作者：Dean TakahashiAdd

在娱乐行业中，移动游戏是个完全开发的领域。虽然Zynga主导社交游戏市场，而大型发行公司控制掌机领域，全球智能时间市场仍旧是个公开竞争的场所。这个领域存在众多潜在用户，有望成为最大的游戏市场。谁将成为其中胜者？

自2007年以来（游戏邦注：也就是苹果iPhone刚问世），智能手机游戏领域就已独立成型。平板电脑游戏在苹果2009年春推出iPhone后开始发展。如今快速发展的移动游戏市场是基于Android操作系统设备。随着《愤怒的小鸟》的成功，这款Rovio游戏现今下载量已突破2亿次，移动游戏公司成功获得大量融资。移动游戏公司，尤其是海外公司，估价直线攀升。Digi-Capital总经理Tim Merel表示，“现在是时候该采取行动。”

angry birds from rovio.com

移动游戏发展潜力

据Merel表示，移动游戏市场2014年估值有望增至130亿美元。移动和在线游戏市场2014年的总体估值有望达到440亿美元，也就是全球游戏市场870亿美元估值的一半。目前的移动游戏估值是80亿美元，仅占全球游戏市场一小部分，如今的市场依旧由掌机游戏、网页游戏和Facebook游戏主导（游戏邦注：据IDC预测，移动游戏未来几年估值有望增至50亿美元，众人对于该市场未来估值看法不一，但都认为未来会有较大幅度的增长）。

未来如何形成庞大移动游戏市场？这是本周GamesBeat 2011的讨论议题。有80位行业精英将参与移动游戏未来发展的讨论，大家都希望获悉如何移动游戏领域施展拳脚。

反复试验方能成功

我们中的愤世嫉俗者都对作品大肆宣传不寒而栗。较早进入该市场的公司发现这个市场深度不够。也就是说，过去这个生态系统还未完全成熟。这是很多公司试图从中有所作为的市场，但鲜少能够获得成功。像《愤怒的小鸟》这样的成功游戏都是继众多失败作品之后才诞生。虚拟世界的其他游戏、功能手机游戏和休闲网页游戏亦是如此。

移动游戏的黄金时代还未到来。苹果之类的平台所有者已做出相应调整，终止开发商的某些业务，例如苹果最近终止某些推广游戏的奖励措施。Android生态系统呈分裂状态，其成熟度还不足以创收。就营收能力来看，其他平台还相当脆弱。

当然，游戏公司若因害怕遭受更多损失而放弃投资移动游戏显然不明智。只有进行投资，遭受失败，然后从中学习的公司才能最终取得进步。Facebook初期阶段也存在许多阻力因素，但最终也发展成能够带来营收的成熟平台。手机生态系统也在逐步成熟。种种迹象足以说明。投资总是需要经历多年反复试验方能最终获得回报。

任天堂和索尼曾凭借移动设备（游戏邦注：例如Nintendo DS和PlayStation Portable）主宰移动游戏领域。但2007年苹果通过推出2亿多部iOS设备打破这片市场。如今有超过42.5万款iPhone应用和10万款原生iPad应用的下载量次数突破150亿。这表明移动游戏市场的准入门槛大大降低，几乎人人都可以参与其中。就连小公司（例如，戴夫·卡斯特努沃创办的Bolt Creative，其代表作为《口袋上帝》）的作品销量都高达数百万份。畅销作品不断涌现，如《翼飞冲天》、《Talking Friends》、《愤怒的小鸟》和《无尽之剑》。苹果至今已向开发商支付25亿美元费用。

Talking Friends from guim.co.uk

但其中的竞争也异常激烈。应用平均收入约为5882美元。这不足以支撑追随该市场的庞大开发商群体，更别提那些大公司。任天堂首席执行官岩田聪曾在3月份表示，智能手机领域出现如此多的1美元应用（移动游戏的均价是1.05美元）不利于市场健康发展，这也是任天堂跳过该市场的一大主要原因。

