Rodrigo A. Sepúlveda Schulz

Digital Games Distributor BOONTY receives $10m series B round of financing

This piece of news is fantastic: the Nouzareth brothers, co-founders of boonty, have just raised $10 million to further expand their games business (~ 8m€). The press release is just off the press, and if you want to hear it straight from the horse's mouth, here's a video of Mathieu that I shot last week (bloggers always respect embargos ;).

Download Boonty_gets_10m.avi

Well done! It is great news for French entrepreneurs, and for the VC community. The sector is waking up, and a few more rounds of financing should be announced this month!

ps: Glowria Games, our games offer is - of course - powered by Boonty!

An analysis of supply and demand for mobile games

It seems that our friend Russ has a lot of time of his hands: he's just crafted one of those spectacular posts where he puts up a selection of supply of something on his blog, in this case recent mobile games.
His post is really worth checking out.

In particular I appreciate his perfect wisdom when he says:

Finally, like I've said before, I think that mobile media is going to start sucking up a lot of the time that people are now spending playing games on their mobile. Professional content, amateur content and your PVR's content are going to be available on the go.

I can't seem to agree more. Consumer needs are getting more and more different to what mobile companies are offering them. For instance, I'd really love an easy-to-understand/buy/find all-you-can-eat mobile Internet connexion that works anywhere, FOR A FLAT FEE per month, just what I get at home. I could even stretch myself to a price plan, such as my mobile subscription, BUT that works with any operator.

It doesn't exist today with all operators (do I care abouthe Wi-Fi, Wimax, GPRS, EDGE, UMTS technologies?), and it's very hard to buy from one single operator (hidden somewhere at the 30th layer of a professional solution for the hard core nomad traveller).

So operators want me to use bandwidth, and buy content from them. Russ is right: too much demand, difficult to find, too expensive. I would only pay a subscription to a service, and I would download every now and then, some content such as games, not to be bored. Maybe. I would pay for connectivity but at a reasonable price.

All this blurp to say that mobile companies have almost completely lost touch with their customers...

Pictures from the E3 game show

Patrice from LaFraise.com is there, and has some great pictures from the show. He's also blogging live pictures from his trip to the USA. Check it out.

glowria expands its business model and launches GlowriaGames!

We had been announcing it for a long while now in various online forums and public roundtables.
Glowria launches a new service tonight with our partner Boonty.

We have decided to bring this new offer first to our Glowria subscribers: since early evening tonight they now see a 'Games' tab on the homepage, and are able to test over 200 games for free for 24 hours.

To keep on playing a specific game after 24h, our subscribers will have to purchase the game, conveniently by credit card.

We are really glad to keep expanding our marketing promise of being a digital lifestyle aggregator. Special thanks to Mad (codename ;) for bringing this project to life, and all our colleagues at Glowria & Boonty for a speedy implementation.

And... keep in mind video-on-demand is next !

Update on 11/4/05: the press is already relaying this story ;) Great. Get the articles from SVM and JdN here.

Thoughts from the 2004 Austin Mobile Gaming conference

Interesting feedback on mobile games in this paper published on IBM's web site about the 2004 Austin Game Conference:

A market to watch out for

"most of the mobile game players surveyed in their marketing studies do not fit the traditional profile of lone commuters waiting for public transportation. In fact, most mobile gamers play at home several times a day even though many of them already own dedicated game consoles. They play mobile games while they are watching TV, SMSing, or otherwise multitasking. Very young kids can now have access to mobile games through family plans for wireless services. Mobile gaming is becoming a way of life for an entire generation of consumers."
"The diverse demography of mobile consumers makes the mobile content market a mass media market that might eventually rival or exceed the television market. It is a historic opportunity for developers and content providers."

Distribution is controlled by the mobile carriers (hey we've already said so so many times...)

"Different from the traditional console/PC game market, the mobile game market is essentially controlled by the wireless service provider (the operator). The operator decides what devices it supports and what data services are offered to its subscribers. It also provides integrated authentication and billing services for mobile content providers, including game developers and publishers."
"more than 90 percent of the actual purchases come from the wireless operator's online catalogs"

Think Java, although it doesn't solve all problems (by the way way Java 1.5 came out this week!)

"The J2ME handset manufacturers have a combined market share of more than 80 percent, and J2ME is available on more than 250 million handsets. By the end of the year 2003, 85 wireless operators worldwide had deployed Java programming support."
"However, Java's "Write Once, Run Anywhere" vision has yet to be realized, thanks to the fragmentation of the device market": "Mobile phone manufacturers need to differentiate their product offerings. "" They also provide proprietary Java extension APIs."
"A Java application needs to be ported, optimized, and tested for each target device it is intended to run on, which is a complicated challenge." "This can be extremely expensive and requires extensive technical know-how to optimize for more than 70-80 devices in house."

