(1888PressRelease)
May 05, 2006 - Casual mobile games such as Tetris and chess are a growing segment – accounting for 52% of the $1.6 billion mobile games industry. However, providers are overlooking the real long term value of casual mobile games by underestimating the importance of a positive consumer experience and ignoring the role of community in generating long term appeal.
“We need to adopt a consumer rather than engineering focused approach to making these games profitable at lower break-even points. This means ‘customer’ not ‘content’ is king. We found that the industry is slowly adapting but the pace may not be fast enough for the less forgiving – customers, operators and investors. We, as a sector, still think community is about ‘multiplayer’ and mistake low demand for a need to ‘educate the user’.”
The report provides recommendations for dealing with the key challenges facing the sector today. In particular, its contributors recommend:
a) Changing our language from “users” to “consumers” to help us better understand how casual games fit into the buying landscape
b) Developing casual games on social drivers – multiplayer functionality is not the only way to achieve this, society can also be built around a game
c) Marketing casual games to a wider audience utilizing different charging models
“Developing and Marketing Casual Mobile Games” is the first in a series of four mobile games reports published today by Wireless World Forum in association with their Executive Research Panel.
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