Digital Chocolate首席执行官Trip Hawkins也曾表示智能手机游戏过于泛滥，各游戏营收还不足以支付一张足球桌。过多垃圾作品涌入会破坏整个市场，消费者难以从中发现优质游戏，带来大量糟糕的移动游戏体验。目前App Store有6.4048万款游戏，平均每天有291款新作诞生。游戏制作成本只需几万或几十万，远低于掌机游戏的数百万预算。

决策正误

相比之下，Zynga每季度创收2.35亿美元，其Facebook游戏的MAU共计2.32亿。Facebook仅有6亿用户，其市场规模比全球手机市场小得多。社交游戏“争地战”发生在2007年至2009年期间。结果是Zynga的Facebook用户超越其15个竞争对手。这让Zynga能够公开发售股票，首轮发售就募集10亿美元，Zynga市值有望增至200亿美元。

这就是市场给予这家新兴游戏市场先驱公司的回馈。这是否会在移动游戏市场重现？曾经在社交和移动游戏方面都比Zynga富有潜力的社交游戏网络早已放弃Facebook游戏，转向iPhone游戏。事实证明这是个错误之举。MindJolt最近以未公开价格收购SGN，但SGN价值显然不及Zynga。

有趣的是，Facebook已经粉碎平台存在的众多竞争。如今Facebook和Zynga都开始从中受益。苹果公司不得不在移动领域极力对抗Android平台（游戏邦注：这个平台已获得相当可观的激活量）。激烈竞争促使移动游戏市场以更快速度前进，这将带来一个更快速发展的移动游戏市场。Android应用下载量已超越50亿，如今Android平台的游戏约有4万款。产生结果是竞争日益激化，Android和苹果都以越来越快速度相互促进。

未来游戏数量不再是关键。平台不再靠应用数量分胜负，而是凭借用户留存率和粘性。Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers公司（风投公司）合伙人Bing Gordon曾在上一次的DiscoveryBeat大会上表示，开发商的目标不是在头一两次留住玩家，而是能让用户在1年内持续登陆。

未来投资必要性

有些公司早早投入大量资金以期在这场战斗中能够处于领先地位。EA 2005年以6.8亿美元收购Jamdat（功能手机游戏开发商），旨在借助智能手机游戏进军更广阔的移动游戏市场。EA如今有些许应用长期位居iPhone应用综合榜单之中，其中包括《俄罗斯方块》，游戏迄今已有1.32多亿次下载量。

其他投入大量资金的公司包括Gameloft、Rovio（在《愤怒的小鸟》问世前，已推出52款作品）、Ngmoco、Digital Chocolate、PopCap Games、Glu Mobile、GameHouse、Capcom和Disney Mobile。成功移动游戏初创公司包括Storm8、Pocket Gems、TinyCo、Craneball Studios、Gameview Studios（属DeNA旗下）、Sunstorm Interactive、Backflip Studios和Outfit7。

全球顶级图像专家和游戏设计师约翰·卡马克表示，移动游戏技术未来两年定会超越当前的掌机游戏。

推广和曝光度是关键

这些公司正开始建立用户基础，给未来推广游戏铺路。TinyCo正是鉴于用户基础的重要性，所以投资500万美元于小型开发公司，帮助他们发行游戏。这家游戏公司为何要自己融资1800万美元，转把其中500万美元投资于其他公司？是希望充分发挥新兴推广力量的作用。

推广实力是游戏开发商在激烈竞争中脱颖而出不可或缺的筹码。如何让应用在众多内容当中被发现是个有待解决的问题。曝光议题促使OpenFeint之类移动社交网络公司的诞生，这些公司提供工具促使游戏通过成就、排行榜和好友竞争元素实现社交化。日本公司DeNA估值数十亿，这是因为成千上万日本手机用户使用DeNA的Mobage网络寻找游戏。

