More people playing mobile games than ever before

'...but the percentage of people downloading games has not increased over the past year, says M:Metrics. Three quarters of the 98.4 million people in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK and the US that played a mobile game in December played a game that was found natively on the device.Meanwhile, M:Metrics says 38.5 million (8.8 per cent of mobile subscribers) played a game they had downloaded and stored on their phone, but that number has been relatively flat from the year before, when 35.3 million (8.7 per cent) played a downloaded game.Only 14.4 million (3.3 per cent) of mobile subscribers in the US and Western Europe downloaded a game in the month, compared to 14.6 million (3.6 per cent) in December 2006. At 12.7 per cent, Spain has the highest penetration of those playing a downloaded game, and the highest rate of mobile games downloads, at 5.6 per cent. France lags all other markets, at 3.5 per cent playing a downloaded game and 1.3 per cent downloading a new game in the month.Seamus McAteer, chief product architect and senior analyst at M:Metrics, said: "To succeed in such a market game publishers will have to foster new models that may include subscriptions to online gaming communities, ad-funded or subsidized gaming, and physical distribution." ' ME Feb 08