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Games Have Ring of Success

Posted on: Wednesday, 17 August 2005, 21:00 CDT

Aug. 17--The games that people play, from poker to bowling, now fit into pocket-sized cell phones.

As those phones have become cheaper, faster and filled with more graphics and memory, they have become hand-held portable entertainment devices.

While his wife shops for shoes, Thomas Adams, 33, plays a few holes of golf on his Motorola RAZR V3 camera phone.

The realistic graphics on his cell phone golf game show wind speed, sand traps and roughs, and the tricks of a pro.

"You can put spin on the ball both ways," he said.

Suddenly, millions of people have discovered that killing time can be fun.

Verizon Wireless customers have downloaded more than 22.5 million games from January through May, nearly double the same period last year.

Games are the most popular category on Verizon's "Get it Now" virtual shopping aisle, outselling ringtones, wallpaper, productivity tools and information services.

Already, 192 million people in the United States have cell phones and more than half of them download ringtones, screensavers, video clips and games.

The number of people downloading games onto their cell phone has risen 25 percent this year, said Seamus McAteer, senior analyst with Seattle-based M:Metrics, which tracks mobile phone content. Consumers download around 6 million games each month in the United States, he said.

Driving the popularity of mobile phone gaming are the newer phones that can display games with Sony Playstation quality, said Jimmy Duvall, Verizon Wireless' spokesman in Dallas. The video-enabled mobile phones also have longer battery life, bigger color screens, stereo sound systems and 3-D graphics.

"The games are just more fun to play and they are more entertaining," Duvall said.

This month RadioShack began selling games developed by Los Angeles-based Jamdat Mobile for Sprint and Cingular wireless customers at its more than 5,000 stores. RadioShack offers six of the most popular Jamdat games: Tetris, Bejeweled, Jamdat Bowling 2, Yahtzee, solitaire and casino/blackjack.

Cell phone carriers' selections range from strategy to casino, sports and action games. They cost $5 to $7 each to download or $2 to $3 for a monthly subscription.

A year ago, Paul Croteau, 39, downloaded Jamdat bowling onto his Sprint camera phone, and it's his favorite way to wait in line to register his car, at the bank or the grocery store. The bowling game, Croteau said, is challenging.

"I have yet to roll a 300. My high game is 258," he said.

Croteau admits it's kind of scary how he can recite his cell phone bowling games stats, but the game is addictive. As a kid, Croteau had a bowling average of 150 and played in leagues, but he hasn't played for years except on his phone.

Few people know about the growing demand for cell phone games better than Ruben Sandoval, 33, who works for Jamdat. He sold his company, Downtown Wireless in Los Angeles, to Jamdat for $6.6 million and moved back to San Antonio this year.

Sandoval's company released Downtown Texas Hold 'Em Poker just in time to benefit from the nationwide poker craze.

"We knew this was going to be the next big thing," Sandoval said. "From the start, it just took off."

By all accounts, the market for cell phone games just is starting to take off. Total revenue was $150 million last year, but within three years that is expected to grow to $1.5 billion, said Andy Riedel, general manager of games for InfoSpace, a mobile phone content provider.

InfoSpace holds daily and weekly cell phone game tournaments for Ms. Pac Man, Wheel of Fortune, Tetris and other games on its network for prizes such as CDs, DVDs and movie tickets.

Mobile phones will see rapid increases in memory that will drive gaming even more in the coming year, Riedel said.

"We'll see a lot more and bigger games and retail offerings where people actually sell memory cards that are pre-loaded with content in the phone store," Riedel said.

LimeLife in Menlo Park, Calif., develops games and other content specifically aimed at women because game makers don't cater specifically to the 90 million American women who own cell phones, CEO Kristin McDonnell said.

LimeLife focuses on creating games with less blood, bullets and galactic aliens. "Word Heaven," a word jumble, has bright, cheerful colors and graphics.

"We think the phone will become more and more central to people's lives," McDonnell said. "It's more convenient than the PC or using the Web. We think there is a huge revolution that is about to occur, and the phone will be the central device in people's lives."

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Copyright (c) 2005, San Antonio Express-News

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Source: San Antonio Express-News

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