Nokia team up with Eidos
Mobile phone giant meets games giant half way over WAP enabled mobile phones and the games the two want to produce for them
According to a release issued by CTW early this morning, Eidos and Nokia have announced a deal whereby the mobile phone giant will allow the games publisher to produce interactive gaming services for its WAP-enabled mobile phone clients. The games will be based on existing Eidos franchises, including Gangsters, and will be offered to customers via wireless operators. Nokia representative Graham Stafford commented that most people who own mobile phones are expected to dabble in gaming on the move at some point in the next few years (a guestimate backed by Datamonitor) and that the services need to be there for them, and represent an incredibly lucrative opportunity for any company quick enough to get their foot in the door, so to speak. "WAP has rapidly become a widely adopted standard for mobile Internet services and phones, therefore it is the ideal vehicle with which to boost a wide selection of new mobile game services," he surmised. Nokia regularly outsources the production of games for their mobile phones, using the "Nokia Mobile Entertainment Service" to help facilitate development. Using WAP and other mobile services seems to be the trendy thing to do at the moment. Rage Software has also signed up to provide game content to Nokia, and just recently Take 2 launched a WAP version of Oni at http://www.wap.oni-game.com. As we reported early this week, console giant Sony is due today to announce its intentions for the deals it has clinched with NTT DoCoMo and Vodafone. We hope to have more news soon. Related Feature - Sony to explain i-mode plans