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98.4 million people in the United States and Western Europe are playing mobile games; but new downloads wane

SEATTLE and LONDON—February 19, 2008—While more people are playing mobile games than ever before, the percentage of people downloading a new game did not increase over the past year in the United States and Western Europe, reports M:Metrics, the mobile media authority.

Nearly three fourths of the 98.4 million people in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States that played a mobile game in December played a game that was found natively on the device, demonstrating an untapped potential for downloaded content. M:Metrics reports that 38.5 million, or 8.8 percent of, mobile subscribers played a game they had downloaded and stored on their phone, that number has been relatively flat from the year before, when 35.3 million, or 8.7 percent, played a downloaded game.

Only 14.4 million, or 3.3 percent of, mobile subscribers in the United States and Western Europe downloaded a game in the month, versus 14.6 million (3.6 percent) in December 2006. At 12.7 percent, Spain has the highest penetration of those playing a downloaded game, and the highest rate of mobile games downloads, at 5.6 percent. France lags all other markets, at 3.5 percent playing a downloaded game and 1.3 percent downloading a new game in the month.

“One of the greatest challenges facing publishers by the growing adoption of smartphones is the wide availability of free or pirated content for these devices,” said Seamus McAteer, chief product architect and senior analyst, M:Metrics.

Smartphones have become increasingly mainstream, due to an influx of consumer-friendly productivity devices such as the BlackBerry Pearl, and Samsung Blackjack, as well as media-centric devices such as the Apple iPhone and Nokia N-Series handsets. Smartphone owners are more avid users of mobile content than are owners of feature phones, and this usage extends beyond e-mail and mobile browser usage to gaming and other forms of mobile entertainment. For example in the UK about 17 percent of smartphone owners played downloaded games in a month during the fourth quarter of 2007 compared with 9.8 percent of non-smartphone owners, reports M:Metrics.

“While these devices lend themselves to mobile media consumption, the openness of smart platforms opens up the Internet and frees consumers from the operator deck,” observed McAteer. “To succeed in such a market game publishers will have to foster new models that may include subscriptions to online gaming communities, ad-funded or subsidized gaming, and physical distribution.”

M:Metrics applies trusted media measurement methodologies to assess the audience for mobile content and applications. As the world’s most authoritative mobile media measurement firm, M:Metrics delivers the most accurate mobile market metrics through the world’s largest monthly survey of mobile subscribers as well as automated data collection methodologies. Below are the findings of its December Benchmark Survey.

Cute and Colorful Chuzzle First in Games Line-up

SAN FRANCISCO and ESPOO, Finland – Game Developers Conference 2008, February 18/PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Nokia and PopCap Games, the leading developer and publisher of casual games, will bring connected mobile Java games to the SNAP Mobile platform. The award winning Chuzzle is the first game to be re-developed by PopCap under a multi-game agreement.

“SNAP Mobile is all about bringing fun multiplayer Java games to the masses,” said Paul Whitaker, Head of Business Development for SNAP Mobile, Nokia. “With a catalog of broadly appealing games, PopCap titles are a perfect addition to our growing portfolio.”

“Downloads of our mobile games continue to grow rapidly and we have learned that consumers are increasingly looking for on-the-go games that allow them to interact with one another,” said Andrew Stein, Director of Mobile Business Development, PopCap. “To help meet that growing demand, we’re happy to cooperate with a company like Nokia that shares our vision of bringing engaging and fun casual games to the mobile mass-market along with a proven track record of efficiently distributing and hosting connected mobile games.”

The multiplayer version of Chuzzle will feature community offerings, including chat, leader boards, and more. The original single player version of Chuzzle, which was named ‘Casual Game of the Year’ in 2005 by Billboard’s Digital Entertainment & Media Excellence Awards, is expected to be available on a variety of mobile devices powered by SNAP Mobile by the end of 2008.

PopCap http://www.popcap.com
SNAP Mobile http://www.snapmobile.nokia.com
Nokia http://www.nokia.com

Congreso Mundial Móvil, BARCELONA, February 13/PRNewswire-FirstCall/ El editor presentará seis juegos para el lanzamiento de la nueva plataforma

Gameloft, recientemente nombrado el editor y desarrollador líder del mundo de videojuegos para teléfonos móviles, anunció hoy que ha sido elegido por Nokia para el lanzamiento de la plataforma N-Gage. Seis de los 18 juegos de Gameloft se ofrecerán en la fecha de lanzamiento.

N-Gage es el servicio de juegos para móviles del principal fabricante de teléfonos móviles internacional. N-Gage estará disponible en Nokia Nseries compatibles y otros dispositivos S60 de 3 edición.

“Nokia demuestra diariamente su sólido compromiso en el mercado de juegos inalámbricos y estamos muy contentos de ser un socio sólido”, dijo Michel Guillemot, director general de Gameloft. “Cuando el fabricante de teléfono móvil número uno del mundo realiza una revolución tan tremenda en términos de
ergonomía, facilidad de uso y apoyo técnico, toda la industria de telefonía móvil puede esperar un salto gigante hacia una nueva generación de juegos”.

Los selectos juegos de Gameloft que se ofrecerán con el lanzamiento de la plataforma son: Brain Challenge, Dogz, Midnight Pooll 3D, Block Breaker
Deluxe, Asphalt 3: Street Rules y Brothers in Arms 3D.

Gameloft es el editor y desarrollador internacional líder de videojuegos para teléfonos móviles. Establecida en 1999, ha emergido como uno de los
principales innovadores en su campo. La compañía crea juegos para dispositivos móviles equipados con tecnología Java, Brew o Symbian. El número total de dispositivos para juegos superará, según lo previsto, los 4.000 millones de unidades en 2011.

Los acuerdos de asociación con comercializadores líderes y personalidades del deporte como Ubisoft Entertainment, Universal Pictures, ABC, Dreamworks
Animations SKG, Endemol, 20th Century Fox, Viacom, Sony Pictures, Touchtone Television, Warner Bros., FifPro, Lamborghini, Paris Hilton, Gus Hansen, Kobe
Bryant, Derek Jeter, Reggie Bush, Llewton Hewitt, Jonny Wilkinson o Robinho permiten a Gameloft formar sólidas relaciones con marcas internacionales. Además de las alianzas, Gameloft posee y opera títulos como Block Breaker Deluxe, Asphalt: Urban GT y New York Nights.

Mediante acuerdos con los grandes operadores inalámbricos de telefonía, fabricantes de dispositivos, distribuidores especializados y tiendas online, Gameloft tiene una red de distribución en más de 80 países.

Gameloft cuenta con oficinas mundiales en Nueva York, San Francisco, Seattle, Montreal, México, Buenos Aires, París, Londres, Colonia, Viena, Milán, Madrid, Lisboa, Copenhague, Varsovia, Nueva Delhi, Seúl, Pekín, Hong Kong, Tokio y Sydney. Gameloft cotiza en Euronext Paris

Gameloft http://www.gameloft.com

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Feb. 13 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — NVIDIA , the world leader in visual computing technologies and the inventor of the GPU, today announced that it has completed the acquisition of AGEIA Technologies, Inc., the industry leader in gaming physics technology. AGEIA’s PhysX software is widely adopted with more than 140 PhysX-based games shipping or in development on Sony Playstation 3, Microsoft XBOX 360, Nintendo Wii, and gaming PCs. AGEIA physics software is pervasive with over 10,000 registered and active users of the PhysX SDK.

NVIDIA http://www.nvidia.com/.