Mobile gaming has been around for some time. The initial Nintendo machines have been used by kids in the backseat of cars since the 90s. Many mobiles started to ship with basic games that have been used by casual gamers. Some games could also been downloaded to mobiles via SMS push. Serious gamers, however had to use specialised devices, such as Sony’s PSP, to experience decent game play. But now a pardigm shift seems to be taking place. Neil Young founder of ngmoco summarises this as follows:

The numbers don’t lie. With an install base of over 30 million, sales of the iPhone and iPod Touch are outpacing Sony’s PSP and Nintendo’s DS. There are 25,000 apps on the store, growing at a rate of 165 per day, he said. And when brand-new games are just a finger swipe away, freeing gamers from the hassle of buying UMDs at GameStop, it can be an “awesome opportunity” for publishers. Over 800 million apps have been downloaded since the store launched, said Young.

The growth of this new apps-market allows marketeers to have a new interactive platform for customer brand engagement. Numerous game types could be possible from classical car games to support the launch of new automotive models to economic simulation games for financial service providers. The development costs for iPhone games varies acording to graphical and gameplay cmplexity. However, there are still plenty of opportunities to achieve significant interaction with brands and products for a limited amount of outlay.