Which way are mobile phone games heading?
Aside online games and static game devices like Playstation,
mobile games are the next most popular games around now. The
popularity has grown so big that mobile operators are competing
against each other by offering their subscribers loads of both
free and paid games for their pleasure. Not only mobile
operators, cell phone manufacturers are also pre-programming
their phones with a variety of games. The growing interest in
mobile gaming is producing a lot of benefits for the mobile
industry. The operators are deriving sizable revenue from
selling these games, software developers are regularly deriving
royalties from phone manufacturers and the manufacturers
themselves are cashing in heavily on revenue from subscribers.
You will appreciate the level of income in this are if you
consider the fact that by the year 2009, there would be 220
million mobile phone game fans in the world. Now lets delve into
the kinds of games we have around: We have the embedded games
that are factory coded into the phones, SMS games that operate
by interacting with a SMS server upon which the game resides and
browser games that are played online using the cell phones mini
browser. Of all these games the cheapest and most popular is the
inbuilt ones though the excitement offered by SMS and online
games are not a deterrent to people who would spend every dime
to get hooked on. The reason is browser games are of multi-media
origin and can be compared to the type experienced on
Playstation or xbox. There are several ways to develop mobile
games though the most popular language used are C++, Java and
Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless (BREW) platform . Out of
these three, Java is the most popular method. The reason is
obvious - java is widely supported by the web and supported by
all the principal phone manufacturers. Again a medium like J2ME
is open source and thus cheap to use as a development medium.
Java as we know it is highly portable across platforms and
leaves developers with little worry that their program will not
work on certain phones. Programmers choose this language
platform because it does not interfere with programs running
natively on the phone. But in reality the future of mobile game
development is in MIDP 2.0 API which is a compilation of high
end applications that allow developers to come up with
sophiscated and highly interactive games for fans. It is fast to
use and ensures a stable program after compilation. It is
projected that this program, though futuristic, shall be the
standard for mobile game developers for a long time as it
exhibits versatility and the quick deployment - qualities
programmer love.
