Technology Ups The Ante For Mobile Casinos And Poker Rooms

Improvements in mobile phone technology are on the verge of ushering in a spectacular boom in gaming on the move. We look at what this means for online gamers.

Mobile gaming is about to hit the jackpot, say experts who believe technological improvements are about to turn playing games on your phone, and at Mobile Phone Casinos, into the next boom area.

And it won't just be fans of shoot-em-ups and driving games who'll feel the benefit of more powerful screens on new phones and the faster data-transfer times of third-generation networks - gamblers who would rather pit their skills against live opponents will benefit too.

So far, mobile gamers in all fields have been used to playing against computer-controlled opponents rather than other people, as phone networks are too slow to allow real-time play with other gamers.

But the extra speed of 3G networks and the increased ability of phone screens to handle faster animation are set to change that.

The result could be a gaming experience that combines the interactivity of the best Online Casinos and Online Poker Rooms with the visual quality of console games and the convenience of gaming on a mobile phone.

Thor Gunnarson, VP (Business Development) of British mobile game producer Ideaworks3D, believes the ability of faster networks to allow data to be shuffled back and forth at will, whenever a game requires it, will transform the ambitions of game developers.

He said that handsets were fast approaching the point where they were powerful enough to cope with "console class gaming", with 3D graphics that scroll past at a rate of at least 20 frames per second, allowing convincing animation.

And 3G networks would definitely allow data to move fast enough that delays would drop below 350 milliseconds. This is the crucial level at which users cease to notice a time-lag: "That's good enough for multi-player gaming," he says.

This could mean that if you're playing in a mobile poker room to while away the time waiting for a delayed train, you won't be stuck waiting for a delayed bet from your opponents.

But Mr Gunnarson also warned that this sort of data transfer would only be practical if phone operators stopped charging by amount of data downloaded and instead switched to flat rate pricing.

It was not until internet service providers adopted this model that net use - and particularly online gaming, including casinos - was able to thrive. Before, gamers were put off by the knowledge that charges were building up with each second of play and each fancy graphic or animation downloaded.

But experts believe that, if the industry can deal with problems like these, the rewards are enormous. Industry veteran Greg Ballard, formerly head of games firm Capcom US and now running mobile games firm Sorrent/Macrospace, says: "We're seeing results that are reminiscent to me of the early console days in the 1990s."

Surprisingly, his company is finding phone gamers are keener to play casino games like poker, or question-and-answer quiz games, than they are to play converted console games. 

"You tend to see games that are not big sellers in other worlds are successful on this platform," he says, adding there was almost no potential limit to the market: "What's exciting about this is that lately everybody has a cellphone."