Phone makers team to push wireless games

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By Sumner Lemon

(IDG) -- Makers of mobile phones and service providers are teaming up to give you another reason to be on the phone: multiplayer wireless games.

Nokia recently joined Ericsson, Motorola, and Siemens in an effort to develop a wireless gaming standard. The companies have established the Mobile Games Interoperability Forum to create tools that will ensure network interoperability for games.

Wireless gaming will be an important source of future revenue for operators of third-generation (3G) mobile networks, according to Bertrand Bidaud, a Gartner research director. Many mobile operators are wary of the high infrastructure costs associated with offering 3G services, and equipment manufacturers are looking for ways to spur carriers to hasten their 3G plans. Mobile gaming could help push operators to deploy 3G networks, he says.

"The first market [for 3G services] to take off is going to be the consumer market," Bidaud says. "This first wave is made up of early adopters who are people with a very specific profile. For them, technology is about having fun."

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The MGI Forum is working with software tools developer Metrowerks, a Motorola subsidiary, on a software development kit to help vendors write games that are compatible with wireless networks and handsets from all four companies.

The release date has been pushed back from the original projection of the third quarter, according to Caroline Ohlson, an Ericsson spokesperson.

The tools "will probably be ready in the first quarter of 2002 instead," Ohlson says. "The scope of the initiative is much more focused and for this reason they need more additional work."

One mobile operator pushing for mobile gaming is Tokyo-based NTT DoCoMo, which has partnered with Sony and six other mobile operators to develop mobile gaming services using technology derived from Sony's PlayStation 2 game console. Other partners in the project include AT&T Wireless, Dutch carrier KPN Mobile, Telecom Italia Mobile, Taiwan's KG Telecommunications, and Hong Kong's Hutchison Telephone.

DoCoMo already offers several Java-based games to customers of its I-mode mobile Internet service. Now, it is working with Sega to find ways to link I-mode phones with Sega's video arcade game machines.

Warding off Microsoft?

Microsoft has developed a smart-phone platform code-named Stinger based on its Windows CE 3.0 operating system. Windows CE shares some code with desktop versions of Windows, as well as Microsoft's upcoming Xbox game console. Its approach will likely compete with the MGI Forum.

For now, Microsoft is seeking a different market, Bidaud says. Microsoft is more focused on selling Stinger to business customers. But that doesn't mean Microsoft will ignore demand for consumer services, he adds. "There's no reason to think they will give away the consumer market," he says.

For now, the MGI Forum isn't concerned about rivalry with Microsoft and competing standards.

"I don't think we have even discussed competition or see [Microsoft] as competitors," Ericsson's Ohlson says.