Disney Gets Into Wireless Gaming Action

By CHRISTOPHER KEOUGH

Staff Reporter

The next time the guy next to you says “Mike and Sully” are on his cell phone, it’s unlikely he’ll be talking about his insurance agents.

As part of a deal struck with Sprint PCS, games featuring characters from Walt Disney Co.’s “Monsters, Inc.” have started streaming to wireless devices an effort to establish a foothold in the nascent wireless gaming business in the United States.

The move to shoot games based on a variety of Disney properties, including ESPN’s “2 Minute Drill” and movies “Atlantis: The Lost Empire” and “Monsters, Inc.,” to personal digital assistants and next-generation cell phones comes at a time when Americans have yet to embrace wireless games. That’s in part because the technology cannot yet compete with game consoles and desktop computers.

Etesh Mangray, director of business development at Disney Internet Group, said the company is banking on three factors to drive the success of wireless gaming: advances in cell phone technology, the speed of wireless networks, and the development of a workable system for billing customers.

Terms of the deal, which will deliver the games to Sprint customers on a per-minute basis, and ultimately through a subscription service, were not disclosed.

DIG already has delivered three games, described by Disney as “pre-Pong” in their lack of graphic sophistication, to Sprint’s Wireless Web group as a result of the deal struck last month.

Mangray wouldn’t say how many people actually have used the game service, launched Nov. 15.

Chip Graves, Sprint’s vice president for the Los Angeles area, also wouldn’t talk specifically about user response. “I’m told it’s performing extremely well,” he said.

Vast potential

While the potential for wireless gaming is profound 21.6 million American wireless users (one of every six) will play wireless games this year, according to one study there are formidable technological and competitive barriers.

Sean Wargo, senior industry analyst at Consumer Electronics Association in Arlington, Va., said advancing technology works both in favor of wireless gaming and against it. While increased bandwidth allows for more compelling wireless games, technological advances in PDAs take some of the allure out of wireless gaming.

“We have to separate in our minds games played wirelessly and games played portably,” Wargo said.

The portable gaming industry, which includes Nintendo’s Gameboy, offers a better game experience, Wargo said.

George Hwang, chief operating officer of the Los Angeles Regional Technology Alliance, said that, for the time being, wireless games will remain little more than a diversion for bored folks waiting on a lunch date.

“They’re fun for what they’re worth, but they’re not really engaging,” Hwang said. “I think the difference now compared with a half-year ago is they probably have realistic expectations about how popular these things will be.”

Graves said Sprint is working to close the gap between console and PC games and their wireless application. Sprint already offers a full-color phone and Graves predicted that new wireless technology due by the middle of next year would approximate high-speed Internet connections available for computers.

“With miniaturization, we’re really moving to an all-in-one device,” he said.

For now, Sprint PCS users who play wireless games are simply using up minutes on whatever plan they have. Mangray said the proposed subscription service could take many forms, including a per-play fee or a monthly fee with unlimited game-playing access.

Japanese model

Mangray said 2 million Japanese customers and successes in Europe are the best indicators that the idea can find currency in the United States. Disney launched wireless game service in Japan in August 2000. “While the culture’s different in the U.S. the same types of service will be repeated, but not necessarily the same content,” he said.

But Hwang said a successful market in one region might not translate elsewhere. Some countries lag the United States in broadband services, which could explain an affinity for simpler wireless games. “As we migrate to (better technology),” Graves said, “the games will become more compelling and sophisticated.”