mobile

Today, we’re releasing a major update to the Playyoo mobile site (m.playyoo.com). There are a lot of new features to discover, so here’s a quick run down of the major ones.

First up, the home page has changed significantly. We now show games from each of your streams in batches of 4.

You can play the game immediately by clicking on “Play now!”, or you can read about it, and access further options, such as adding to your favourites, by clicking on “More…”.

We’ve added a more personal touch to Playyoo mobile: you can now see who created the games you’re playing, and send them messages. You can also quickly discover other games they’ve created. Click on the member’s nickname to go to their mobile page.

Apart from accessing the games in your streams, you can now use the Search facility to retrieve games you might have seen on the web site, or you remember playing but can’t find. Just enter any part of the name, and a list of the top 10 matches will be returned (the search also looks at the game’s description)

And if you’re feeling lucky, click on “Random Game” to be offered a game dredged up from our vast archives.

The streams have also been slightly reorganised, and colour-coded for instant recognition.

When you access a stream, the header and footer will change colour based on the stream contents. The corresponding links are also colour-coded:

• Your Gamestream: green
• Your Favourites: sky blue
• Your Playlist: violet (previously called “Recently Played Games”)
• Random Game: pink
• Search Game: orange

We hope you enjoy the new mobile site, and we welcome your feedback, good or bad.

(PER LA VERSIONE ITALIANO, CLICCA QUI)

We recently introduced a feature which allows you to tell somebody else about a game you played and liked on Playyoo. This article shows you how to use it.

1. Sending a game

After you finish a game, and submit the score, you will come to the standard Playyoo “scorecard” section, which is included in all downloaded games. Once the connection with Playyoo has been established, and the data is updated, you will see the main menu. One of the options on the main menu is “send to a friend”:

If you select this option, you will move to the the Send To a Friend screen:

Here you must enter your friend’s phone number, and if you like, you can add a short message. We’re sorry, but for now you have to enter the phone number, you can’t look it up. We don’t have access to your contacts list, and if you think about, you’ll probably agree that that is just as well. However, we are working on an update which will make things a little easier.

You also need to enter the full phone number, including the international code. So, if you friend’s number is 0787 987654321, and she’s in the UK, you’ll need to enter 44787987654321.

After you’ve entered the phone number, and maybe a message, you can click on the Send button, and Playyoo will do the rest.

2. Receiving a game

Ok, let’s be honest here: we don’t actually send the game. We actually send a text message with a link to the game, on your behalf. One reason we do this is that your friend may well have a different phone model to you, and this requires us to package the game differently. Here is how the message looks:

When the message is opened, you can see the link. Accessing the link works a bit differently on various phones. On this Sony Ericsson K850i, it is simply a question of scrolling down to the link, which is then highlighted, and clicking:

The game page is then loaded:

And finally, you friend can play the game:

At the end of the game, your friend is invited to join Playyoo (if she’s not already a member) and add her score - and explore the rest of Playyoo at her leisure!

This is just the beginning. We’re working on some cool new stuff which will allow to track what happens with your sent games, and set up responses and challenges to keep things interesting. Oh, and the tiny little bugs which might just possibly get in your way … well, hopefully we know about them all, and we’re currently making sure they get well and truly squashed.

The other day I downloaded a white paper from Juniper Research on mobile games. Juniper recently published a report predicting big things for mobile games. The research group believes today’s 5 billion mobile game market will skyrocket to 16 billion in 2012.

Here’s why Juniper has such high hopes:

Universality: There are now 2.8 billion mobile handsets (and growing), compared with just 324 million consoles (Sony PS2, PS3, Wii, etc.). [Note: the 2.8 billion is Juniper’s figure from the WP- according to a new post on Engadget Mobile, there are now 3.3 billion mobile phone subscriptions]

Low level of mobile game penetration: The total number of mobile phone owners actually playing games is still low - around 7% - meaning there’s a lot of room for growth.

Technological advances: The rollout of 3G networks around the globe offers new opportunities for connected, multi-player gaming, while more sophisticated handsets can offer more attractive graphics and a better gaming experience.

Shifting demographics: Juniper noted the growing number of female players.

Rise in casual games: Good news for casual game developers - Juniper attributes much of the growth in mobile gaming to the rise of the casual gamer.

Sure, the numbers are encouraging (and we’re definitely not going to dispute that there’s a large opportunity in mobile gaming) – but it’s going to take a lot of work to get to the promised land of 16 billion.

We’ve got to address some of the chief hurdles in today’s mobile game market: mobile games can be too expensive, too difficult to find; and, well, to quote John Carmack, “most of the games are just crap.”

At Playyoo, we’re doing what we can to bring mobile games to the masses. Free games, game creation tools, community ratings, and a game stream that will make finding cool games as easy as a trip to the sushi bar. Most importantly, we’re expecting big things from the Flash Lite developer community and we’ll keep sponsoring contests to spark everyone’s creativity and talent.

So, in short, we know there’s a big road ahead of us, but the future looks pretty good from where we are.
Read more…

It’s some data about the mobile business. It would be nice if mmetrics would share their data but then it’s their only source of revenue I think. But then there still is Mobref. So with triangulation and magic you might be able to get to some point.

AdMob Metrics: “We hope that this data snapshot will provide insight into trends in the mobile ecosystem. Here are a few interesting bits from the data:

- Dramatic growth in UK ads served
- The iPhone more than doubled share in the US in October.
- SonyEricsson and Samsung gained share in the AdMob network in the UK”

For those people in a hurry and those without Flash lite enabled handsets I got some impressions from the mobile: you’ll see the start screen and some games.

Still the preview though.Starting with December we will have the actual site for free mobile games up and running. So stay tuned for further insights and news to come.