但在美国移动社交网络公司估值还不到数十亿。但其有潜力达到此标准。这也是为什么DeNA（游戏邦注：受益于日本强大用户基础）能够以4.03亿美元收购Ngmoco。以此价格收购Ngmoco似乎有些奢侈，但DeNA认为其有望因此成为国际化移动社交网络公司。Gree（DeNA在日本的竞争对手）也开始迈入国际市场，其以1.04以美元收购OpenFeint。Ngmoco的Neil Young认为，未来几年移动社交网络市场将会凭借曝光渠道涌现更多价值数十亿的公司。

除移动社交网络公司外，各种辅助公司都开始瞄准曝光度方面。Tapjoy通过自身强大营销网络推广游戏。Applifier目前正逐步将其Facebook宣传栏转移至移动平台。Getjar对其应用商店进行战略布局调整以达到宣传游戏目的。就连美国运通、Paypal、Zong、Visa及其他付费公司都开始参与其中，力图消除移动游戏付费障碍，以覆盖更多用户。

投资是关键

游戏公司2010年融资10.5亿美元，比前一年高出58%。今年单单Zynga就在其首次公开招股中筹得10多亿美元。去年排名前20的游戏公司中只有4家是移动游戏公司。

但如今我们可以发现多数投资都是秉承“移动平台优先”方针，其中移动游戏公司引领游戏市场。移动游戏投资趋势显然正在逐步白热化。

TinyCo融资1800万美元，Digital Chocolate筹得1200美元。 Pocket Gems募集500万美元。Rovio也获得4200万美元投资。投资者也越发引人关注： Accel Partners、帕金斯、红杉资本和马克·安德森都纷纷进军该领域。Storm8虽未进行融资，但其营收相当可观，最近刚刚宣布其营收首次增至100万美元。

免费游戏给移动游戏商业模式铺平道路。苹果在2009年秋引入了内置付费机制（游戏邦注：即用户无需离开应用便能够实现虚拟商品购买）。谷歌今年夏天引入内置付费系统。据移动分析公司Flurry表示，App Store应用综合榜单65%的营收都来自免费游戏。回到今年1月，排名前100的游戏当中，只有39%的营收来自免费游戏。此外，Xyologic今年3月份表示，40%的游戏下载都来自免费游戏。

这开始引起Zynga之类的大公司的注意，该公司刚推出iPhone游戏《CityVille Hometown》。去年Zynga斥资5330万美元收购移动游戏公司Newtoy（热门拼字游戏《Words With Friends》开发者）。Zynga最近又收购几家移动游戏公司，其如今已推出11款iPhone游戏。

cityville hometown from wordpress.com

但移动游戏领域虽受到众多追捧，也不免存在些许挫折。苹果今年4月份宣传停止采用付费安装营销策略（其中开发商向Tapjoy之类的营销者支付一定费用，以给安装应用用户一定奖励）就给其市场当头一棒。苹果认为开发商是以掏钱方式挤进前25名榜单。这促使Storm8之类的公司转移至Android平台。应用商店搜索公司Xyologic创始人马特豪斯·柯里科斯基表示，这促使新作发展成热门巨作越发困难。

未来发展之路

移动游戏有望形成一个巨大市场。Nielsen Research表示，游戏将会继续成为最受欢迎的应用类型。93%的应用下载者愿意为游戏掏钱。平均来看，移动玩家每月体验7.8小时，而iPhone玩家每月则花费14.7小时。日本和欧洲移动游戏普及度非常高，而美国也在不断发展之中。PopCap调查表明，1/3的美国和英国成年人过去1个月里都有玩移动游戏。

平板电脑游戏将会推动游戏市场朝新方向发展。OnLive之类的公司开始瞄准平板电脑（如iPad 2）陆续推出高质量PC游戏。随着游戏跨平台技术的诞生，移动设备的硬件实力不再是关键。游戏将存储和运作于远程服务器，其会向用户设备输送图像，不论是PC、平板电脑还是智能手机都能够顺利接收并呈现画面。

