Mobile carriers and content vendors keep trying to push gaming past the “golden nickel” — the 5% ceiling of users who buy and play games on their handsets — and into the mainstream.
So maybe they should quit charging so many nickels for their goodies.
Browsing the games department on a carrier deck feels like stepping into a Vertu store. Looking for ESPN Winter X Games? It’ll cost you $4 a month, or an $8 one-time charge, from Verizon Wireless. Gotta have Madden NFL Football by EA Sports? Plan on shelling out $10 for unlimited access. The mobile version of the hit Guitar Hero III? Dig deep — it’s a $12 one-time fee.
It’s not just the sexy new titles that seem as pricey as a John Edwards haircut. Something called Terra Zone is $11 on Verizon Wireless’ deck. Pictionary is $8. One of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” titles is also $8 — after you take the time and five dozen clicks to finally get there. (Shouldn’t there be some sort of discount for games that require 60-plus clicks to find, anyway?)
Even Verizon Wireless’ white-label games seem steep. Seven dollars for VZW Mahjong? Mahjong?
Verizon Wireless’ not particularly egregious when it comes to pricing the stuff, of course; charges seem fairly consistent from operator to operator. But is this any way to grow a business?
Apparently not. While uptake is tough to pinpoint, figures from M:Metrics indicate that about 7 million U.S. mobile users — or 3.3% of them — downloaded a game in September 2007. The same percentage downloaded a mobile game in April, according to the firm, and both figures are down from the 3.7% who downloaded a game in November 2006.
Meanwhile, ad-supported game distributors such as Greystripe and MobileRated appear to be thriving. MobileRated, a Canadian subsidiary of Kalador Entertainment Inc., recently said it has seen downloads increase one-third over a three-month period, delivering more than 1 million free games per month. Greystripe, a San Francisco startup, claims to rack up 8 million downloads a month through its GameJump.com storefront. And it seems established publishers are joining the free-games movement every few weeks.
A few top-tier game makers remain opposed to the ad-subsidized game effort, fearing that giving the stuff away threatens the paid-game model, and they may be right. While gaming may be stagnating, after all, it’s still a lucrative business for a small handful of companies.
And it’s true that margins are thin in the mobile gaming space. Developing games and porting them across hundreds of handsets require enormous resources, and high-profile licenses are expensive. So carriers and publishers are exploring ways to counter those costs, including subscription models and try-before-you-buy offers.
I can appreciate the strategy of asking $12 for a hit like Guitar Hero, which is likely to attract hardcore gamers in impressive numbers — for a while, at least. But sticking a $7 price tag on a simple, carrier-branded puzzle game seems like a great way to make sure mobile gaming never moves beyond that lackluster golden nickel.
