Q Entertainment licenses Lumines and Meteos for mobiles

Japanese game developer Q Entertainment has announced that two of its recent puzzle titles for handheld consoles have been licensed to mobile publisher GameLoft for release on handsets in early 2006.

Lumines and Meteos were both designed with input from famed former Sega designer Tetsuya Mizuguchi, and have received massive critical acclaim in their original incarnations on the PlayStation Portable and Nintendo DS respectively.

Both are stylish twists on the traditional falling block style puzzles which have proved very popular on handheld devices ever since Tetris on the original GameBoy - and indeed, Tetris remains one of the best-selling mobile games to this day.

"We are delighted to partner with GameLoft, who is the ideal mobile game partner for Q," commented Q Entertainment CEO Shuji Utsumi. "We are confident of their ability to deliver our games' gameplay and style - the combination that has made them a success."

"We are very excited that Lumines and Meteos will be enjoyed by a wider reach of customers through distribution on mobile phones," he concluded.

For its part, Gameloft views the two titles as key new products for its range of casual games.

"Casual games are a strategic component for our sector, whose aim is to reach the widest possible public," explained Gameloft VP of publishing Gonzague de Vallois. "Tetsuya Mizuguchi's games have fantastic potential on mobile phones."