N-Gage Rated Top for Downloads
"According to UK mobile game retailer mProvision sales of downloadable mobile games to N-Gage users has exceeded that of 3510i users by 8%, despite a huge disparity in installed user base for the two formats."

Consolidation in the mobile games market
"The games developer, In-Fusio has announced an undisclosed cash purchase of the game business of leading US mobile games developer Cybiko. By acquiring the game business of Cybiko, the developers of the award-winning Moto GP, In-Fusio further strengthens its ability to provide Java (MIDP2.0), BREW( and ExEn mobile games) and gives both operators and handset manufacturers a unique and complete global service offering.

In-Fusio will add Cybiko's entire portfolio of mobile games to its existing catalogue of branded titles, which include: Jurassic Park III, Rollerblade and South Park. The Cybiko studio will continue its focus to create mobile games now for exclusive worldwide distribution by In-Fusio. Following the acquisition, In-Fusio has a physical presence in all major markets: Western Europe, Asia and the USA and has a total of 170 employees with the largest mobile game development team of any publisher."

QUALCOMM Introduces New BREW™ 3.0 Client Software Providing Increased Multimedia and Group Management Support for Developers and Operators
"SAN DIEGO -- November 18, 2003 -- QUALCOMM Incorporated (Nasdaq: QCOM), pioneer and world leader of Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) digital wireless technology, today announced the third major release of its Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless™ (BREW) client software and BREW SDK™ (software development kit) tool. "

Konami Brings Mobile Titles To US
"Representatives from Konami have annouced the company’s intentions to release three new mobile phone titles in the US market - in the form of classic franchises Frogger, Gradius and Castlevania."

GSM 850 and the Momentum of EDGE Wireless
"Brazil : GSM, the world's leading mobile technology, is also fast on its way to becoming the top technology in the Americas. The latest white paper from 3G Americas entitled Wireless Trends in the Americas: The Proliferation of GSM 850 MHz and EDGE explores the reasons behind GSM's extraordinary success in the Americas including the important role played by the introduction of GSM 850 MHz equipment and the role of EDGE in the migration to next generation services."

MobileCore released
"MobileCore is a new OpenSource project at SourceForge, aimed at easing cross platform development of games for mobile devices. MobileCore is a very small interface that sits between a game (or game library) and the OS. MobileCore has been implemented for PocketPC and Symbian; a Win9x is also available for easy development. "

Dedicated wireless tool set supplier apps for phones announce highly functional Development Environment for JAVA phones
"Bristol, (UK). apps for phones are delighted to announce today the first product in their range of developer tools for creating applications for phones, wireless devices, smartphones and other devices that support the J2ME standard.
The apps for phones Development Environment is a sophisticated fully functional Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that has been specifically developed to address the needs of software developers who are building applications for phones. "

More N-Gage retail incentives offered in the USA
"Nokia has launched a new incentive to drive sales of the N-Gage in North America, offering three free game titles of the consumer's choice with each device sold - on top of a $100 rebate already being offered by key retailers."

Mobile Benchmark Tool Launched

"Representatives from UK company Morpheme have announced the release of MorphMark – a proprietary benchmarking software application which tests Java enabled handsets' abilities to run games."

QUALCOMM Introduces New BREW(TM) 3.0 Client Software
"SAN DIEGO, Nov. 18 -- QUALCOMM Incorporated (Nasdaq: QCOM), pioneer and world leader of Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) digital wireless technology, today announced the third major release of its Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless(TM) (BREW) client software and BREW SDK(TM) (software development kit) tool. The new BREW 3.0 client software extends a mobile handset's multimedia functionality by adding support for removable storage media and a serial interface that allows users to easily connect their BREW-enabled handsets to other devices, such as keyboards or personal computers. In addition to multimedia enhancements, the BREW 3.0 client software also offers group management features, which will enable operators to segment consumers, including business users and corporations, to deliver tailored wireless applications portfolios. BREW 3.0 software also allows developers to take advantage of its secondary display access capabilities."

