PopCap targets mobiles for future growth

PopCap Games is targeting mobile as one of the companies key areas of growth over the next few years, as the casual games specialist looks to expand outside of the PC market.

Speaking to our sister site GamesIndustry.biz, chief creative officer Jason Kapalka has said that despite the clumsy process of downloading games, the company intends to make the most of the growing mobile market.

"Mobile is currently a really large proportion of the casual market because the capacity of mobile phones to play games has gotten a lot better. It's still considered a wide-open growth market because the way cell phones work is that people upgrade every couple of years," detailed Kapalka, in an interview published today.

"The actual experience of downloading games onto your phone is still pretty cumbersome and awkward. Despite that it's still a big market for us, Bejeweled and Tetris are the number one and two games on mobile phones worldwide," he said.

Kaplaka is confident that casual games are better suited to the mobile format, so PopCap won't be chasing technological advancements such as full 3D games.

"The form factor of a mobile device is very applicable to casual games. Companies like Electronic Arts have tried to make more complicated mobile games and the hardware is getting to the point where you can do things like 3D on the cell phone. But what hasn't changed is that it's still a one inch screen that you're trying to play with one thumb on a little clumsy keyboard," offered Kapalka.

"So despite the presence of a lot of technological games on cell phone, the fact that games like Tetris, Bejeweled and Solitaire dominate the top ten lists of mobile gaming suggests that casual games are going to be the dominant force for some time to come."