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But the market is still relatively small in the West, with 85% of the estimated $1 billion global spend on mobile phone games in 2004 accounted for by Japan and Korea. That isn't often pointed out in the breathless predictions for the sector. There are many questions about how mobile game sales can be spurred on. At last week's Osney Media-sponsored Mobile Games Forum, many strategies were outlined, including richer portal experiences where people can get a better feel for what they are buying, much more marketing, and exploiting entertainment brands.

My view is that games are most fun when playing against other people and it is this social aspect which can really drive user adoption. I discovered multi-player gaming when I worked in the City of London in the mid-90's. Late at night we would hijack a departmental server at Citibank and play Doom death match against each other: did we laugh!

So, where does the future lie for mobile multi-player gaming:

The good news for anyone into games is definitely all of the above, and all of the key players, including game developers and publishers, handset manufacturers, chipset manufacturers, network operators, operating-system providers and middleware companies are making their bets. But which are going to be the most fun and most accessible?

Currently there is a lot of effort going into making games that run over the GPRS and 3G networks. This usually includes features such as uploading and viewing high scores, buying or trading items, and leaving messages for other players. A bit more advanced is the ability to race against a phantom racer of the current best time which can be downloaded. Nothing particularly thrilling, in other words.

The holy grail of multi-player, real-time gaming is delivered by companies such as Kayak Interactive, ExMachina, and Terraplay, a Swedish company that has just raised an additional  6.5 million to fund expansion. I've seen the Morphun Rally racing game running over Terraplay and it works. You've got one-second latency, plus or minus, but the game is designed to deal with this.

Nevertheless, plus one second latency is a lot when you are pulling a trigger or trying to block a shot. What I really want to see are games that I can play against friends here and now. Why? Because it's fun! Just like playing Doom at Citibank when you toasted someone you could laugh at them over the cubicle wall and then go for a pint afterwards and gloat about it.

Showing the way are the Nintendo DS (Dual Screen/Developer System) and Sony PSP (PlayStation Portable) due to be launched in Europe Q1 2005. Both offer full multi-player capability through WIFI while the Nintendo DS has a proprietary local networking capability for up to 16 players. Neither seems keen to add in a phone system, probably wisely, given compatibility issues globally.

Personally, I can't wait to get my hands on a Nintendo DS running Super Mario 64 in multi-player mode and play it with my boys, who are six and four. They love the single player game and we won't want long journeys to end when we can play against each other collecting gold stars in the Princess Peach's castle.

But it has got to be mobile phones for the mass market. Phones that are Bluetooth equipped and running games as well as the current Nokia Series 40 and 60 phones, now that gets interesting. However, Bluejacking is just as likely to get you a punch on the nose as a date if you try it on a London underground carriage. I mean, if all the identifier tells you is T610 what use is that? Now, if it told you that you could go head to head playing a game, then that would be cool, or that you could join in a game permeating the whole carriage, how awesome would that be?

Of course, there are problems, such as the fact that Java on a T610 cannot talk to Bluetooth or the myriad API compatibility issues. Where the API is not the issue, it is still often disabled, for security or DRM purposes or even operator limited to force you to download over the air rather than over the Internet on your PC and doing a Bluetooth file transfer. This is more of an issue in the USA though, thankfully.

Nokia is to be congratulated that its new Series 40's and 60's let Java talk to Bluetooth, and hats off to O2 for launching Bluetooth Biplanes, developed by Morpheme. It is a great game, I highly recommend it. It has made the final six in the 'Mobile' category at the 2nd Annual BAFTA Games Awards: http://www.bafta.org/interactive/announce.htm

It would be nice to see more work on standards (Sun, are you listening?) to allow us to get closer to inter-handset operability. If more mobile games came out of the box with Bluetooth multi-player support then I think more people would try and play these games, especially if we could engineer in the Nintendo DS-like capability where a single game copy/cartridge is enough to run a game across several Nintendo DS's via wireless provisioning. This is a slick form of Super Distribution that should be copied.

Providing ubiquitous Bluetooth local multi-player capability can help drive the mobile gaming market to its multi-billion dollar predicted global market size and it is a lot easier to do than reengineering the entire existing and planned network infrastructure to provide low pings for networked gaming

Reprinted from AlwaysOn 20th December 2004