GDCE: 'Feature: Yahoo! Games Gone Mobile: The Power of Connected Communities'

In this postcard from the mobile section of GDC Europe, mobile keynote speaker John Cahill, Director of Games Operations for Yahoo! outlined some of the company's plans, as well as his thoughts about the current state of the mobile industry. Though Yahoo! itself has only been in the mobile space for some six months now, Cahill's view is sober, yet optimistic. In Gamasutra's coverage of the GDCE Mobile keynote, some of Yahoo!'s specific mobile gaming plans are touched on: "Specifically, Cahill revealed, Yahoo! Games itself had 23.8 million unique visitors in June, and is currently seeing around 6 billion user minutes of gameplay per month. Since Yahoo! started its mobile game business about 6 months ago, it's positioning itself to keep its strength in the free, advertising-supported online casual game market, and expand its reach into mobile by offering an SDK which means you can play a game at home on your PC, and then go out and play that same game on your mobile phone. Indeed, Cahill commented: "We're seeing a fundamental shift in consumer patterns - they want to play games anywhere, anytime, and anyplace." But he stressed that the community behind content is very important - in Yahoo!'s opinion, people come to its site for games, and stay for the community. Yahoo evidently sees this as transferrable from the PC to any number of other platforms - in fact, one of Cahill's slides referenced the Sony PSP as another eventual target for the company as well as mobile titles, although this is clearly in the longer-term." You can now read the full Gamasutra feature on the subject (no registration required, please feel free to link to the article from external websites).