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WirelessDevNet.com Press Release
Octane Technologies Bhatia Warns of Potential “Steroids Scandal” for Mobile Game Industry
(LOS ANGELES, CA) – During this year’s annual E3 Expo, Octane Technologies CEO Sameer Bhatia reported how the need to port games to handsets is proving to be a hidden problem for the mobile gaming industry much like Baseball’s steroid scandal that has recently been brought to light.
”The most neglected problem in this booming industry is the high costs of game porting - the process of adapting a mobile game to all available handsets,” said Bhatia, whose firm ports games for leading publishers Gameloft and RealNetworks. Bhatia described that, "game publishers develop a game from start to finish, but only for a basic handset, oftentimes a Nokia Series 40 or Series 60 phone. Of course, no carrier will promote a game until it works on the majority of handsets they are selling in the market. Therefore, the game is not marketable until it is ‘ported’ - adjusted to work properly - on all the carrier's handsets."
Porting costs overtake original development costs
Bhatia stated that the average publisher spends $5000 per port it executes in-house, not including added costs of language translation. If a publisher wants to place a single game on 50 devices in five languages, it can face a cost of a half-million dollars or more. Not surprisingly, the expense of porting games in-house can far exceed the cost of actually developing and producing the original game.
Bhatia discussed an option many leading publishers are choosing in order to bring the economics of porting back to earth: outsourcing. However, he cautioned executives in the audience from rushing into the arms of any low-cost porting house they can find. "You’ll find plenty of companies in far-away places that will eagerly take your porting projects, especially if you are equally desperate to hand them over. Unfortunately, most don't have the ability to deliver builds that will meet the carriers' quality standards."
Bhatia recommended that game publishers know their vendors, start small, negotiate out-clauses, and pay for performance. He also suggested working with U.S. based firms such as Octane.
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