GDC08: Gameloft's Guillemot predicts 'console transition' for mobile in 08

"We're delivering two games per second," trumpeted Michel Guillemot in his keynote address, kicking off Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.

The president and CEO of Gameloft outlined his vision for the mobile industry, as well as provided a snapshot of its current state and Gameloft's role. Guillemot honed in on increasing connectivity and media saturation that characterises mobile gaming. The rate at which Gameloft titles sell – two per second – signifies demand for fast media.

Mr Guillemot predicted that by 2010 nearly four billion people will carry mobile phones. Clearly, the ubiquity of mobile devices creates greater connectivity – something that feeds directly to the concept of a faster life and impatient demand for new media. "Everything is moving toward mobile entertainment," he proclaimed. Such demand means game publishers like Gameloft must begin to shift their strategy to accommodate a larger, mass market.

"Our purpose is to create games everyone can play," Guillemot asserted. "Consumers now know that they can play games on their phone. Mobile gaming has moved from being niche to resting on the cusp of mass media. [We're starting to see people] demanding what types of games they want to see and play."

Of course, delivering content to the glut of available handsets is one of the greatest challenges to game publishers. Gameloft has been one of the few publishers not just capable of catering to so many devices, but maintaining a modicum of quality across each version.

Releasing five games in a month, for example, can be an astronomical undertaking. Multiple those five titles by the number of handsets, languages, and carriers that must be supported and that handful explodes into thousands of variations – up to 50,00 versions (or SKUs) per month.

This has a knock-on effect in term of the rising expectations for mobile games, particularly among casual players who expect titles matching handheld and console games in terms of quality. But it isn't just quality that keeps people from gaming. "If we want mobile games to become massmarket, we must provide massmarket pricing," Guillemot said.

This is a considerable hurdle in the US, where carriers have long had a stranglehold on how games come to market.

"Mobile games are the only retail service I can think of where consumers don't know how much they're paying," Guillemot argued, in relation to issues such as variable data charges.

Yet progress in these areas, as well as advances in the way games are distributed, points to what is hoped will be the start of a dramatic shift throughout the second half of 2008. "Today we have only scratched the surface for the potential of mobile games," Guillemot surmised. Much like new handhelds and consoles spur increased spending on games, new mobile devices and better ways of getting games will raise consumer interest in mobile titles.

The launch of Nokia's much-anticipated N-Gage platform, the release of the iPhone SDK and inclusion of wi-fi in new handsets open new avenues for games. Gameloft supports both N-Gage and is looking to add iPhone, and will likely release a wi-fi-enabled mobile titles before the year's out.

This fast new media, however, doesn't come quickly. Ironically, the demand for advanced mobile gaming is outstripping what publishers are providing. Guillemot predicted that much of this demand won't be met until the second half of 2008. From our perspective, it can't happen soon enough.