Talking BlackBerry gaming with Magmic
Forget push email: you can play Golden Tee on those things!
You'd be forgiven for assuming that BlackBerries exist purely to ensure high-powered business executives never ever have any downtime, even when they're at home / on holiday / sitting on the loo. Maker Research In Motion has a lot to answer for.
However, we've picked up a distinct trend in the last year for more frivolous uses for a BlackBerry: namely gaming.
For example, Gameloft has been converting some of its most popular titles to run on BlackBerries, while recently In-Fusio and Hudson Entertainment have struck deals with BlackBerry games publisher Magmic to convert their games for the devices.
We thought we'd find out more by firing some questions at Magmic's vice president, Nicholas Reichenbach.
Pocket Gamer: How big a market is BlackBerry gaming? Do games sell well?Nicholas Reichenbach: It's estimated that there are close to 11 million BlackBerry subscribers worldwide. While that figure is nowhere close to the enormity of the J2ME market, when you consider the fact that at least 8 per cent of BlackBerry users have played a mobile game at one time – which is three times the cellphone market – and also consider that mobile gaming still a fairly nascent industry, we have an opportunity to significantly expand that number and create a large core of BlackBerry entertainment users.
RIM recently reported an addition of 1.45 million subscribers in the last quarter alone, so we know that the BlackBerry market is growing. We estimate that in excess of 800,000 BlackBerry users have downloaded a Magmic Games product via RIM and Bplay.com, our BlackBerry direct-to-consumer portal. And we're fortunate to have a very loyal following among our BlackBerry customers.
What genres tend to be popular, and how does it compare with regular mobile games?For the most part, the game genres that are popular in all of mobile gaming are also popular with BlackBerry users: card/casino games, sports games and puzzle/word games being the top three. We're not very surprised by that.
At Magmic, the Texas Hold'em King franchise has easily been our most popular and best-selling game title. The multiplayer features and overall speed and efficiency of the gameplay are very popular with our players. Most THK players swear that it's the best poker game on the mobile market, and we're proud of the user experience we've created with it.
In the future, Magmic is definitely looking at developing titles that may be more tailored to the demographic and psychographic profiles of typical BlackBerry users, as well as considering lifestyle applications and other products that may fit into the BlackBerry user's interests.
How are you using some of the features in newer BlackBerry models for gaming? For example, some have a trackball – are they becoming good gaming devices?There's no question that a BlackBerry is far superior to a typical Java-based cellphone for gaming. In fact, the BlackBerry Pearl was voted the second best mobile gaming device. As it relates to combination phone/pda type devices, it's hard to top a BlackBerry for playing a mobile game.
A BlackBerry owns a lot of features that lend themselves well to gaming: a larger than normal screen, a qwerty keypad for easy word input are required, and controls that make it easy to navigate the gaming environment.
For instance, as you mentioned, the BlackBerry Pearl (8100, 8130) and Curve (8300, 8310) uses a trackball control in the centre of the device for most navigation. This trackball control is perfectly suited for our Golden Tee Golf Mobile Edge game, for instance. In fact, it approximates the Golden Tee arcade game experience, which also uses a trackball control. So from that standpoint, it's a perfect match.
Golden Tee sounds really cool, and we remember the arcade version well. Tell us more about how you're approaching that, especially with its connectivity.It is cool – and the players are loving it. It's pretty well known that Golden Tee is the most successful coin-op franchise in US history – there are over 100,000 Golden Tee arcade units worldwide, and Golden Tee owns an avid tournament community.
It was important for In-Fusio, the mobile game's original developer, to have some way to connect with that large, established Golden Tee coin-op base. So with the mobile game, the mobile player can check the coin-op tournament standings and find Golden Tee units in their local area.
More and more connected featured should be introduced with subsequent editions. In-Fusio did a great job with the game and we were very happy to partner with them to bring Golden Tee to BlackBerry users.
What else have you got coming up for BlackBerry gamers?There's a few titles coming up that we're really excited about. We're launching a new version of World Poker Tour 2 this week at CTIA with our partners at Hands-On.
And, we've got our next THK version in Texas Hold'em King 3 coming out early next year, along with the a sequel to Magmic's original and very successful BrainUp, called BrainUp: Clash of the Sexes.
And we've recently signed agreements with publishers such as In-Fusio and Hudson Mobile to bring some of their popular titles to the smartphone market, which we'll be doing within the next six months. It's going to be a very busy next 12 months at Magmic, and we're very much looking forward to it.