IN-FUSIO SURPASSES 10 MILLION MOBILE GAME DOWNLOADS
"Bordeaux, France - November 13th 2003 - IN-FUSIO, the number one mobile games service provider for operators in Europe and China, today confirmed that since service launch, in July 2001, it has downloaded exactly 10,160,000 'paid for' mobile games.
The news comes one month after IN-FUSIO confirmed that it has in excess of five million registered users, and means that in less than one month IN-FUSIO has downloaded more than 700,000 mobile games. In addition to the games downloads, IN-FUSIO's interactive mobile game service is about to reach the 60,000,000 premium SMS interactions barrier, creating an additional, valuable and real revenue stream for mobile operators and game developers. "

Gamers Get Ready! Nokia Game 2003 Begins on November 19

"10-Day interactive multimedia game features turn-based multi-player storyline and incredible prizes

On November 19, gamers will begin competing in Nokia Game 2003, a 10-day interactive multimedia game competition that includes a series of challenges, turn-based role play games, as well as arcade-style action. Last year, Nokia Game registered a record number of gamers -
over 1 million. Registration for Nokia Game 2003 has already begun,
with capacity expanded to accommodate more participants than ever before. The top winners in each participating country will receive a Nokia N-Gage mobile game deck as a prize."

BBC NEWS | Why girls and games are a good mix
"Perhaps the increasing popularity of mobile phone games will introduce more people who have not played games to the gaming world. Anna Larke works for games developer Argonaut and has worked on titles like Croc, Buck Bumble for N64 and the Harry Potter games. Here she tells BBC News Online where video game makers are going wrong in their attempts to appeal to women. "

Did hackers expose N-Gage games?: "If various Web reports are true, someone has discovered a way for the games to be played on any cell phone that, like the N-Gage portable video game machine, uses the Symbian operating system. Symbian is an overwhelming favorite among handset makers that develop next-generation cell phones."

Mobile power: Valley could still have key wireless role
"Mercury News | 11/10/2003 | The conventional wisdom is that Silicon Valley missed the boat on wireless.
None of the big wireless carriers is based here. Europe and Asia are rolling out cell phone innovations at a much faster rate. Ecosystems of wireless companies have grown up in Scandinavia, thanks to the success of cell-phone giants Nokia and Ericsson. Dallas has Texas Instruments, the biggest maker of chips for cell phones. San Diego boasts wireless chip maker Qualcomm."

$1.93 Billion Mobile Games Market Will Be Dominated By Few Key Players According to Alexander Resources
"DALLAS, Nov. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- The mobile games market is set to become the single largest and most important mobile entertainment application in the wireless world according to a new report: 'Winning and Losing in Mobile Games' now available from Alexander Resources, a leading research, consulting and education firm specializing in wireless communications."

Nokia launches Chinese market handset
"Nokia has added a new mobile phone with intuitive pen input and handwriting recognition capability optimised for messaging to its product portfolio. The Nokia 3108 brings the benefits of the innovative pen-based capability to a wider segment of Chinese language users in Asia Pacific markets."

Develop state-of-the-art mobile games
"Mobile gaming is projected to become one of the fastest growing sectors in the IT industry. In this article, Michael Yuan looks at this exciting new market's characteristics and the opportunities for Java developers. The Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition (J2ME) is the dominant technology platform for the new generations of multiplayer mobile games. In the second half of this article, Michael surveys the latest game-related innovations and APIs in the J2ME world"

The joy of mobile games
"Looking around me, I realized that mobile gaming is rapidly becoming a huge part of our lives, just like how the Internet had engulfed us in the past five years. And while we are on the subject, look at how mobile gaming has evolved. We used to play simple games like Snake and Memory on our mobile phones, now we are able to play a wider selection of games in colourful hues, no less. More recently, with the N-Gage, we are now able to play games previously played on PCs and Consoles. "

Quake-Based Games On Nokia Series 60

"Bobbee Tec has added support for Nokia’s 60 Series (3600, 3650, 6600, 7650, and N-Gage) cell phones to its DRG 3D Game Engine.

This allows games designed for the Quake or Quake 2 engines to be ported to these phones, in addition to the other devices that DRG already supports (including Gameboy Advance, Siemens’ SX-1 phone, and the SonyEricsson P800 and P802 phones)."