游戏串流公司Otoy的首席研究员Rob Wyatt表示，游戏跨平台技术将会促使掌机设备逐渐淡出市场，让所有设备够能够呈现高质量游戏。云端游戏需借助高质量无线连接技术，确保双向流动不被干扰，但该技术目前还在研发当中。OnLive的Perlman目前正致力于一个名为Dido的技术，其拥有无限宽频，能够向无线用户传输高速数据。这听起来有点不可思议，但OnLive两年前就开始着手此项目。如今其已顺利实现。

此外，很多游戏公司开始调整自己的在线网页游戏，让其能够运作于平板电脑当中，同时添加程序支持触屏或重力控制装置。随着智能游戏开发商和PC/掌机/网页开发商逐步转投平板电脑平台领域，该市场将发展成一个开放的大型市场。

同时，索尼和任天堂也开始加大在高端移动平台游戏的投入，确保其高价值用户不会流向其他平台和Android设备。任天堂今年3月在3DS平台推出裸眼3D作品，索尼计划今年秋天推出维持掌机画面质量的掌上PlayStation Vita。任天堂的Iwata表示，公司坚决不会涉猎手机游戏。

HTML5与原生应用

HTML5 from huomo.cn

另一会影响移动游戏未来的的因素是HTML5，这是移动和网页应用的新通用语言，其以某特定格式书写应用，让其能够运作于各种平台和设备。Hawkins认为，HTML5移动浏览器的出现将会让游戏公司免受App Store的限制。

HTML5游戏目前运作还相当缓慢，所以高质量游戏尚未采用该技术。原生应用或瞄准特定平台的应用目前运作速度最快。但随着开发商逐步学会调试应用，这将发生变化。最近一次试验是推出“混合应用”（游戏邦注：这是集所有元素于同个浏览器的原生应用）。运作迅速的游戏仍旧是那些采用原始格式的应用，但这将发生改变。游戏引擎和其他工具开发商将学会制作跨平台游戏。

随着游戏开始依托浏览器，用户无需完全通过App Store购买应用，其中苹果要分成30%。这将彻底变革App Store市场，跳过原本管理商店应用的商店主。当应用商店所有者丧失控制权，内容就变成免费。Hawkins表示，这将创造一个价值高达1000亿美元的游戏行业。

不论发生与否，这都是移动游戏的美好未来。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

The road ahead in mobile games

By Dean TakahashiAdd

Mobile gaming is the wide-open battleground of the entertainment industry. While Zynga dominates social and big publishers rule console games, the global smartphone game market is up for grabs. Since there are potentially billions of users in this market, mobile gaming could become the largest game market of them all. Who will win it?

Smartphone games have been growing as a market since 2007, when Apple’s iPhone debuted. Tablet games have been growing since the spring of 2009, when Apple launched the iPad. Now the fastest-growing mobile market is based on devices running the Android operating system.With triggering events such as the success of Angry Birds, the hit Rovio game that has been downloaded more than 200 million times, mobile game companies are raising tens of millions of dollars. Mobile game companies have garnered significant valuations, particularly overseas. Tim Merel, managing director at Digi-Capital, says, “The time to act is now.”

The potential of mobile games

Mobile games could be a $13 billion market in 2014, according to Merel. Mobile and online games together could be a $44 billion market, or 50 percent of the global $87 billion market in 2014. Today, mobile games are around $8 billion, a small slice of the overall game market, which is still dominated by console games, web games, and Facebook games. (IDC estimates mobile games will grow to $5 billion in a few years; the estimates vary, but few doubt mobile games will have a great growth rate).

How will a huge mobile game market come about? That’s one of the questions we’ll explore at GamesBeat 2011 on Tuesday and Wednesday at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. We’ve got 80 of the game industry’s finest minds focused on the evolution of mobile gaming. We all want to figure out how to connect the dots in mobile games.

