Mobile2web convergence is happening, now

Talk to anyone who doesn't work for a mobile operator and they'll tell you the next big thing in mobile games is distributing games outside the operator's portal (i.e. the list of games you get when you select 'games' on your mobile phone).

The reason is most operators don't really care about the quality of the games on that list and don't pay decent margins to anyone not on the list either – hence the huge success of the less-than-imaginatively branded mobile games which end up filling up the top 10 selection you're presented with when you hit the 'Most Popular Games' list on your mobile.

In fact, the situation has got so bad that mobile publishers who don't feature on such lists are getting creative when it comes to highlighting the entertainment value of games that don't involve TV or film brands.

So it was at the Casual Connect conference in Amsterdam, Ilkka Paananen, the studio president of Digital Chocolate's mobile studio, pointed out his company has been investing in web versions of its games, notably Tower Bloxx.

The free flash version of the game (which is cut down, not including city building options) has been played over ten million times, while the Facebook variant (despite its ongoing technical difficulties) has been installed on 430,000 accounts and is played 35,000 times every day. This sort of cross-promotion has led to over 300,000 people selecting the highlighted option to pay to download the mobile version of the game, although due to data mining limitations Digital Chocolate can't confirm how many of those people actually ended up purchasing the game.

A similar approach has been occurring at Realgames, where some of the mobile games from Mr Goodliving have been promoted through the company's German website on a try-before-you-buy basis. More generally, in 2008, Realnetworks expects to further align its web download casual game business with its mobile game business which should see cross-promotional opportunities for games such as Trivial Pursuit, Cake Mania and Super Collapse.

Another company which sees the off-portal dollar signs lining up is Oberon Media, which as well as powering some massive casual gaming websites also owns mobile publisher I-play.

It's recently launched an integrated web-mobile campaign with US cable TV/internet company Comcast in which it cross-promoted titles such as Fast & Furious Fugitive and Jewel Quest II through Comcast's Chill portal.

The goal was to drive mobile sales from free web play via try-before-you-buy mobile versions of the games. To ease this process, you only needed to enter your mobile phone number to gain access to the game while direct billing was supported from most operators in the US and the UK.