Universal Mobile Games Platfotm

Thrasher

Hi,

Does anyone know anything about the proposed Universal Mobile Games Platform that Ericsson, Siemens and Motorola are said to be working on?

I'm looking at this from a coders perspective. Last I heard, the initiative was supposed to develop a platform that would support Metrowerks’ CodeWarrior IDE
and run on mobile phones/communicators etc.

If anyone has ANY info regarding this, it
would be extremely helpful!

Thanks!
/Rory

kayos

Ahhhhhh not CodeWarrior please no.....

I used CodeWarrior when I was programming Plam Pliots many moons ago (I think it was the Palm3 that was just out back then). I liked the IDE itself but to be honest any development tool that refuses to work and actually crashes your system when you have another certain Dev tool (It was either VS6 or Builder 2/3) installed is a evil piece of work. But hey I love the glow in the dark boxers they sold back then As if I'm that much of a nerd........

kayos

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When you get to hell tell them I sent you,
you'll get a group discount...

tribes.gameshop.ie

MiCr0

i'll have a look 2moro in work

MiCr0

Ericsson Press Releases

Ericsson, Motorola and Siemens to develop industry initiative for Universal Mobile Games Platform - Mobile leaders define API's for Mobile Games Platform; benefiting operators, developers, and consumers.

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Date: Wednesday, March 21 2001

Ericsson, Motorola, Inc. and Siemens Information and Communication
Mobile, today announced plans to develop an industry initiative to
define a universal mobile games platform, using existing and emerging
standards. With this initiative, the three companies aim to help mobile
operators offer a broad selection of games content and to provide
developers with a standardized platform. Mobile consumers will benefit
through a rich, interactive, multiplayer game experience.

Mobile operators and developers of mobile games are faced with an
overwhelming array of choices for mobile game services and lack a
platform that is open, standard and extensible. Without such a platform,
operators face greater complexity and cost in offering a wide range of
games that access their network functionality, such as billing,
authentication and location services. The initiative will focus initial
efforts on agreeing upon open Applications Programming Interfaces (APIs)
and a Software Development Kit (SDK), which, once developed, will be
available to software developers subject to license. The three companies
expect to have specifications available in Q3 of this year.

Once the initiative is formally launched, Ericsson, Motorola and Siemens
plan to work with other industry leaders and innovators to extend the
benefits of this universal games platform, including mobile phone and
infrastructure vendors, platform technology providers, games developers,
mobile operators, games service providers and systems integrators. The
objectives of the proposed initiative are to:
·
· Support mobile network operators and Application Service Providers
(ASPs) to deliver the most compelling selection of applications
·
· Attract games developers to create applications that can easily be
deployed to reach the largest number of mobile consumers
·
· Supply consumers worldwide with access to a wide variety of
engaging interactive mobile games content - driving the demand for next
generation networks and devices

"We believe that offering compelling mobile games will act as an
effective catalyst for the Mobile Internet market as a whole, so we are
convinced that operators, as well as the game developing community, will
benefit greatly from this initiative," said Jan Lindgren, vice president
of Ericsson Internet Applications. "Our aim is to promote an open
approach to the mobile games market by supporting current - and future -
standards and by collaborating with all interested industry players.
This co-operative approach clearly demonstrates Ericsson's strategy of
supporting network operators wherever and whenever we can."

"We're seeing that developers of mobile games are resorting to writing
their own platforms or having to multiply the efforts to support many
platforms," said Tim Krauskopf, vice president and general manager of
Core Solutions for Motorola's Internet Software and Content Group. "As a
result, costs are increasing and distribution options are limited. As an
industry we need to provide an integrated development environment that
unites mobile networks, devices and game servers as a mass market games
console."

"One of the Siemens IC Mobile objectives is to make it possible for
users in Tokyo to sit and play a multi-player game with some friends in
Washington and Munich at the same time, on different networks and
platforms, with various models of mobile phones," said Thorsten Heins,
President of Solutions within the Siemens Information and Communication
Mobile Group.

Ericsson, Motorola, and Siemens have agreed to work with Metrowerks, a
leading development tools organization, to support this platform with
the company's CodeWarrior® Integrated Development Environment (IDE).
CodeWarrior, a leading IDE for the consumer and wireless markets, is
used by the majority of developers for Sony Playstation 2, Nintendo
GameCube, and Palm OS, and also supports Java (J2ME for wireless) and
Symbian. With more than 400,000 developers worldwide using CodeWarrior
development tools, Metrowerks will play a major role in expanding the
developer community for this platform.

Developer support, test facilities and application certification will be
provided through Ericsson Mobility World, which includes Ericsson
Developers' Zone, Motorola's Applications Global Network (MAGNET)
Program, and Siemens' relevant program.

Ericsson is the leading communications supplier, combining innovation in
mobility and Internet in creating the new era of mobile Internet.
Ericsson provides total solutions covering everything from systems and
applications to mobile phones and other communications tools. With more
than 100,000 employees in 140 countries, Ericsson simplifies
communications for customers all over the world.


FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT

Eva Sparr, Director of Communications,
Ericsson Internet Applications
Phone: +46 8 508 76 553; E-mail: eva.sparr@lme.ericsson.se

USA Press Contact for Ericsson:
Kathy Egan, Vice President Communications,
Ericsson Inc.
Phone: +1 212 685 4030; E-mail: kathy.egan@ericsson.com

USA Press Contact for Motorola:
David Rudd, Motorola Public Relations
Phone: +1 847 576 7089; Email: david.rudd@motorola.com

EMEA Press Contact for Motorola:
Patrick Hamilton, PR & Marketing Communications Manager
Motorola
Phone: +44 7715 175 043; Email: patrick.hamilton@motorola.com

Press Contact for Siemens:
Axel J. Schafmeister, Press Spokesperson
Siemens Information and Communication Mobile
Phone: +49 170 63 29 546; E-mail: axel.schafmeister@mch.siemens.de

USA Press Contact for Siemens:
Esra Ozer, PR Manager
Siemens Corporation
Phone: +1 212 258 4348; E-mail: esra.ozer@sc.siemens.com

More information can be found at Motorola's company Web
site: www.motorola.com

For further information about Siemens IC Mobile, please visit our home
page: www.siemens.com/mobile


[This message has been edited by MiCr0 (edited 03-07-2001).]

MiCr0

[hush]
timescale

launch in Q2 2001
move to standard bodies in Q4 2001
publish specs in Q1 2002
[/hush]

Thrasher

Thanks David,

I'll try and track down some technical info
from the Siemens and Motorola contacts given.

Cheers,
/Rory

MiCr0

might want a look at this too
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/5/20269.html

MiCr0

and defn here:

http://www.ifone.com/intro.html

The Corinthian

Just another leg in the battle for the future Operating System of wireless and other hand held devices. Each of the handset manufacturers is vying to have their OS become the industry standard and various alliances have been formed and broken in the last two years.

Ericsson and Symbian had partnered last year to produce the R380 that carries a cut down version of the EPOC OS, Late last year they began to move apart as it became apparent that Symbian was losing market share (in particular to Microsoft) in the PDA market. Meanwhile Microsoft appeared on the scene with their rebounded Windoze CE on PDAs and the ‘Stinger’ phone and Palm brought out a wireless enabled version of their OS with the Palm VII.

This ‘initiative’ is unfortunately another rather cynical attempt to encourage content development on another proprietary system so as to increase market share. You’ll notice that the manufacturers involved are Ericsson, Motorola, and Siemens who have tended to farm out much of the firmware development in the past (to Symbian with the former, Openwave with the latter two).

I would wait for an OS to gain a foothold before wasting my time on initiatives that are unlikely to be seen on real phones. Then again, this ‘initiative’ could work out for them, which is what they’re banking on, I suppose.

Greenbean

Even in the short-term isn't it realitively cheap to push something like this so they can market it, boast etc and gain a good profile for their phones? I mean they wouldn't even loose out if their games platform didn't work.

I wouldn't mind seeing something like this catching on, I've a project that would benefit immensely from a universal audience like this.

The Corinthian

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Greenbean:
Even in the short-term isn't it realitively cheap to push something like this so they can market it, boast etc and gain a good profile for their phones? I mean they wouldn't even loose out if their games platform didn't work.</font>

Short term in the mobile market is quite different to short term elsewhere. For example WAP 1.2 was released in 1999. The standard on WAP phones is still version 1.1 (released 1998!). So by the time any of this will come to pass, especially nowadays, it may arrive stillborn.

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">I wouldn't mind seeing something like this catching on, I've a project that would benefit immensely from a universal audience like this.</font>

The audience is not universal - it’s peripheral. Is Nokia backing it for example? Will all of the members to this ‘standard’ back it to term (not like any of them have back out half way in the past)?

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"Just because I'm evil doesn't mean I'm not nice." - Charlie Fulton

Thrasher

>The audience is not universal - it’s peripheral. Is Nokia backing it for example?

Looks like Nokia are involved - the
initiative has rebranded itself as the
Mobile Games Interoperability Forum and will
include all the major players:

03 July 2001

The world's top mobile phone groups, Nokia, Motorola, Ericsson and Siemens, said on Wednesday they had established an industry forum to promote open standards in mobile games.

Telecom equipment makers and operators see the budding markets for mobile electronic games and entertainment as an important source of income which is expected to help operators fund the construction of third-generation (3G) mobile networks.

"The aim of the initiative is to specify a global standard and to develop certification procedures to encourage wide adoption of the standard," the companies said in a joint statement.

The new Mobile Games Interoperability (MGI) Forum will work to define games interoperability specifications for network-based servers, they said.

"The specification will enable games developers to produce and deploy mobile games that can be distributed across multiple game servers and wireless networks, and played over different mobile devices," they said.

The MGI Forum will work with standards bodies and others to ensure an open technological environment for developing mobile games, and it will also cooperate with software tool developers that make tools for mobile games creators, they said.

They said they welcomed game publishers and developers, game platform vendors, game service providers, mobile network operators, device and infrastructure vendors and service integrators to join the forum.

The Corinthian

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Thrasher:
Looks like Nokia are involved - the
initiative has rebranded itself as the
Mobile Games Interoperability Forum and will
include all the major players</font>

Arrghh!!! It's already rebranded? (Warning bells ringing loudly).

There's a lot of initiatives taking place at present in the mobile sector. Another recent one is the mServices initiative, spearheaded by the GSM Assoc. and also supported by all the major players, which intends to standardize usability in the mobile Internet sphere.

My opinion and main point is not to hold your breath, the main purpose of these initiatives is to bolster falling intrest in the mobile Internet sector and it is questionable (although not impossible) that they will ever see the light of day in any real terms.

I've seen the alliances between theses major players change more often than those in a game of Diplomacy.

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"Just because I'm evil doesn't mean I'm not nice." - Charlie Fulton