Backlash to the hype

The cynics among us shudder at the hype. Some companies that dove in too early found there isn’t enough water in the swimming pool. That is, the ecosystem hasn’t been fully mature in the past. It’s a market where lots of companies have tried to succeed, but very few can claim successes. For every Angry Birds, there are thousands of failures. The tale has been similar for other gaming bubbles in virtual worlds, feature cell phone games, and casual web games.

Mobile gaming nirvana isn’t here yet. Platform owners such as Apple have made changes that have disrupted the businesses of developers, such as when Apple recently banned certain incentives for marketing games. The Android ecosystem is fragmented and not as mature when it comes to making money. And other platforms are still fairly weak in terms of a proven ability to generate revenues.

Still, it would be foolish for game companies to avoid investing in mobile games, for fear that they might get more scars. Those who invest and fail and learn are the ones that get ahead. There was a lot of chaos and friction in the early days of Facebook as well. But that eventually turned into a solid platform for making money. The mobile ecosystem is maturing as well. There is plenty of evidence to point to progress on this front. It always takes a few years of trial and error before an investment pays off.

Nintendo and Sony once ruled mobile games via devices such as the Nintendo DS and the PlayStation Portable. But Apple has busted the market open with more than 200 million iOS devices sold since 2007. There are more than 425,000 iPhone apps and 100,000 native iPad apps that have been downloaded more than 15 billion times. That shows that the barriers to entry in mobile games have been lowered so that almost anyone can enter. Small developers such as Dave Castelnuovo’s Bolt Creative — maker of Pocket God — have sold millions of units. Big hits have emerged such as Tiny Wings, Talking Friends, Angry Birds, Infinity Blade and other titles. Apple has paid $2.5 billion to its developers to date.

But the competition is also nightmarish. The average revenue per app is about $5,882. That’s not enough to support the huge ecosystem of developers that are chasing the market, let alone big companies. Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata (pictured holding 3DS) said in March that the presence of so much free and $1 software (the average mobile game price is $1.05) in the smartphone games market isn’t healthy and is a primary reason Nintendo is avoiding the market.

Trip Hawkins (pictured right), chief executive of Digital Chocolate, has also warned of the problem of having a glut of games on the smartphone platforms, noting that the average revenue per game doesn’t even pay for a really good foosball table. Too much junk can ruin the market for everyone and make it hard for consumers to find the good games, resulting in a lot of bad experiences in mobile games. Today, there are 64,048 games on the App Store, including 291 new ones a day. The cost of making these games is in the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars, a lot less than the multimillion-dollar console game budgets.

Making the right and wrong choices

By comparison, Zynga is bringing in $235 million per quarter with a base of 232 million monthly active users for its Facebook games. With 600 million users, Facebook is a smaller market than the worldwide mobile phone market. The land grab in social games took place from 2007 to 2009. The result is that Zynga has more users on Facebook than the next 15 rivals.That has positioned the company to go public, raising $1 billion or more in an offering that is expected to value Zynga at $20 billion.

That is how the market rewards companies that pioneer a new market in games and come to dominate it — at the right time. Will the same thing happen again in mobile? Social Gaming Network, which once looked more promising than Zynga in both social games and mobile games, shifted into iPhone games early on, abandoning Facebook games. That turned out to be the wrong move. MindJolt recently acquired SGN for an undisclosed price, but SGN was definitely far less valuable than Zynga by the time it sold out.

The interesting thing here is that Facebook has crushed a lot of its competition. Now both Facebook and Zynga are reaping the rewards. With mobile, Apple faces a bruising fight with Android, which has begun to win the race in terms of numbers of phone activations. The fierce competition is driving the mobile market forward at a faster pace, and that should result in a faster growing mobile games market. Android app downloads have crossed 5 billion, and there are about 40,000 games on Android now. The result is a spiral of competition, where Android and Apple are propelling each other forward at faster and faster rates.

At some point, the numbers game won’t matter. The platform that wins won’t be the one with the most apps. It will be the one with the most retention of users and the most engagement. As Bing Gordon, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, said at our last DiscoveryBeat conference, a developer’s job is not to get a first date, or a second date with a gamer. It is to get an anniversary.

