The competition to provide the complete mobile gaming experience is heating up with Nokia returning with the N-Gage brand, so Games On Deck has taken the opportunity to talk to Mike Yuen, head of Qualcomm's Gaming Group, about their option, the Brew Gaming Signature Solution.
Games On Deck: Tell us about the Brew Gaming Signature Solution.
Mike Yuen: I've been at Qualcomm for about 5 years, since about 2001, so I've been here since the beginning of Brew. Brew was originally formed as an end-to-end platform, but in the last few years we unbundled it, because while for many operators our complete "ecosystem" suited, others, particularly in Europe for example, for whatever reason they would have their own system in place, and it just wouldn't be possible to take their old system out and replace it with ours, even if in many cases ours would be better. So now there are certain components or aspects of Brew you can take depending on the operator or the customer's needs. A good example of that is the Brew Gaming Signature Solution. It's been announced as a "next generation" service.
Mike Yuen
It's no longer about "hey, download this application/game to your handset" and that's that; we've built a full service. It's kind of like how on consoles you've got Xbox Live now and it's made this huge difference, that's kind of what we're trying to do on mobile. That's something that we announced last summer.
What we're trying to do with the Brew Gaming Signature Solution, conceptually, is, well, think of it like this, if Java was actually a cup of coffee (and this really isn't a knock against Java) it's like getting a coffee at McDonalds or a 7 Eleven. It's a fine cup of coffee, but it's not the best, it's not personal and it's not presented as well as it could be. Conceptually what we're trying to do with the Brew Gaming Signature Solution is to make it like getting a coffee at a Starbucks. When you go to Starbucks it's like being part of a community, and people are willing to pay more for that cup of coffee, as when you go there you don't just buy it and leave, as if from a machine, you hang out and enjoy it, maybe there's even some "multiplayer action" with people having a good debate over their coffee.
GOD: So what does this mean in the mobile space?
MY: From a functional standpoint, the solution is very similar to Xbox Live. You have a profile which includes stuff like your reputation and your achievements. So if you can visualise, on your mobile phone much like when you open your phone and it's branded with your operator, this will be a service branded to the operator, so rather than just going to WAP and working your way through some menus, you know, games, then 3D games, then maybe like this one line of text describing the game you want, this is a full service launched from your phone's home screen from which you can select and run the titles you want or own. So it'll have a lot of stuff like rotating adverts for new games that have been launched that match your tastes, and your "most recently played game." You can access your profile and change your avatar/icon and so on. You can also see icons of other people in your personal community who are online when you are.
The Brew Gaming Signature Solution Dashboard
And you can go deeper into the community than that, what we call the "playground" where you can go and join games, issue challenges, send messages, you know, that sort of thing.
Our belief is that when you build something like that you increase not only loyalty and usage from the consumers but also revenue. And from the consumer standpoint this genuinely is a better experience, even if our Brew games are already rich 3D and multiplayer in many cases.
