Mobile game sales have 'flatlined'

Cause almost all cell phone games suck!

It can be a quality market, but for as much revenue that is being brought in, I dont' think development, or at least the innovative mindshare, is getting a significant piece of that action. If you can get our visionary designers onto the platform, I think good things could happen, with significant "I Care" from both the gamer and casual market.

The problem, as I see it, really is the aggregation and coverage of the available technology. Mobile is really putting a mean value app on as many similar spec phones as possible. Once you get all those covered, you're figuring out what you can and can't get certified, and then, you can't really advertise meaningfully, compared to the investment.

And that's where Apple wins by their same playbook. They're designing the hardware, the firmware, and the app store. When all those parties are on the same page and running toward the same goal (or if nothing else, the same pocket), then you're free to advertise cheap applications on million dollar advertisements.

If the mobile game biz is ever going to touch the level of end user influence that Apple has, its got to start streamlining the process. Android and N-Gage are steps in the right direction. But its then a matter of scope. Until every phone comes with a truly standardized feature set, and every carrier deck cleans up its deck practices, people will continue to have no idea what to think of the mobile games sector, let alone realize that there are good things happening there.

But you know, when you're making $5.4 billion on selling games by name recognition and a 2 sentence blurb, who needs to try hard?

I wouldn't mind mobile games if they actually worked on my phone that can't even run them too well :/

Quality has nothing to do with it.

People will buy any old shit if its marketed properly or they think it's cool. Look at all the retro games on XBLA

I agree here with DemonEyes23. Sometimes i want a decent game on my cellphone (which is a piece of shit, a decent game would probably be limited to a tetris clone) but then i realise i generally have my psp with me if i could be bored, so theres no point.