This article titled “Developers debate Android gaming potential at Mobile Games Forum” was written by Stuart Dredge, for guardian.co.uk on Thursday 26th January 2012 09.34 UTC

More than 62m people played games on their mobile phones in September 2011 across the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, according to data shared by comScore at the Mobile Games Forum conference in London.

That represents more than 25% of all mobile users in those “EU5″ countries. Meanwhile, nearly 13m played mobile games almost every day that month. “There’s a frequency of repeat usage that’s encouraging,” said comScore’s vice president of mobile Jeremy Copp as he revealed the figures.

The most popular gaming platform in these countries? Apple’s iPhone. Specifically, more than 3.4m people played games on an iPhone 4 16GB model in September 2011 according to comScore’s research – extrapolated from its surveys across the EU5 countries.

It was followed in comScore’s gaming handset chart by the iPhone 3GS 16GB model (1.5m) and the iPhone 4 32GB (1.3m). RIM’s BlackBerry Curve 8520 also had 1.3m mobile gamers in September.

Copp added that 36m people were playing games on smartphones in the EU5 markets in September, with 15% having made in-game purchases of virtual items, currency and upgrades.

The comScore data set the scene for a day of optimism at the conference about the mobile games market. There was a clear sense that iOS and Android remain the two platforms of choice for most developers at the event – a change from the same conference a year ago, where Android had yet to become a priority.

“We need to follow the big markets, and at the moment that’s iOS and Android,” said Oli Christie, chief executive of British publisher Neon Play, which has just celebrated its 30 millionth mobile game download across those two stores.

However, Christie said Android is still posing some headaches for developers, citing Neon Play’s game Traffic Panic as an example. “We launched Traffic Panic 3D as a paid app on Android, and we got 98% piracy,” he said, before labelling it as an essential yet problematic platform.

“It’s going to be absolutely massive, it has to be. We’re big into Android, we love it, but we’re struggling with it.”

Processor firm Nvidia’s vice president of mobile content Neil Trevett was notably bullish about Android in his presentation at the event.

“Apple is fabulously successful and I’m sure will continue to be so, but I do think Android will, over time, really dominate the mobile market,” he said. “I think it’s going to be a repeat of the PC/Mac market, with 80% Android and 20% iOS.”

Trevett’s talk also focused on the potential for developers to create “console-class” games for smartphones and tablets with the latest processors from Nvidia and its rivals. He also suggested that even games like Angry Birds, which do not rely on console-quality graphics for their appeal, will benefit.

“I’ve talked to Rovio, and there’s going to be versions… I should be careful,” said Trevett, seemingly almost letting slip news of new Angry Birds games with beefed-up visuals.

“Angry Birds can do a lot more,” he continued. “Once you give them the power, they can start doing particle effects in the volcanoes… They can use a 3D physics engine… Even the classic 2D title like Angry Birds with the right imagination will be able to take advantage of the processing power.”

A later panel session focused on tablets specifically, with Electronic Arts’ director of worldwide OEM Peter Parmenter pointing out that Android tablets could break new ground for games in countries where console penetration is low or non-existent.

Parmenter said that the launch of sub- tablets in India and Africa could see them becoming the primary gaming devices for families in these countries, bypassing consoles and desktop or laptop computers. “The tablet could be the connectivity device that they have,” he said.

He accepted that this may force a strategic shift in the business models for games launched by companies like EA in these markets, citing sub-Saharan Africa as a prime example.

“We have a very mobile young sport-crazy audience there who are hungry for entertainment products in general, and you also have huge brands wanting to get in front of these customers, where the only way to do that is through these devices. So we’d encourage a partnership mentality with those big brands.”

There was surprisingly little nitty-gritty discussion of freemium business models for mobile games during the conference’s first day, despite this being one of the key debates within the industry at the moment.

However, publisher NaturalMotion’s chief executive Torsten Reil finished the day with some lessons learned from his company’s switch from paid games to freemium titles on iOS.

NaturalMotion has now racked up more than 16m downloads for its games, with 8m of those coming from its first freemium game, My Horse, since its launch in September 2011. He said that adaptability is a key attribute for mobile games firms to prosper at the moment.

“We needed to do the things that were scalable and would create lots of games with a huge number of users. That’s why we switched to free-to-play,” he said.

“To a lot of questions right now, we just don’t know though. You have to try it out and if it doesn’t work you have to change it very quickly.”

But Reil returned to the question of how much potential there is for these games on Android. “Our paid games are already on Android, and they monetise at a significantly lower level than they do on iOS,” he said, although NaturalMotion is keeping a close eye on Android to gauge when to take My Horse to Google’s platform.

“Android is going to grow, but iOS is a huge opportunity, and if you make that opportunity work other incremental opportunities will appear on top of that.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

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Image credit: Lynn Wallenstein, Creative Commons

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