Casual Connect in Hamburg, from 10. – 12. February 2010 right at the front-door of FISHLABS 

We are very pleased to attend Casual Connect with three topics on the second day. Casual Games Association Events are the premiere events for the casual games industry with over 3,500 professionals attending Casual Connect Events each year. Casual Connect Europe brings together the most talented and knowledgeable experts in the casual gaming field to further the casual games industry with the best of networking and learning.

This year FISHLABS is among the front runners: With 10 iPhone Games and more than 21 Millionen downloads we are now ranked as one of the top players worldwide.

At Casual Connect we are attending three panels:

What’s the Smart Choice in Smartphones?

Attendees:
Alex BUBB, Senior Partner Manager, Media and Games Nokia
Joe NEALE, Head of End User Programs Symbian Foundation
Michael SCHADE, CEO FishLabs
Moderator:
Chris JAMES, Founder Pocket Gamer

Smartphones are the new black in the mobile content world, but who are the main players and which of the many new platforms and accompanying app stores should you be supporting? Our expert panel of platform representatives and publishers offer an invaluable guide from Android to Windows Mobile.

Case Study: Ad-Funded Games

Speaker: Michael SCHADE, CEO FishLabs

Smartphones are on their way to become the most engaging media in everyone’s life. Millions of downloads with hundred thousands of hours game time make ad games on smartphones like iPhone, Android and other new mobile platforms the Trojan horse for brands to cut through the daily media noise. Learn from best practices with Volkswagen and Barclaycard how to engage with consumers on a global level in a long-lasting and lean-forward experience.

Business Models & Pricing – Making Money on the App Store

Attendees:
Nicholas LOVELL, Director GAMESbrief
Michael SCHADE CEO, FishLabs
Christopher KASSULKE, CEO HandyGames GmbH
Moderator:
Tim HARRISON Founder The Mobile Consultancy

The iPhone has well and truly shaken up mobile games pricing, enabling a wide variety of new business models. This session examines these models and key pricing trends from the initial rush to the bottom to the emerging premium bracket along with micro-payments, lite and free versions, subscriptions and asks the simple question…which models are making money?

Of course there will be enough time for chats and discussions after and in between the panels and we look forward to many inspiring conversations.

Sony Ericsson has been known for its outstanding 3D gaming performance on Java phones for years now. It all started back in 2004, when Sony Ericsson introduced the first mass market Java phone that could render decent 3D graphics on a 176×220 pixels screen. We had been early on and released our first 3D games Motoraver, featuring 3D driving physics in a fairly large sandbox-style city at night, and Robot Alliance, a proper first person shooter in full 3-D (!) with smoothly animated 3D characters, all within 350KB of data.

Continuously, Sony Ericsson improved their hardware and, even more important, the Java Virtual Machine it was running. The crown of 3D enabled java phones still belongs to the K800i, the game experience felt close to the Playstation 1, even if it was not as fast and on a smaller screen. And Fishlabs has to give Kudos to Sony Ericsson. Without this great performance we could never have created mobile games of such high quality like Blades & Magic, Rally Master Pro, Snowboard Hero and Galaxy on Fire 2.

From music to photos to games

In 2005 3D gaming was hyped very much but could not break through as the carriers always forced developers to support the lowest common denominator and the majority of handsets could only render 2D graphics. Sony Ericsson did right in focusing on music instead and introducing the Walkman brand to mobile with great success. A year later Sony Ericsson repeated the success story labeling their photo feature phones with the popular brand Cybershot. With all those millions of Walkman and Cybershot phones sold, sharing a consistent Java platform and decent 3D rendering capabilities, Sony Ericsson’s strength in mobile gaming started as the best kept secret of the industry and led into ruling the mobile gaming business: in 2007, Sony Ericsson was the fourth largest manufacturer of mobile phones worldwide, seven out of ten games downloads were happening on Sony Ericsson phones in Europe and emerging markets like Latin America and South East Asia. Until today, Sony Ericsson has released over 50 models supporting proper 3D rendering and has an installed user base of approx. 200 million devices (Fishlabs’ estimate). Not a bad thing for developers like us, focused on 3D mobile games, if only the ecosystem was right.

iPhone – the mobile games game changer

Nothing is constant but change. It was not Nokia, with its great ambitions in mobile gaming, finally introducing N-Gage as a service, or Vodafone with more than 300 (?) million subscribers who literally changed the mobile gaming business over night. New kid on the mobile block Apple swiped away all competitors with a mobile phone featuring a game experience beyond Nintendo DS and close to Sony PSP. With the latest installment of iPhone 3GS and iPod touch 3rd generation featuring OpenGL ES 2.0 even beyond PSP. In combination with the App Store integrated in iTunes, a fair business case for developers (70/30 revenue share) and a low entry barrier (get started for less than $299 with an iPod touch and the iPhone SDK) for everyone mobile game developers were flocking to this new exciting platform.

Satio – ramping up for the fastest mobile gaming device?

It took Sony Ericsson a while to find an answer to the unexpected competitor coming from the computer area backed by a loyal customer base addicted to superior user experience – which is exactly why Apple is so stunningly successful with the iPhone. Although, feature phones based on Java had been a great success for Sony Ericsson and were the preferred mobile phone for gaming by tens of millions users, the future in mobile gaming lies in smartphones. However, any half-hearted attempt to stand up against the leader of smartphones will fail. But Sony Ericsson has sent a decent device stuffed with the latest hardware to the race. The Satio features the same 3D-Chip PowerVR SGX  as the iPhone 3GS running Symbian on an even more powerful CPU ARM11 clocked at 600MHz. Furthermore, it comes with plenty of memory and with a bigger display than the iPhone featuring 640 x 360 pixels resolution. 

