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 new 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 the third quarter 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.
"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 development tools organisation Metrowerks to support this platform with the company's CodeWarrior Integrated Development Environment (IDE). CodeWarrior is used by the majority of developers for Sony Playstation 2, Nintendo GameCube, and Palm OS, and also supports Java and Symbian.
Nokia, Motorola, Ericsson, Siemens and other industry leaders in the mobile communications and content industries last week announced that they are supporting XHTML (Extensible Hyper Text Markup Language) as the format for the future evolution of mobile services. The companies also expressed their intention to develop products, content and services based on the XHTML language. XHTML is described as the natural evolution of the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), which converges WAP with the fixed internet.
In addition to handset manufacturers, mobile operators have also announced support for XHTML, including Vodafone and Orange.