers?
Stein: We're working on a payment system where developers can do billing from within the game. Were targeting 2007.
Nakayama: I love the idea of an in-game marketplace.
Stein: We don't design phones. We put requests out and OEMs bid/pitch. We're very price conscious. If we're going to sell a million units, each extra dollar of cost in the hardware is $1 million.
