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TheBuzz Erika Engle |
Deal opens Japan market
to Manoa game publisherMANOA mobile game publisher Blue Lava Wireless LLC is getting into the import-export business. It has signed a cross-licensing agreement with Japan-based mobile game developer G-Mode that will allow each company to distribute mobile games through the others' networks of wireless carriers in the United States and Japan.
Full-color video games played on cell phones have been the rage in Japan for years, but they are relatively new to the U.S. market.
About 60 million wireless phones in Japan are game-capable, versus about 1.5 million in the United States, estimates Henk Rogers, chief executive officer of Blue Lava. "We're still catching up," he said.
Blue Lava offers a portfolio of puzzle, sports, casino and other games via wireless carriers including Verizon Wireless, Sprint PCS, AT&T Wireless, and Nextel. G-Mode offers more than 100 games.
"We're going through them little by little. Some are so culturally different they're not going to work (in the U.S. market), yet some are going to be very interesting."
The games must be translated, beginning with the obvious Japanese and English language and text issues. Also, the G-Mode games use the Japanese version of the JAVA computer language, called DoJa. Blue Lava uses the J2ME language and the BREW operating system.
Not all game titles will translate into English. We've all seen odd Japanese product names, such as the health and beauty product available locally as "Dew-Dew."
Some titles might do just fine. A car-racing game called "Pocket Rally" might work, but Blue Lava is wrestling with another one, called "Yakiniku."
"It's a game where you are the chef in a yakiniku restaurant. You're cooking and trying to satisfy customers. The more satisfaction you get, the more customers you get," Rogers said. The title would be fine here and other cosmopolitan markets, but it might not play in say, Peoria. Should Blue Lava decide to retitle the game, the graphics might also have to be adjusted, Rogers said.
The non-sexy code translation work is outsourced, Rogers said.
Blue Lava, founded in March 2002, hit its 2 million downloads mark last month, reflecting the increasing demand for the latest cell-phone bells and whistles.
"People like that we provide the games. It's not just kids, although that's a big segment of it, but adults too," said Lissa Guild Eveleth, marketing and public relations manager for AT&T Wireless in Hawaii.
Games are "definitely an increasingly popular feature. With the new technology, the games have gotten more advanced and realistic from the days of Pac-Man and Snake."
Experts predict that 450 million people will be playing mobile games by 2006, according to the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association.
The games that are offered are hugely popular and there are new games every week, said Georgia Taylor, public relations manager for Verizon Wireless.
"The customers are asking for it and we're providing it," Taylor said.
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Erika Engle is a reporter with the Star-Bulletin. Call 529-4302, fax 529-4750 or write to Erika Engle, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., No. 7-210, Honolulu, HI 96813. She can also be reached at: eengle@starbulletin.com