Now everyone can Game...

It doesn’t take a Mckinsey/KPMG report to tell you that Gaming is exploding...

Every household has a kid/youngster whose wishlist is a gaming console for his or her birthday/diwali/[insert any random occasion where gifts are exchanged]. Heck, I know of many who have a number of Gaming devices- a Ps2, a psp and of course the mobile phone.

Yes, you read right- I called the mobile phone a gaming device...

For years, people have been dreaming of the day when gaming is accessible to all and we can all be happily twiddling our thumbs away killing monsters in distant lands or racing our fantasy cars on the winding roads of Monaco. Dream no more, the mobile phone has made that possible.

A few years ago, the mobile gaming experience was quite inferior- a poor man’s gaming console, due to the handset capabilities and inexperience on the part of mobile gaming developers on how to utilize the restricted environment to offer quality gaming experience. However, that has changed and how!

All the latest handsets support gaming experiences to rival the Nintendo DS and even the PSP! Mobile device makers have, to their credit, pushed the limits of hardware capabilities and game developers have exploited this fully. The Apple Iphone has to some extent shown the other device makers of how a mobile phone can be a great gaming console. Sure, Nokia had a great device called the NGage with some really good titles but the device had a love it or hate it ‘sidetalking’ feature and a bad game discovery process. The iphone with its superlative hardware and a great app store coupled with great low prices and top of the line titles has really infused new energy to the once-flaccid mobile gaming market. Gaming for the iphone is very profitable business line- evident by the number of games available in the app store- Games lead all iPhone categories with 6,276 titles, or 23.1 percent of total App Store applications.

Unfortunately, most carriers are still mostly grappling in the dark when it comes to Mobile Gaming. It all starts with the Carrier’s deck- most carrier decks are cluttered with too many inferior games selling at mostly inflated prices. Gaming for many in India begins with the Mobile phone (since consoles and high end PCs are still out of reach for the average Indian) and the first few experiences that they have with it will determine on whether they would purchase more games from the carrier or stick to their embedded ‘Snake’ Game for the rest of their lives (Read the Video Game Crash of 1983 for more). It is imperative that Carriers get quality titles that are reasonably or at least creatively priced with pricing options like Try N Buy, Micro-payments etc to get people to get their first taste of gaming. A large opportunity stands before the carriers in the country- they can quickly get an entire generation hooked onto mobile gaming and lead this initiative or watch the device makers, with their fantastic app stores, to snatch them away.

This is one real-world game that has a lot at stake for the mobile operators.