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ported to consoles (Xbox, Wii and PlayStation) and was used to launch a
full line of merchandising.
However, mobile gaming confronts a number of challenges, ranging from
technology and economics to the institutional framework. From a historical
perspective there was fi rst a business culture clash between mobile opera-
tors and content providers only partially solved when the application stores
burst onto the mobile arena. Price, usability and processing power of mobile
phones was next, again on its way to be solved with the market success of
smartphones and tablets. Lack of mobile broadband impeding online and
social gaming is also becoming an issue from the past, at least in most parts
of the developed world. The echoes of these past dii culties surface in the
complexities of the mobile ecosystem, in the fi ght for the control role in the
emerging platforms within the ecosystem and in the dif erent perceptions on
the mobile game realm evolution: still for many game developers mobile is
just another distribution channel; for mobile industries games are just another
type of content/application. But beyond mere techno-economics lie a num-
ber of more fundamental challenges. Attracting, rewarding and sustaining
innovation in the mobile game fi eld so it becomes an industry with long-term
growth is arguably the biggest of them. The conditions for such innovations
are related with the emergence of distinct platforms that compete to attract
talent. Precisely, in this chapter the main features of such platforms are pre-
sented and compared to extract some conclusions on the opportunities for
the industry and for mobile game developers in particular.
For a glimpse of the comparative relevance of mobile gaming, fi gures
available on the ecosystem of mobile gaming from market analysts (Feijoó,
Gómez-Barroso and Ramos 2010) show that the global value of the market
was estimated to lie from €3 to 6 billion in 2009, that is, around 10 per
cent of the €40-50 billion global video game market, about 20 per cent of
the mobile content and applications market and a tiny 0.01 per cent of the
global mobile communications revenues. These relative valuations contrib-
ute to explain the perceptions on the mobile gaming relevance from each
of the main players involved. Market analyst Gartner calculated worldwide
The fi gures from a main publisher of mobile games, Electronic Arts, more
in 2010, rising to €3.5 billion in 2013. At that time Asia would account
for 50 per cent of the market, the U.S. about 30 per cent and Europe the
remaining 20 per cent.
THE MOBILE GAMING ECOSYSTEM
The mobile gaming ecosystem follows the conventional three-stage model
for digital mass consumption: (1) creation/production/publishing, (2) deliv-
ery/distribution/access and (3) use/consumption/interaction (Feijóo et al.
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