Trends in mobile games and a survey of related J2ME APIs
"Mobile gaming is projected to become one of the fastest growing sectors in the IT industry. In this article, Michael Yuan looks at this exciting new market's characteristics and the opportunities for Java developers. The Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition (J2ME) is the dominant technology platform for the new generations of multiplayer mobile games. "

Java Game revenues surging ahead
"Mobile gaming will be key in driving the growth of mobile content and entertainment services, according to a new report from Analysys. The report predicts that the total Western European market for mobile games will grow more than tenfold from its 2002 value of US$230 million to nearly US$3.4 billion in 2008 - representing just over 19% of total revenue for mobile content and entertainment services. Nearly 80% of gaming revenue (US$2.7 billion) will be derived from downloadable games."

Mobile phone games set for blast-off
"Warding off alien attacks or hunting down spies on your mobile phone will become a near two billion pound pastime in the next five years as mobile games aim for lift-off in Europe. The market for mobile phone games is a small but growing segment of the massively popular video game market, an estimated $30 billion (18.4 billion pounds) global market that rivals movie box office sales."

Games to drive wireless market
"Mobile games are set to become the key driver of the mobile entertainment market in Europe over the coming years, according to new research. The study from Analysys suggests that mobile games revenues will grow more than tenfold over the coming years, from EU0.2bn in 2002 to EU3bn in 2008, accounting for a fifth of the total mobile enterainment market."

Nokia "pleased" with N-Gage, but admits there's "a lot to do"
"Finnish giant still sticking to sales forecast of over 6 million units next year. Almost exactly a month after Nokia's N-Gage launched worldwide, a spokesperson for the company has stated that it is 'pretty pleased' with customer reaction to the device, but that there's much to be done if it's to meet expectations"

Superscape First to Market Following Ratification of New Java Standard for 3D on Mobile Phones
"HOOK, England, November 4 -- Superscape Group plc (LSE: SPS) announces that following the official ratification today by the Java Standards Community of JSR 184 - to be known as the Mobile 3D Graphics API - the company's Swerve technology is the world's first commercially available implementation of this standard for delivering rich media 3D on mobile devices. "

Mobile Games in India

"MANY kids having IT background dream of being high-end programmers -- or at least the ones passing out with a good GPA, but few reach the standard to make considerable contributions to the fledgling gaming industry.
eSophers is one such group comprised of students yet to graduate. Their debut project was much-talked about -- 'DhakaRacing', the first 3D game made in Bangladesh.
One of their upcoming projects is the first person shooter and strategy game called Bangladesh-71.


eSophers tagged along with a mate Md. Asif Ali to finish what they call a 'side scrolling platform game' called Eden Harbour. This is one of the few mobile (cellular phone) games made in Bangladesh, targeted for the Nokia 60 series sets.

Based on a sub-contract from Game Mix, a US-based software company, the picture slides (sprites) for the game have been supplied from abroad but the coding and final part are being done by the local boys. The game is expected to hit the market next year."

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Mobile Games in Kuwait
Wataniya Telecom launches Kuwait's largest portfolio of mobile games -AME Info Business News
"Wataniya Telecom announced today the launch of its new Java mobile games service that offers all Wataniya customers the opportunity to choose from a collection of more than twenty of the hottest new games that can be downloaded straight to their mobile phones.
The new games come in a range of categories, including action, adventure, board games and crosswords, developed by leading content providers from around the world. Wataniya has also developed and made available the 'Kout Bo Sitta' mobile game--one of the most popular card games in the region--to cater specifically to the local Kuwaiti market.
"

Gambling games launched on mobile phones
"Mobile phone users will this week be able to play lottery and gambling games anywhere they can receive a signal as T-Mobile, Deutsche Telekom's mobile phone arm, launches the UK's first lottery games on mobile phones."

Taito enjoys revival thanks to mobile phone games"
"Taito is enjoying a revival in the popularity of its past video games thanks to the emergence of mobile phone gaming. The mobile gaming market in Japan is worth an estimated $180 million, according to Taito in Financial Times. Taito has signed agreements with Vodafone and 30 other mobile operators across Asia and Europe, and is looking to sign deals with North American operators before Christmas 2003. Taito believes that the focus on old 'classic' games will attract mobile phone users who remember playing those games in the past. Sega (Japan), another mobile entertainment provider, is also relying on its past titles to establish itself within the mobile gaming market. Eidos (UK), games publisher, is relying on its established Tomb Raider and Pandemonium titles for its move into the mobile gaming sector. Among the factors contributing to the popularity of old are the fact that they use up little memory and can be controlled by only 2-3 buttons on the handset."