IGS: Vodafone content chief warns industry over "crap" mobile games

Consumers may be discouraged from buying mobile games if companies continue to release poor quality titles, especially those based on major licenses, Vodafone global content boss Graeme Ferguson has warned.

Speaking to games industry representatives at the ELSPA International Games Summit this morning, Ferguson lashed out at the low quality of many of the titles still being sold by mobile developers and publishers.

"I'm still amazed after three years at Vodafone to see some fantastic licenses with really terrible games," he said. "Some of these games, even now, are really rubbish."

He went on to give the example of a Lord of the Rings title - which Vodafone ultimately refused to put on its service - from around two years ago. "This was what, the biggest film of the decade?" he said. "But it was one of the worst games I've ever seen. I was asking myself how New Line could allow this to happen to their IP."

"Consumers aren't mugs," he concluded. "They won't keep buying games if they're that crap!"

Elsewhere in his speech, Ferguson addressed a number of questions about the future of the mobile games market. Talking about device fragmentation, he had little solace to offer developers, saying that fragmentation will continue to be an issue for as long as services continue to be differentiated by the handsets they offer.

"No consumer changes operator based on content," he explained. "They change based on price and handset."

Ferguson was also adamant that the games industry should embrace the new 3G handsets and services. "You should not regard 3G as high end or early adopter," he told the audience. "It's got to be mass market, or it's a total failure for us."

Regarding the current position of mobile gaming, Ferguson revealed that while games are lower priority than music and TV content on mobile, with only 12 per cent of content customers accessing games on the firm's portal, major selling titles on the Vodafone network can now expect to sell around 250,000 units across the company's five European markets.