Here's the link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3182031.stm

This could totally be an area where indie game developers could make a place/niche for themselves - it's a new field in a way, and even the big names may be willing to use games created by indie game developers just to get their name out there...

Seems like an opportunity. Anyone here working on mobile device games?

Depending on whom you talk to, the mobile market is either wide open and full of potential or it's already flooded with developers attracted by the low barrier to entry. The truth is probably somewhere in between these two extremes (isn't that where Truth is always found lurking?). I considered trying my hand at making mobile games but decided against it because my understanding was that the myriad of different devices out there made it a real gamble picking the "right" platforms to support. That was over a year ago (!), though, so perhaps the waters have calmed a bit.

I have a friend who's been writing cel phone games for about a year and a half. He's only a one man operation and seems to be doing fairly well. He isn't exactly getting rich quick, but it is paying well enough for him to make a living at it.
He writes his games using an API called Brew. Infact he wrote a book on it: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1556229054/qid=1061962228/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/103-8769136-4351038?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

The last game he released was Poker Solitaire, and he said it's been selling really well.

It's quite different from standard indy business. It's almost impossible to sell on your own. You must go to publisher/distributor, who goes to mobile operators, who finally host your game on their networks and collect payments through phone bill.
Your game must be liked by all of them before it gets to customers. If you target some niche it could never see market.
I'm speaking from my experience - I have 5 publishing agreements but none of them succeded in pushing my game to operators yet.

http://www.cogin.com

Every year we get something to be the 'way' for indies, and every year we see this doesn't happen. GBA, PDA, CEL, next year whatever it will be, it will be dominated by a small bunch of companies, and the indies that spent most of the time on thos platforms are left with bed crums. Don't believe the hype. I know some people working for companies doing web games and yes, they do well, but the companies have enough money to do the games good enough for the publishers to take. Breakout clones won't cut it anymore. On the other hand I know a bunch of talented coders and artists doing webgames and getting their games on backup disks cause publishers/distributors never do anything.

I'm looking into getting AF ported (and redesigned) to work on a mobile phone. Seeing as it would require a pretty much total rewrite the only useful assets we've got are the graphics though.

I don't intend to make any money out of the port necessarily - but we do consider it to be a great way of marketing the desktop version of the game. I think that with exposure on thousands of phones we're likely to see a significant number of people converting to the full PC version as well.

Cas :)

@princec: it's not easy to expose mobile game to thousands of users like you plan. E.g. you can't easily give away free version.
As far as i could see, operators usually don't offer demo versions - because full game costs only few euros anyway and user can take a look at screenshots/anim gifs.
You can't avoid operators because many of them won't allow midlet downloads except from their own servers - so you need to deal with them, and since you're too small you have to go through publisher. None of them will be interested for freeware because they work for (large) percentage of each sale.
What I'm trying to say is that only people who buy your game will be able to play it - which is ok, but I don't think this can work for marketing purposes only.

That's exactly my plan. Alien Flux Mobile has to be a good game in its own right, and the sort of thing people shell out a fiver for to play on their phones without a demo. It's got to be published. We're not interested in making a great deal of money from it, and in fact, I'm certain I wont, as I'll probably see less than 50p from a sale. What it will do is make the game Alien Flux suddenly very noticeable.

What fits on a phone is going to be a very cut down version of the desktop game. There's a good chance that people who enjoy the phone game might be tempted to take a look at the PC version. It's a great way of increasing exposure and finding fans.

Provided, of course, we can get a publisher interested.

Cas :)

Well, maybe there *is* serious money to be had in the mobile market: EA to Develop Games for Nokia N-Gauge (http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=1985) .