It seems the entire mobile gaming industry is scampering to churn out pick-up-and-play, made-for-mobile titles that emphasize simplicity and downplay rich graphics and other sophisticated features.
Vollee Inc. is headed the other direction.
The San Mateo, Calif.-based firm is hawking a kind of placeshifting technology that allows gamers to play PC- and console-based titles on 3G phones. Games are adopted for wireless phones by simplifying controls and streamlining gameplay, and are streamed to handsets where a media player transforms the content into what Vollee hopes is an immersive-yet mobile-experience.
Game shifting
While the strategy may be new in the mobile gaming world, it mirrors a trend in the larger world of wireless content, according to Vollee CEO Martin Dunsby.
“I think the trend you’re seeing across all types of content is a shift,” Dunsby opined. “Instead of people downloading the applications and running them locally, they’re streaming them over the network. People are not feeling that they have to have the content stored locally.”
The company was founded in Israel in 2005-Vollee has since moved its headquarters to the Silicon Valley area-and appeared on the radar screen several months ago when it secured $7.5 million in a Series B round of financing, adding to an initial $4 million investment. Dunsby, whose resume includes stints at Deloitte Consulting, inCode Wireless and Openwave Systems Inc., came on board in June.
Activision, Codemasters and Encore have agreed to let Vollee mobilize games from their portfolios (no specific titles have been announced yet), and the startup is in trials with at least one major U.S. operator. The subscription-based offerings are scheduled to be available on carrier decks by early next year.
Bull’s-eye
Vollee is taking aim at the sweet spot of the untapped mobile gaming market: users with mid-market, 3G-enabled feature phones. The media player supports both Java- and BREW-enabled handsets, and because the games reside on Vollee’s servers-as opposed to the phone itself-gamers without special 3-D hardware can nonetheless play games in 3-D.
The way Dunsby sees it, though, Vollee is targeting publishers as much as it is consumers. The company in less than a month can create a version of a game that will play across a wide variety of 3G handsets, and it doesn’t require access to the title’s original source code to do so. That, according to Dunsby, substantially decreases one of the most expensive tasks in mobile game publishing: porting.
“Everyone’s looking for the next Tetris because of the cost to port Java and BREW games,” said Dunsby. “It’s somewhere around a half-million dollars on the low end, and on the high end-for a 3-D game-it’s almost a million.”
Fierce competition
Vollee is entering a crowded market at a very difficult time. Glu Mobile Inc., Electronic Arts Inc. and TWQ Inc. each recently reported disappointing quarterly results, and the second quarter of 2007 saw revenues decline by 9%, according to a recent report from iSuppli. Some publishers have even begun to experiment with other business models: I-play, for instance, has launched a video service, and a handful of other established players are distributing games through ad-subsidized channels.
Other challenges will face Vollee as well. Embedded games may not be as sophisticated as their server-based counterparts, but streamed content could result in latency issues-a sure-fire non-starter in an environment timed by the nanosecond. And while Vollee is targeting mainstream mobile users, the service will require an all-you-can-eat data plan.
But Vollee may be able to tap a vast library of content that has yet to come to mobile, and deliver wireless games without the onerous overhead publishers typically face. Most of the players in the space are struggling just to keep their heads above water with downlodable, casual games. So streaming the interactive content may be a more economically viable play.
“We’re able to bring a great catalog of titles to mobile at a much lower time and cost; we think this is going to address some of the key issues” in mobile gaming, said Dusnby. “Those consumers who like a good gaming experience are not challenged by puzzle games; basically, they are an unserved market for us. We believe, and our partners believe, that there’s a big opportunity to bring those folks a good gaming experience.”
