Mobile Game Porting Methods

Mobile game porting is very important part of the mobile game development life cycle. This article describes the porting methods and trends in this field.

Mobile game market:

The mobile gaming market is growing very fast and it will capture the market of pc games soon. Day by day, game developers are increasing in this field because of the increasing mobile phone users all around the world.

Mobile Game Porting:

Why the term porting did come into mobile game development field? The main reason was the number of mobile phone models, mobile phone manufacturers and different languages for mobile device. A new developed mobile game's market depends on the number of models covered as the target customers are huge when covering a large number of mobile models. The following are the types of ports which are usually undertaken by developers.

Type of porting:

• Platform porting • Porting into different mobile phone models • Localizations porting • Different carriers porting

Platform porting

There are two main platforms for mobile devices which most developer concentrate are J2me and Brew. Most developer use J2ME as the number of models that support this platform is very high when compared to the other. Brew and Python come next in this list. If a developer wants to develop an applications or games and release it world wide then they will have to port it to other languages for covering all markets.

Porting into different mobile phone models

Mobile phone models are increasing day by day, and developers keep added them to their database for porting. Since customers who buy new mobile models buy more games, most of new models are the first target for developer.

Localizations porting

The term localizations porting mean changing the language in the application or game. For Example Chinese market which is considered the biggest market for mobile games, sell only Chinese ported models. Meaning, the text in the application or the game should be in their local language. Many other countries prefer such kind of localizations as the target customers prefer these languages.

Different carrier porting

There are different carriers each have a different terms and conditions to the mobile applications and mobile games. The carriers decide what devices it supports and what data services are offered to its subscribers. Carriers only support a specific platform like J2me or BREW. The most important choices to make at the beginning of the development process are on which mobile software platforms this game should run.

Methods of porting:

• Internal porting • Outsource the mobile game porting

Internal Porting

If the developers do the porting then they have strong relationship with carriers and device manufacturers around the world for needed to ensure the availability of the necessary information. The global testing facilities are needed to be able to load applications onto the actual devices and test them. The frequencies and network protocols of wireless networks in various parts of the world often differ from a local network. In internal porting they will cover only some number of mobile models.

Outsource the mobile game porting

The main reasons for outsourcing the mobile game porting are given bellow:

1. It is highly reduce the cost of the products. 2. Porting into large number of mobile phone models. 3. Non Risky field. 4. Time management and quality control. 5. These works are doing by experts of this field. For these benefits the mobile game developer's or application developer's products would be cover the hole world marketing very easily and quickly.