The necessity of investing in the future

Some companies have invested a lot of money early to be out front in this fight. Electronic Arts bought Jamdat, a maker of games for feature cell phones, for $680 million in 2005. It used that position to ready itself for an even bigger mobile game market with the debut of smartphone games. EA now has some of the biggest grossing iPhone apps of all time, including Tetris, which has had more than 132 million paid downloads to date.

Other players that have made big investments include Gameloft, Rovio (it made 52 mobile games before Angry Birds took off), Ngmoco, Digital Chocolate, PopCap Games, Glu Mobile, GameHouse, Capcom, and Disney Mobile. Successful startups in mobile include Storm8, Pocket Gems, TinyCo, Craneball Studios, Gameview Studios (part of DeNA), Sunstorm Interactive, Backflip Studios and Outfit7.

John Carmack, one of the world’s greatest graphics experts and game designers, says that it is unquestionable that mobile gaming technology will surpass the current consoles within two years.

Distribution and discovery matter

These companies are building up user bases that can become distribution networks for future games. Recognizing that it has distribution power, TinyCo has started a $5 million fund to invest in small developers to help them launch their games. Why would a game company raise $18 million and turn around and invest $5 million in others? It is leveraging its newfound distribution power.

The distribution power is what the game developers need in order to stand out from the nightmarish competition. How to get your game discovered in a sea of content is still an unsolved problem. The problem of discovery gave rise to mobile social networks such as OpenFeint, which offer tools to socialize a game with achievements, leaderboards, and friend competitions. In Japan, DeNA became a billion-dollar company because tens of millions of Japanese phone users used DeNA’s Mobage network to find games.

But in the U.S., the mobile social networks have not yet become billion-dollar companies. But the potential is there. That is why DeNA, benefiting from its strong base in Japan, was able to buy Ngmoco for $403 million. That seemed like an extravagant price to pay for Ngmoco, but DeNA saw a chance to become a worldwide global player in mobile social networks. Gree, DeNA’s rival in Japan, had to step up on the global stage as well and it acquired OpenFeint for $104 million. Ngmoco’s Neil Young believes that the billion-dollar companies will be created in the mobile social network space in the next couple of years because of the discovery problem.

Beyond the mobile social networks, all sorts of supporting companies are attacking the discovery issue. Tapjoy is promoting games through its own powerful marketing networks. Applifier is adapting its Facebook promotion bar to mobile. Getjar is offering strategic placement in its app store to promote games. Even American Express, Paypal, Zong, Visa and other payment companies will get in on the act, finding ways to eliminate the friction in paying for mobile games so an ever-wider audience can enjoy them.

The investment juggernaut

Game companies raised $1.05 billion in 2010, up 58 percent from a year earlier. This year, Zynga alone could raise more than $1 billion in one fell swoop with its expected initial public offering. Only four of the top 20 companies on that list last year were mobile companies.

But now we’re seeing investors who are embracing in Mobile First strategies, where game companies lead with mobile games. The momentum of this investment into mobile is clearly growing.

TinyCo raised $18 million. Digital Chocolate raised $12 million. Pocket Gems raised $5 million. Rovio raised $42 million. The investors are also getting more interesting: Accel Partners, Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital and Marc Andreessen are all moving into the market. Storm8 hasn’t raised money, but it is generating considerable revenue, having recently reported its first $1 million revenue day.

Free-to-play gaming has helped paved the way for a real business model in mobile games. Apple introduced in-app purchases — the ability to buy something such as a virtual good without leaving an app — in the fall of 2009. Google introduced in-app purchases this summer. On the App Store, about 65 percent of the revenue from the top-grossing games now comes from free-to-play games, according to mobile analytics firm Flurry. Back in January, only 39 percent of the revenue from the top 100 games were free-to-play. Separately, Xyologic reported in March that 40 percent of game downloads were free-to-play games.

