US mobile games publisher Namco Networks has announced that players of its Scene It? mobile trivia games have downloaded more than 17 million questions.

That spans two games: Scene It? Movie Edition, and Scene It? TV Edition. Both offer a mixture of trivia questions, including audio, video clips and images, with new themed packs to download every week, and a nationwide high-score table.

"The Scene It? mobile game franchise is a perfect example of how the networked nature of cell phones can be leveraged to create fun gameplay," says Scott Rubin, VP of sales and marketing at Namco Networks.

"It is also an example of how Namco Networks applies new technologies such as networked features when it makes sense to enhance gameplay."

(Isn't that just the same quote twice, but in reverse?)

Anyway, it's good news for Namco, and further proof – following the story last week about Vivendi Games Mobile generating 7.5 million downloads of episodic content for its Surviving High School mobile games – that the US is forging ahead of Europe when it comes to connected mobile games.

Hopefully the barriers to publishers doing this sort of thing on this side of the Atlantic will continue to come down in the months ahead, allowing these kind of games can find a market here, too.