An Exploration of the Mobile Gaming Ecosystem from Developers’ Perspective - The Video Game Industry: Formation, Present State, and Future - page 76

because developers need a virtual marketplace to reach the scattered demand.
Therefore, the market power is transferred to new intermediaries.
As a fi nal summary, it can be said that the much sought-after neces-
sary conditions for the success of mobile content and applications, mobile
games in particular, are already met in most of the developed countries and
are about to be met in the developing economies. Broadband mobile data
networks are increasingly available and af ordable and usable and af ord-
able smartphones—and other smart devices—are becoming the standard
handset in many markets. In addition, the mobile platform of ers a number
of particular features, well suited to a successful massive adoption of gam-
ing. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that every industry analyst agrees on
the high potential growth of the mobile gaming market. Recent develop-
ments in new platforms, defi nitively attracting innovators and providing
them with powerful means to reach the end consumers, are contributing
signifi cantly to the expectations for growth.
However, there are still many hurdles that must be overcome to increase
adoption. From the author's perspective, there are three main of them:
data roaming, privacy and consumer protection. Charges for data roaming
impede all types of mobile gaming usage in precisely those situations where
it could be rewarding or useful. Privacy or usage of personal information is
a general issue beyond the mobile gaming domain, but it touches on the use
of context for gaming. Finally, past scams in the mobile arena and increas-
ingly wide usage of mobiles across age and level of education recommend a
sound approach to consumer protection.
From a software game developer perspective there are, also, important
challenges. The low costs of development in mobile platforms and the avail-
ability of a direct-to-consumer channel are counterbalanced by the high
number of these and their dif erent implementations in specifi c mobile
devices and networks, therefore increasing the transaction costs for those
developers wishing to work across several platforms. Worse, the increased
competition among games in any of these platforms gives more relevance to
the role of marketing and advertising and, consequently, shifts the market
power back from developers to publishers and platform owners. Thus, it is
now the platform owners who negotiate with mobile operators to ensure
the—subsidized—presence of the device part of the platform in each of the
mobile communications national markets. As part of this new platform
scenario, the application stores seem to be in 2010 the “market shapers”
strongly infl uencing users' perceptions of mobile content and applications
when it's not the innovation from application developers themselves.
Looking beyond, the role of platforms and applications belongs to the
future of mobile gaming development, but it is only a part of the story,
not all. Comparing the evolution of mobile gaming with that of online
gaming (see the relevant chapter in this topic), the future importance of
both the browser and the game portals emerges. In the mid-term, mobile
application developers will face the primary decision to program in any