That has drawn bigger companies such as Zynga, which recently launched CityVille Hometown on the iPhone. Last year, Zynga paid $53.3 million to acquire mobile game maker Newtoy, creator of Words With Friends, a hit Scrabble-like game. Zynga is acquiring mobile game companies regularly now, and it has 11 games on mobile phones.

But for every endorsement of the mobile game market, there is a setback. Apple wounded its own market in April when it abruptly cut off pay-per-install marketing, where developers paid marketers such as Tapjoy to offer incentives to users to install other apps. Apple felt that developers were buying their way onto the top 25 lists. That’s driving companies such as Storm8 to expand on Android. The effect is that it has become harder to launch new games which go on to be a top hit, said Matthaus Krzykowski, founder of app store search firm Xyologic and a frequent VentureBeat contributor.

The path to the future

But there’s hope that mobile games will become a great market. Nielsen Research says that games continue to be the most popular category for apps. About 93 percent of app downloaders are willing go pay for games that they play. On average, mobile gamers play 7.8 hours a month, while iPhone users in particular play 14.7 hours a month. In Japan and Europe, mobile game usage is huge, and it is growing in the U.S. A survey by PopCap said a third of U.S. and U.K. adults have played a mobile game in the past month.

Tablet games are likely to take the market in a new direction. Companies such as OnLive are streaming high-quality PC games onto tablets such as the iPad 2. With game-streaming, the power of the hardware for the mobile device doesn’t matter. Games are stored and executed in a distant server, and video is sent down to the users machine, which can display the video whether it running on a PC or a tablet or, eventually, a smartphone.

Rob Wyatt, chief scientist of game-streaming firm Otoy, believes that game streaming could make consoles obsolete, allowing devices of any kind to run high-quality games. Cloud-based games will require good wireless connections to keep the two-way stream from being interrupted, but that technology is in the works. Perlman at OnLive is working on something called Dido that will have virtually unlimited bandwidth for delivering high-speed data to wireless users. It sounds crazy, but OnLive itself seemed crazy two years ago. Now it works.

Meanwhile, many game companies are beginning to adapt online web games so they run on tablets, with routines added to support touchscreen or accelerometer controls. The tablet market may be an even bigger free-for-all, as both smartphone game makers and PC/console/web game makers can target the platform.

Sony and Nintendo, meanwhile, are doubling down on their investments in mobile games at the high end to make sure that Apple and Android devices don’t steal their high-value customers. Nintendo launched glasses-free 3D viewing on the 3DS in March and Sony is preparing to launch the PlayStation Vita handheld with console-like graphics this fall. Nintendo’s Iwata insists that the company won’t be doing smart phone games.

HTML5 vs Native apps

Another factor that will affect the future of mobile games is HTML5, the new lingua franca for mobile and web apps that allows a game written in the format to run on a variety of platforms and devices. Hawkins believes that the arrival of HTML5-based mobile browsers will set game companies free from the restrictions of App Stores.

HTML5 games run fairly slow right now, so the highest-quality games can’t use them just yet. Native apps, or those designed to run on specific devices, perform the fastest now. But that could change over time as developers learn how to fine-tune their games.The latest approach to doing this is the “hybrid app,” which is a native app that runs all of its components in a browser. The fastest games must still be coded in native formats, but that could change. The game engine makers and other tool makers may figure out how to make cross-platform games.

With games running in the browser, users won’t be dependent entirely on purchasing apps from App Stores, which take a 30 percent cut. That would complete the revolution that began with the creation of the App Store, which bypassed the gatekeeper carriers who previously had control over which apps were available for purchase. When the app store owners lose control themselves, content will be free. And that, Hawkins argues, will lead to a $100 billion game industry.

Whether that happens or not, it’s a rosy future for mobile games. At our conference, you’ll hear people from across this entire spectrum — from people like Atari founder Nolan Bushnell to technologists creating the future such as Otoy’s Rob Wyatt. We hope you’ll join us.（Source：venturebeat）