Social networking sites will drive mobile game development

The rapid rise of social networking sites and the launch of Nokia's new gaming delivery platform will play a big role in promoting mobile game publishers. The mobile gaming market unexpectedly slipped last year, with game developers blaming telecoms operators for their lack of interest in investing in game marketing. Now they have turned their attention to the hottest social networking sites, hoping to promote and sell their games through these new channels. For example, digital chocolate, a mobile game publisher, has put its favorite game, Tower Bloxx, on multiple social and gaming sites. Only 4 months into Facebook, the game has been installed more than 400,000 times. Digital Chocolate Game development director Eca. "The marketing effect of social networking sites is much more than we expected and this year all of our important products will be Pannanin," says Ilkka Paananen. M:metrics, a media research firm, says the number of U.S. and European users who bought mobile games in the past year has barely changed because of the growing popularity of mobile-phone pre-installed games. Daniel Informa, analyst at the market research firm. Winterburthom Daniel Winterbottom said: "The mobile gaming market has been stalled, with less than 5% of users actually buying and playing games." A major problem is that about 90% of mobile games are sold through operators ' portals, but operators have little investment in new game marketing and promotions. "Informa expects mobile gaming revenues to reach $4 billion trillion this year, thanks to Nokia's new Gage gaming service, Rose 23% from 2007. Early last month, Nokia pioneered Gage gaming services to global N81 mobile subscribers, hoping to get feedback to further improve services and eventually open to more users. So far, nearly all major mobile game distributors have signed up to Nokia Gage gaming services, including EA, Gameloft and Glu Mobile. For mobile game publishers, too many phone models are one of the major challenges they face. Only five of the world's top handset makers, including Nokia, Samsung Electronics, Motorola, Sony Ericsson and LG Electronics, are launching hundreds of new handsets a year. Because different mobile phones may use different software, mobile game developers also need to launch a number of versions of the game, which greatly increased the cost of development. Through the Nokia Gage Service, mobile game developers can issue a single version of the game to 1000多万部 mobile phones.