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| October 2, 2005 | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Day Two: Inside The CTIA Wireless I.T. & Entertainment 2005 | |||||||||||||||||||||
Tripping The Rift Trip Hawkins, CEO and Founder of Digital Chocolate, a developer of mobile games, was the last of three keynote speakers -- and a substitute, at that. Nonetheless, he came prepared with news of the launch of Digital Chocolate’s new game Mobile League Sports Network (MLSN), a mobile sports prediction game with league-based play and text-massaging support, across most major carriers in North America. Hawkins spent the majority of his time to explain his farsighted view of the potential for the mobile platform, as a “social computer”, more than a vehicle for straight content. Hawkins predicts content, like games, alone will not account for greater than ten percent of revenue in the mobile business in the foreseeable future. However, social experiences and interaction, he feels, will take its place, because of the success of the most popular and uses of the mobile phone: e-mails, text messaging, and of course, calling. “Less is more,” Hawkins stated, advocating the view that enhancing the audio and visuals of the content experience wasn’t as critical as boosting the social experience. He demonstrated his point to the audience of almost a thousand by asking who had played Madden 2006, EA’s popular football game and an example of hardcore content, and one or two raised their hands; he then asked who played in online fantasy sports leagues, a community-based and more casual experience, and several dozen raised their hands; then he asked who watched the last Super Bowl, and almost all in the audience raised their hands at that point. The “Super Bowl” audience is the mainstream market, as Hawkins described it, and it is the one cell phone content providers are working to reach. Further underscoring his view, from the bandwidth and value side, in Hawkins view, the basic business model is a value/kilobyte for transfer. File transfers such as MMO games have the least value, while voice is the standard, and text is the optimal value to aim for. If nothing else, contrasting Hawkins’ views with those of other industry leaders, who feel game content needs to be more attractive, more diverse and complex, to succeed, is interesting. In the coming months and years, seeing which point of view eventually proves more accurate will be worth keeping an eye on. Enter the Expo Of course, what would any good convention/conference be without an expo show floor? CTIA WIRELESS I.T. & Entertainment 2005 is no exception. Spread across two levels, the expo featured the latest and greatest in wireless technology, services, accessories, and games as well. However, unlike last year’s CTIA event, the presence of gaming seemed a bit more toned down, compared to the bright, excitement-around-every corner circus tent atmosphere from the year before. The pavilion dedicated to gaming had fewer game developers and more booths for supporting technologies and developer services – though even more games were shown off the floor. Even so, there were quite a few noteworthy games and technologies on display. Today and tomorrow we’ll be taking a look at a few of the more eye-catching games and developers tucked away amidst the less-sexy technology booths. Mobile Graph: Certainly ahead of it’s time for the US market, Mobile Graph’s Feel3D graphics processor chipsets for handsets, showed off some razzle-dazzle visual capabilities for mobile phones. Visually, based on what I saw of the Feel3D processors, the graphics displayed looked roughly like what might be seen for the PlayStation, only miniaturized to the level of a two inch cell phone. Visually, the graphics are impressive, though on such a small screen, the visual details are a little hard to sort out. Still, it’s nothing short of impressive to see PlayStation classics like Resident Evil and RayStorm represented in recognizable form on a mobile phone environment. The Feel3D is loaded up with impressive stats given the platform -- anti-aliasing (reduces the stair-stepping on pixelized textures), bilinear filtering (smoothes textures), independent sprite rendering support, and more. The first generation chipset, the F3D 1000, was utilized in Korea in Samsung’s SPH-G1000 and SCH-G100 gaming phones – and unfortunately, may never see the light of day here. But it’s a glimpse into a possible future for mobile phone technology stateside. GameLoft: GameLoft never seem to show up at CTIA empty-handed, these folks had several titles, including Vijay Singh Golf 2005 3D, Massive Snowboarding and several other titles. Specifically, Sanette Chao, GameLoft’s Communications Manager, was kind enough to demonstrate – in butt-kicking style, handing me defeat on a platter – how the multiplayer features of Asphalt (Urban GT) 2 worked, on a V Vast-enabled handset. I played head to head with her and the impression of speed was convincing, all in all. The graphics rendered nicely, and the sprite scaling and zooming also kicked in nicely. The sprites, both environmental and vehicular, were rendered clearly and colorfully, despite the night-time based environment. Expect more detail, more 3D effects and hopefully polygons, as Asphalt 2 races toward completion before the end of 2005. I also gave Massive Snowboarding, the recently released snowboarding game in the vein of Cool Boarders for the PlayStation for V Cast mobile phones a try. Graphics were again smooth and fluid and also very clear, on both the riders, the boards and the mountainous and snowfield environments. It’s clear that the experience is more than just a let-gravity-take-its-course game. Riders have a choice of tricks, boards, characters to pick from. Very impressive stuff. The sound, however, I can’t yet vouch for, considering the cacaphony of sound around me in the expo area. Noumena Innovations: Noumena was part of a group of Nokia developers, showcasing their mobile game product under the Nokia booth banner. Noumena is a Beijing-based developer, who uses the less-commonly used development platform, Symbian; but according to the developers, the platform is ideal for 3D graphics. Their games are developed on the “Magic Game Station” development system. Specifically, I had a chance to try out “MGS Mad Macs”. Mad Macs is a turn-based multiplayer tank battle game for up to 4 players, and expected future support for up to 8 players. The one of the six battlefields I did see absolutely blazed by, to give a solid impression of speed, without a lot of the graphics tearing you’ll frequently see with other mobile titles. Noumena doesn’t yet have a presence stateside, but it shouldn’t be ruled out in the future either. The look and feel of the game, while quite speedy, is also quite cartoony – which isn’t a bad thing, if you prefer bright, bold characters and vehicles in your mayhem. Summary: The expo show floor was loaded down with promising new technologies to enhance the entertainment value of the average mobile phone user, not so much in the way of packaged entertainment product. But what was there to see has proven to the mobile gaming industry is definitely advancing in eye-catching ways. However, there are a few more booths, a few more interesting tidbits of info, a multiplayer mobile game-player should know about. Look for the last installment of MPOGD’s look inside the CTIA WIRELESS I.T. & Entertainment 2005. Written by Paul Philleo | |||||||||||||||||||||
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