Porting costs still a problem, says Ideaworks exec

Tim Closs, chief technical officer for Ideaworks 3D, has told MobileIndustry.biz that porting costs are still holding back the mobile gaming industry from reaching its full potential.

In an exclusive interview published today, Closs said, "We're still seeing Java porting costs being up to 50 per cent of the total game development budget. There are some very good solutions now in the Java space, such as Tira's Jump solution - but nothing like that currently exists in the native space."

Closs also cited "problems from the operators' perspective - making it easy for people to actually buy and download these games".

"That's something that everyone in the industry is working very hard on, to try and make them improve their processes and make the user experience much easier. There are some good steps being made, particularly by Nokia and also Vodafone, to improve that."

Earlier this month, Ideaworks unveiled Airplay 3.0, its latest middleware solution for mobile game developers. According to Closs, the solution allows developers "to build their game once and employ it to as many different native handsets as possible", across Brew, Symbian, Windows Mobile and Linux Mobile.

"It basically reduces their porting costs almost to zero," he added.