Prepaid Reviews Blog » Mobile Gaming

Old school video games on your phone

Joe — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 19:40:10 +0000

If you’ve read through our old columns, we make our bias towards old-school video games very clear. So we’d like to direct you to Going Cellular, our sister site (and where you can catch our ravings about the postpaid cellular world), for an installment called Old-School Games for Cell Phones. The takeaway quote: “Super Mario 1 will never die!” Damn straight.

This post originated at PrepaidReviews.com - The number one resource for NET 10 Prepaid information on the web!

Old school video games on your phone

This post originated at PrepaidReviews.com - The number one resource for NET 10 Prepaid information on the web!

Old school video games on your phone

Google throws hat into mobile content ring

Joe — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 17:00:30 +0000

Is there anything Google doesn’t do? Well, until recently, they had little invested in the mobile world. Then we heard of their play at the wireless spectrum auction. Now the news is that they’re about to enter the mobile content industry. Which makes perfect sense, since they’re in just about every other technological industry. Like many of their endeavors, the power of their search will power their mobile content plan.

The idea is to aid consumers in finding all of their mobile content via search. If someone wants to find, say, a Van Halen ringtone, they would just use Google’s mobile search to find a list of places they can find Van Halen ringtones. If they want to find a copy of Tetris, they can search and sort through the billiondy places you can find a copy of the popular puzzle game.

After proving this model is successful, Google would then take a note from its ad program and charge websites for higher placement for certain keywords in search. However, everything isn’t all smiles and sunshine:

The company has been working for months with content providers — including large entertainment companies and smaller mobile-media aggregators — to index their material and make it available via mobile search. But the project has been marred by a series of technical delays, people familiar with the matter say, illustrating that there’s a learning curve as Internet giants adjust to the peculiarities of the mobile world. It isn’t clear how soon Google plans to launch the service.

Another snag: they’re going to have to work with or around major carriers like Verizon and AT&T. Surely, those companies won’t be too pleased that Google is trying to steal some of their marketplace, and may make it tough on them. However, Google could initiate a move that would allow transactions to pass through the major carriers’ storefronts, thereby being an affiliate-like program. Still, with all the fighting over the spectrum auction, we don’t see these companies working together in the near future.

There are also rumors of Google starting a social networking kind of site where users can exchange content. This would be run through their popular Gmail platform. Google has issued no confirmation on this, but it makes sense. It wouldn’t cost them much, and the benefits could be far-reaching.

It seems Google is popping up everywhere in the news nowadays. We’re absolutely looking out for them to start their own mobile network; their recent dealings with major carriers make it unlikely they’d start an MVNO.

[Wall Street Journal]

This post originated at PrepaidReviews.com - The number one resource for NET 10 Prepaid information on the web!

Google throws hat into mobile content ring

This post originated at PrepaidReviews.com - The number one resource for NET 10 Prepaid information on the web!

Google throws hat into mobile content ring

A good day for prepaid mobile gamers

Stuart — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 17:00:16 +0000

Funny how things work out. On Friday, we talked about finding a provider rich in mobile games. Today, we received a story about a merger between iLoop Mobile and Via One Networks that will bring prepaid digital content to your cell phone. iLoop is the mobile technology company that wants to deliver the games, and Via One Networks deals with point of sale transaction processing. It seems like a match made in Mario Heaven.

We’ll let the article do the talking, because we don’t think we could explain it much better:

Under the agreement, the Via One prepaid billing solution will be offered to iLoop Mobile mFinity platform users. Thus, content providers will be able to create mobile distribution initiatives with various prepaid billing solutions available and ready to deploy.

Subsequently, Via One will use iLoop Mobile’s mFinity platform for their clients to create and manage mobile content distribution initiatives. Via One has opted for the mFinity appliance to take advantage of independent control over their mobile infrastructure.

This truly sounds like one of those “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” kinds of deals, rather than the “we’re big and you’re small, so we’re going to ‘collaborate,’ and by collaborate we mean take you over” brand of deals.

The best part about iLoop is that allows anyone to create mobile content. This will also play well for businesses, as iLoop’s mFinity platform allows for “direct one-to-one consumer interaction and mobile content distribution.” We can totally see this being used in the upcoming elections.

Honestly, we hadn’t heard of either company before reading this article. But as we got through it, we realized the power of this partnership. iLoop sounds like a great company with a great goal, and Via One is helping them achieve their goals via distribution. Once again, these are the kinds of deals we praise.

[TMCnet]

This post originated at PrepaidReviews.com - The number one resource for NET 10 Prepaid information on the web!

A good day for prepaid mobile gamers

This post originated at PrepaidReviews.com - The number one resource for NET 10 Prepaid information on the web!

A good day for prepaid mobile gamers

Verizon, Sprint hold edge in mobile gaming

Joe — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 15:03:38 +0000

So it seems that Verizon and Sprinthave an edge over the competition when it comes to mobile gaming. Not only are Verizon and Sprint customers happier with their gaming experience, but they find it easier to navigate towards their games of choice. Extra props to Sprint, who beat out Verizon by one point — whatever that means — in overall portal experience.

According to Paul Brown, author of the report, “On average it took users three times as many clicks to access the games store using the AT&T/Cingular service compared to Verizon Wireless.”

The first question we asked ourselves: does it really matter? When someone chooses a phone service, how much weight does the gaming carry? Okay, so that’s the first two questions we asked ourselves.

We suppose that if someone considered AT&T and Verizon neck and neck in terms of service (though we’ve had both and would completely disagree with that notion), it could come down to the accessibility of the extras. If Verizon had more of and better access to games and ringtones, they might just win out. But that would assume that everything else is created equal, which is rarely the case.

Now, we don’t currently have both services, and it would be unfair to speak of the virtues of the one we have while not being able to speak of the other. However, we did check out the respective websites. With Verizon, it took one click and we were browsing through games. With Cingular, we had to click “Ringtones & Downloads,” then click “Games,” Then go through the games landing page. So it was a few extra clicks, but it wasn’t really a hassle at all.

In Cingular’s corner is that you can purchase games right on the website, whereas you have to get the game through your phone with Verizon. Does the option of purchasing on either your phone or your computer outweigh the couple of extra clicks it takes to get to your destination? We suppose so. Then again, we didn’t experience how difficult it was to navigate to the games through a phone, so there’s a chance that’s an issue.

David Kerr, vice president at Strategy Analytics, offers some criticism, ostensibly at Cingular: “While the estimated US revenue from mobile gaming is projected to be over $520 Million in 2007, operators are missing out on over $100 Million in revenue as a result of inferior usability.”

Certainly, Cingular alone isn’t losing $100 million by requiring a couple of extra clicks. But according to Kerr, they are losing revenue with their extra navigation steps. In the same light, though, isn’t Verizon losing money by not allowing users to buy games on the website? Was the website not brought into consideration in this study?

We still don’t see games as a huge selling point in mobile services (though there are 520 million reasons we’re wrong). Then again, it wasn’t so long ago that we were sitting in the back of the classroom, ruining our calculus grade by playing Tetris on our graphing calculator. On second thought: let them play games (without having to click a lot)!

This post originated at PrepaidReviews.com - The number one resource for NET 10 Prepaid information on the web!

Verizon, Sprint hold edge in mobile gaming

This post originated at PrepaidReviews.com - The number one resource for NET 10 Prepaid information on the web!

Verizon, Sprint hold edge in mobile gaming