Start with a Symbian Series 60, then port it down to Java series 40 machines

"For instance, the Nokia Series 40 devices -- the most widely adopted Java phone ever -- have sold 10 times more units than fSeries 60 devices."
"The Nokia Series 40 was the most frequently mentioned line of devices at the conference. Developers love it for its huge market share, but hate it for the amount of optimization work needed to port applications to it."

Just as a reminder, in-fusio got another round of financing this summer, Sorrent got some more in July,

No blogging from the Olympics ? Try pictures!

This is ludicrous: the Olympic committee is banning all officials and athletes from running blogs, (and I suppose posting to existing blogs...). You can't even wear a brand that is not one of the official global sponsors! When I was there 10 days ago, I saw a guard strip the label on a water bottle from an English girl just after the metal detectors, because it was not the official brand ! The brands of fire extinguishers and clocks present in the stadiums were covered with black tape!!! Ridiculous.
And you can't even link to their websites unless you're authorised (check the comment on my post here)!

Update on 24/8/04: the IOC is even forcing internet radio streams to shut down...
Update2: aha! athletes are refusing to become Epsilon citizens ! They have started to blog nevertheless!

On the positive side, the trip to Athens was well worth it. I saw fencing (sabre & sword), swimming, beach volley, volleyball, men and women gymnastics. It was like a big party, with people cheering their country, or someone else's country (whatever), just to have fun and spend a good time together. We ended wondering if they were parties organized every night so that the Olympic spirit could last 24/7... Still time for you to go for a couple of days, you won't regret it. Still second thoughts ? Check some of my pictures here.

$27m more VC money for mobile gaming

Just off the press by email from their PR agency and on their web site (the PDF is not linkable easily...), another mobile gaming company, in-fusio, goes for another round of financing:
"PARIS, BORDEAUX LOS, ANGELES, NEW-YORK
August 4, 2004
IN-FUSIO, the leading global game publisher and game services provider for mobile phones, today announced that it has raised $27 million in its latest round of financing. U.S. based venture capital firm Insight Venture Partners leads the funding, joining existing IN-FUSIO investors Banexi Ventures, Partech International, VPSA (formerly Viventures) and Innoven Partenaires.
The capital raised will help to further secure IN-FUSIO's leading market share position in Europe, as well as its growing presence in the U.S. mobile gaming industry."
The management team's calculated and focused global expansion has placed IN-FUSIO as one of the most successful and profitable companies in the market with $14.4 million in revenues in 2003."
"IN-FUSIO currently publishes 65 titles for more than 70 wireless carriers and 140 handsets worldwide."

Remember we announced on this blog that in-Fusio was one of the winners of the first MEF awards, and was cited as on of the top 100 RedHerring companies!

Portable video players competing with the iPod and mobile phones

I have been predicting that the next generation of iPods will be featuring color screens and wireless connectivity. Well the Taiwanese industry has already addressed the first concern, producing a number of color-screen video players, that also play of course MP3 music and many more formats. As always they've also included new differentiating factors: DiVx playback, etc.

Wireless connectivity is not yet included, however some of these devices already can run Java applications specifically written for mobile phones. The blurring of frontiers between all portable devices is continuing at a very fast pace.

The Register has the story:
"PQI has looked beyond video and music: the mPack also runs Java games written for mobile phones, and contains its own text viewing and editing apps - though without a keyboard, the latter can't be an easy task. There's also an FM radio in there, and since the device mounts as an external hard drive, you can store other data too."

"Apple has publicly said that it doesn't believe video is a killer mobile app, but the iPod certainly has the potential today to be given photo display capabilities - support is already there in the PortalPlayer engine. And with Sony launching personal video players in Japan this month - probably round the world later in the year - and iRiver readying its own video player, the H300, Apple may be forced down such a path."

Speaker at MEM04, 2-3 June London

I shall be joining the plenary session panel on thursday morning in London at the Mobile Entertainment Market in London.
The session will be on "DEFINING THE INDUSTRY, The role of content owners in determining the future of mobile entertainment" with other distinguished industry members:

1. Justin Richardson, Director Europe, Wireless, Warner Bros
2. Nigel Sandiford, Asia-Pacific Executive, Electronic Arts
3. Claudio Aspesi, Senior VP for Strategy & Development, EMI
4. Johan Lodenius, Senior VP of European Business Relations, Qualcomm

If you are going to attend, drop me a line. Comments after welcome as well.

Wi-Fi enabled gameboy

In a previous note and at a recent conference, I was assuming devices would be converging soon, and I had given one example: I thought it would just be a matter of time before Nintendo introduced a Wi-Fi enabled gameboy (potentially turning it into a phone as well with an embedded Skype client...).

Well, this is now reality: Sony just introduced the Wi-Fi enabled portable play-station (looks like a Gameboy to me...). More info here.