Mobile game market has matured, says Nokia sales boss

The mobile games industry has matured greatly in the last three years, with publishers now far more aware of what consumers want from the space - with the challenge now being to apply that knowledge to their products.

That's according to Nokia's head of global game sales, Antoine Doumenc, who was speaking exclusively with GamesIndustry.biz at the GDC Mobile event in San Francisco this week.

"Three years ago there weren't enough professional people in the mobile games industry," Doumenc commented. "It's different today. EA Mobile, Gameloft, Glu Mobile - all of these publishers understand the market really well, and the industry itself has matured. We know need to turn that understanding into real products."

He believes that the N-Gage platform, which Nokia championed in its keynote at GDC Mobile yesterday, will play a key role in taking that next step - both in terms of giving publishers more freedom to innovate and more confidence in assigning large budgets to mobile projects, and in terms of providing a mark of quality for consumers.

"These publishers have the know how to create some fantastic games. But in terms of the set-up, the mobile business just hasn't been good enough - the fragmentation, the development costs, tools and so on have delayed the industry," Doumenc explained.

"Through learning with the first N-Gage we've managed to build up an ecosystem that can be relied on, it's predictable and publishers can manage costs and also have the brand recognition that comes with it. With all of this taken care of on their behalf, publishers can now afford to take more of a creative risk and develop more games with a better return of investment."

You can read our full interview with Antoine Doumenc on the site today.