An Exploration of the Mobile Gaming Ecosystem from Developers’ Perspective - The Video Game Industry: Formation, Present State, and Future - page 65

or needed by mobile games (pale grey boxes) and new—and generally non-
existing—activities that may be required for next generation mobile games
(dark grey boxes).
As an overall comparison with the software games industry in terms
of main players, it could be said that in the mobile domain the market
power of game publishers is counterbalanced with that of mobile opera-
tors, handset suppliers and application stores providers. The mobile user
relates games with the brand of the operator, the handset or the applica-
tion store, therefore diminishing the relevance of the game publisher to a
certain extent.
The resulting structure of the mobile game ecosystem is rather complex,
and putting a mobile game into the market involves more steps than in
other gaming platforms. In particular, in a typical scenario mobile games
have to match several layers of technical specifi cations that mainly impact
on the software programming: the huge variety of relevant hardware parts
of the device (display, interface, camera); the several possible types of oper-
ating system in the device; the many applications in the device that could
be connected with the game (browser, media player); the dif erent features

Development studios j New "mobile games" studios

Other media /
content industries

Engine / middleware
software developers

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Game publishers New "mobile games" publishers

Marketing

Advertising / other business models I PR management

Mobile gaming enabling platforms / application server

Aggregation platforms / applications stores

User data/ profiling

Context-aware services

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Payment / billing

Near field
communications
and sensors

Mobile communication and broadcasting networks
(UMTS, HSPA, LTE, WiMax, DVB-H,...)

Internet

Client mobile software game

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Other mobile device applications

Batteries
memories
displays
interfaces
cameras
suppliers

Software platforms

Hardware/software
for ambient interaction

Mobile devices operating system suppliers

Mobile devices suppliers

Mobile game users

Figure 4.1 Structure and main activities in the mobile games ecosystem. Source: De
Prato et al. (2010).