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Challenges and Opportunities in Mobile Games

By Michael Juntao Yuan
2005-04-13

Choosing the Right Platform
For game developers, one of the most important choices to make at the beginning of the development process is on which mobile software platforms this game should run. Although developers have constantly complained about the limitations of the mobile phone hardware and software environment, it is somewhat surprising to see that few of them actually choose the more powerful mobile platforms, such as Symbian C++, Visual C++, and .Net Compact Framework, to develop their games. Most developers focus on the relatively constrained Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition (J2ME) and Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless (BREW) platforms. The reason is simple: Those are the two platforms with the highest volumes and, therefore, the best support from operators.

BREWBREW is a C++-based smart client platform for handsets based on Qualcomm's CDMA chips. Its main attraction is that the platform integrates very well with the operator's services and enjoys automatic support for content downloading and billing. BREW is very popular among CDMA network operators in the United States. For commercial mobile developers who lack the experience working with wireless operators, BREW is a good platform to start on, although its reach is limited. The number of CDMA network subscribers is only one-fifth of GSM network subscribers worldwide. In addition, the C++ programming language is difficult for many developers to master. For hobbyist developers, the tight integration between BREW and the operator makes it difficult to distribute free or personal BREW games over third-party Web sites.

J2MEJ2ME is by far the most popular application development platform for mobile devices. It is primarily available on GSM handsets and is supported by all major GSM manufacturers, including Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, and Sony-Ericsson. In fact, J2ME is even supported on Nokia's CDMA devices and Motorola's Windows Mobile devices. The J2ME handset manufacturers have a combined market share of more than 80 percent, and J2ME is available on more than 250 million handsets. By the end of the year 2003, 85 wireless operators worldwide had deployed Java programming support. With automatic memory management and a rich set of easy-to-use APIs, J2ME is designed to boost developer productivity. On the other hand, the large market share and diverse device support for J2ME also present the biggest technical challenge for J2ME developers -- the problem of porting an application to a variety of devices.



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First published by IBM DeveloperWorks
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