Top 10 mobile gaming trends in 2007 (part 1)

Okay, the heading and strap pretty much tell you what to expect, so let's just get on with it, shall we?

Waiting for N-Gage
For those of us interested in Nokia's plans to relaunch N-Gage as a many-handset gaming platform, 2007 has been alternately frustrating and exciting. Exciting because, every so often at industry events, Nokia has shown off some enticing new N-Gage games and talked up its plans for a seamless Xbox Live-style community.

But frustrating, because that corporate talk has been punctuated by long periods of silence, and towards the end of the year, two last-minute delays in the launch of new N-Gage – now due sometime in 2008. So if there's one thing that 2007 has taught us about the new N-Gage, it's that it has huge potential, but everything to prove.

Brands subsidising original games
Mobile game journalists love original games that aren't based on a big brand. Maybe it's because we've seen one too many platformy film licences, or because we like rooting for the underdog. Or because, well, some of our favourite mobile games have been unbranded.

Trouble is, they don't sell well. Many of the original-IP games us hacks rave about never make it into the UK's ELSPA Top 10 chart. But a welcome trend from 2007 is the moves by big publishers to start investing the profits from their big branded games into own-IP titles too. Kudos to Glu, then, for Frantic Factory (pictured) and Super KO Boxing, for example, or to Disney for publishing Capybara's Critter Crunch, or to EA for its continued association with the Orcs & Elves franchise, or to Gameloft for own-IP games too numerous to mention.

We're under no illusions: Glu sold many, many more downloads of Transformers than it did of Frantic Factory. But the fact that these big publishers see the need to cultivate original ideas alongside all the branded stuff is encouraging, as part of the process of mobile finding its identity as a mature games market.

The early days of ad-funded games
It's fair to say there's been a lot of activity around ad-funded mobile games in 2007, particularly from companies like Greystripe (Gamejump), Hovr, MobileRated and Cellufun. What's equally fair to say is that the big publishers have kept well clear. Ad-funded portals have been a way for smaller developers to get their games to market while, as the year went on, medium-sized publishers dipped their toes in the area, too (most recently, Digital Chocolate).

So 2007 has been the early days of the ad-funded model. The sites distributing these games regularly release impressive stats on how many games have been downloaded, but aren't talking about how often those games are then played, or how much advertising revenue they've generated for publishers. Like we said, early days.

It's also worth mentioning that a lot of the games available for free haven't been high-quality, although there have been gems among the dross. We're left with the sense that ads could be a useful way to bring the price of mobile games down and get more people playing, but it's still too early to figure out exactly how it'll work, and how big they'll be.

The New Hardcore
We've alluded to this before, most recently in our Gothic 3 preview – it's almost become received wisdom that mobile gaming is all about bite-sized entertainment. In other words, short sessions playing casual games that are if not throwaway, certainly a dip-in dip-out experience.

Yet there's been a smaller, parallel trend of games with a bit more meat on them, particularly in the RPG and strategy genres. Besides Gothic 3 (pictured), we'd cite the likes of Blades & Magic, Heroes Lore and Rise of Lost Empires. Hardcore stuff for elf-loving nerds, you might say, but nevertheless, they're more complex and involving games.

It's a sign that mobile isn't just about coloured balls, blocks and bricks, virtual dogs, or brain training. There's an audience out there that wants something meatier, even if those individuals play it in a different way than, say, World of Warcraft on a PC.

Market consolidation
Excuse us while we put our hard-headed analyst cap on. When it comes to the games sold on operator portals (and thus, the ones that make it into the ELSPA chart), fewer publishers are providing them. In fact, we wouldn't be surprised if a majority of them now came from the Big Three: EA Mobile, Gameloft and Glu.

The operators have deliberately cut down the number of direct publishers they accept games from, directing the rest to 'aggregator' companies with their own criteria for choosing which games to then offer back to the operator.

The operators and big publishers say this is a good thing, as it allows people to put more effort (and funds) into marketing mobile games, building the market. And that's true to some extent, although sometimes we wish the operators were weeding down their portals on quality criteria as well as pure commercial grounds.

But the flipside is that for a small developer with a big idea, it's simply not possible to walk into an operator's office and get on their deck directly, meaning they have to work through an aggregator or find a publishing deal.

That's maybe a useful filter to a lot of the derivative rubbish that's clogging up the mobile games market, but having seen some games that we loved never make it to the portals, we hope that the system can be refined to make sure the good stuff doesn't slip through the net in 2008.