Lots of horsepower – what is it good for?

It is one thing to stuff a lot of nice hardware into a mobile phone. It is another story to make all this power available to the developer. Sony Ericsson did an amazing job here. We have ported Rally Master Pro from iPhone to Symbian featuring almost the same functionality on Satio (only automatic acceleration when using touch controls due to single touch on Satio and no multiple simultaneous sounds due to lack of layered sound capabilities). Although the resolution of the Satio display is quite higher compared to the iPhone we experience a stable frame rate of 30 frames per second on both devices running identical game code and graphical assets. Thanks to the better screen resolution of Satio, it is stunning how much more details can be rendered in the scene (the original iPhone textures were designed with some head room for larger screens).

Xperia X10: Mobile games on the big screen

Today a prototype of the latest Sony Ericsson smartphone has arrived at our studio: A shiny Xperia X10 and we have to convey it looks stunning, indeed. It is still a very early proto but navigation on the capacitive touch screen feels great and fluid and the whole menu is much more inviting and intuitive to play around with than it used to be with previous smartphones from Sweden. As the X10 is an Android based phone it will take a while until we have our first game running on it. But one thing is for sure: The big screen is a great, great plus. You can see our website in full 800 pixels width and everything is crystal clear. Even the small fonts can be read with ease. Equipped with a whopping 1 GHz Snapdragon Chip supporting OpenGL ES 2.0 it promises high-end smartphone gaming on the big screen.
 

The Games Convention is just around the corner, and our preparations are in high gear. This time, we will have three booths: you will find our promotion van right inside the entrance in the large glass hall, where our mobile games can be downloaded free to your phone via Bluetooth. Our promotion girls will then show you the way to our main booth G20 in Hall 5.

Sony Ericsson W760i Walkman mobile phone drawing

At our generous booth in Hall 5, you can not only get a first-hand impression of our upcoming games, we will be giving away a super-cool Sony Ericsson W760i Walkman mobile phone every 2 hours. In addition, we will be holding drawings for FISHLABS games packs, each with 5 full versions. That way, you can start playing right away. You should probably just relax on one of the many cube seats at our booth, because our games won’t let go of you so quickly.

First FISHLABS mobile game on Symbian with OpenGL ES

Our business partners will always be able to reach us at the GameCity Hamburg booth F11 in the Business Centre in Hall 2. There we will demonstrate another ‘world premiere’: Powerboat Challenge™ on the Symbian platform with full OpenGL ES hardware rendering. Even with four boats at once, full-throttle graphics, and all of the light, reflection, and water effects switched on, the native game runs at maximum visibility at an unbelievable 30 frames per second in full resolution and landscape format. That is mobile console gaming at its best!

Galaxy on Fire™ 2 gameplay video ready to go

Along with our current mobile games Powerboat Challenge™ and Rally Master Pro™, we will also be showing the release candidate for Gladiator and the first playable version of Galaxy on Fire™ 2, which you have been eagerly awaiting. For those of you who may not be able to travel to the GC, we have put together the very first gameplay video for Galaxy on Fire™ 2.

Of course, this video does not represent the final version of the game. Above all, we still have not fully implemented the head-up display and so we have left it out here. But you can already see what direction the gameplay is going: for example, you are no longer tied to one station, but can fly directly to nearby planets and their stations and move freely between star systems using jump gates.

You can also get an eyeful of the new graphics quality in the sequel in this video – and that even though these are not even the final graphics! You can expect not only gaming highlights, but also visuals that may be unique in the field of mobile games!

Take a close look, and you will discover even more gameplay features: for example, the option of taking control of the turrets yourself. Very handy when you are attacked from behind  or when flying past larger battleships, if you want to take out their guns with targeted fire. Or the new special weapons, such as EMP bursts, which incapacitate your opponents for a brief moment, so you can finish them off. And the nukes are nothing to sneeze at – they’re a real blast! Especially if you have to destroy a real monster ship or too many enemies are after you all at once.

FISHLABS on GCDC Mobile Games Panels

FISHLABS will not only be in the exhibition area of the Games Convention, but will also be taking part in three mobile games panels on Monday during the GCDC:

The State of the European Mobile Games Industry

Abstract: The European mobile games industry has developed its own quality and style that is unique in the world. Europe is also the home of Nokia, Gameloft and high profile international developers such as Ideaworks3D, Fishlabs and Digital Legends. Many European studios (Elkware, Iomo, Haiku, Sumea, etc.) have been bought by Japanese and American studios in the recent past and this is a trend that is likely to continue in the coming years.

Enough reasons to ask ourselves: can we grow the mobile entertainment business ourselves? Can we do our own research and development? How about Financing? Can we improve the European market commercially? Any best practices in the games or media industry?

On or Off Deck: Is there a future for mobile games distribution without the operators?

Abstract: 2008 started with the launch of NGage, the announcement of the Iphone SDK and Google’s Android program. Big companies seem to discover the potential of mobile game distribution, a potential that was already discovered by Jamba, Zed, Buongiorno and Sony Ericsson with Fun and Download. C4M sees a future in the Japanese distribution model based on free games, others are experimenting with distribution via e-mail, virtual item buying and in-game advertising.

This panel of experts will give you an insight in the present and the future of off deck distribution strategies.

Multi Platform Publishing Strategies

Abstract: To be announced.