Game apps still on strong path

Dubai: Mobile is becoming the fastest growing segment in the consumer game industry and businesses are picking up on this, according to game experts at The Mobile Show in Dubai, which ended on Wednesday.

“Whenever an app store launches across any platform, gaming is the number one category that users flock towards,” said Peter Parmenter, head of OEM and new platforms for EMEA and APAC at Electronic Arts (EA) Mobile.

The low cost of developing games for mobiles and the wider reach these have with an increasingly mobile-connected global population are some of the factors that have made it a hit with developers.

Parmenter said that what the industry needs to focus on is creating games users can experience across different platforms. With the rising number of screens, including smartphones and tablets, the game experience may not be consistent across these platforms.

According to a recent Nielsen report, games continue to be the most used type of app in several markets worldwide, including China, Australia, Italy and Brazil. The report showed that in China, 70 per cent of smartphone owners use game apps.

Consumers have the option of either paying per download or paying per day and downloading an unlimited amount of games, said Savio Saldanha, CEO at mobile games distributor Nazara in the Middle East and Africa.

“Downloading per day is easier and cheaper for the end user. You would only need to pay one or two dirhams,” he said.

By charging a small amount per game, developers will need to cover their costs.

“Developers cover their costs by making money in a game — that’s where they get a lot of their revenue from,” said Ziad Matar, head of Middle East and Central Asia and senior director of global business operations at chip-maker Qualcomm. The first payment request that pops up on your mobile’s screen normally comes some levels into the game. By that time, consumers are aware of what the game offers them and they are more likely to pay than if the payment request had happened earlier into the game, according to Matar.

“Some people will not download a game if they don’t know a lot about it,” he added.

Another factor that may stop consumers from downloading a game onto their mobiles is the language it is in. “There are not enough games in Arabic. Localisation is very important. If the name of the game is in English, Arabic-speaking users may not download it because they would not know what the game is about,” Saldanha said.

Additionally, the benefits of game apps can extend to telecom service providers, according to Saldanha. “If there is an uptake by telecom service providers, they can increase their average revenue per user,” he said.