The ever competitive nature of the mobile business means it's not surprising developers are looking to new platforms to generate fresh revenue.

One area that's attracting increasing attention is smart TVs - otherwise known as IPTVs. Commentators expect this sector to gain traction with consumers in the near future, especially if a revised TV platform from Apple is on the cards.

Unity is already moving aggressively into this space with its Union publishing and development arm.

Rather than focus on the company's cross-platform game engine, Union helps developers get Unity-powered games onto platforms typically considered not financially viable for dedicated development, but whose platform holders are eager for content.

Hardware wars

Oren Tversky, VP of business development at Union, told us the firm is confident that developer support for smart TV platforms will soon be a no-brainer.

"If you look at most of the forecasts, the volume of smart TVs are around 100 million per year," said Tversky, speaking at Mobile World Congress.

"I believe the install base by 2015, the install base will be 400-500 million."

Unity's recent deal with LG to deliver Unity-powered games to the South Korean firm's smart TVs certainly reinforces the company’s commitment to the space, with titles such as the forthcoming Frisbee Forever and Madfinger's Shadowgun demonstrated on the latest generation of devices in Barcelona.

But Tversky believes there are still a few roadblocks that need to be addressed before the platform takes off as a truly viable alternative to smartphones.

Leaders in the storm

One such issue is the lack of storage when compared to mobiles, but the other is one that's less easy to solve - how the player interacts with the game in the first place.

"There's a lot of experimentation with different input mechanisms," Tversky explains.

"For instance, the LG ships with a motion controller, some people are using controllers with touchpads, others gesture-cam [Kinect-style motion control], and others have old school d-pad controller."

"One of the things we do when sourcing content is keep in mind all of the different input paradigms that we’re looking to hit. It's fun - you look at a game and think ‘you know, this could work really well with motion controller, but not a d-pad."

Yet despite this diversity of input mechanisms, Tversky believes their are reasons aplenty to believe smart TVs will soon surge - the first being LG's 'leadership' in shipping a motion remote controller with its latest generation of TVs.

The second revolves around the power inside the sets themselves, with Tversky claiming "we've finally reached the point where the hardware profile is good enough to run some pretty good content."

Mobile movers

That content is likely to be almost exclusively ports from the mobile sphere, at least for now.

"What will happen will be the same thing that's happened in mobile....A lot of the first smartphone games didn’t take advantage of the touchscreen," he continued.

"You'll see some good games from mobile come over right away, but the really interesting stuff will come when people develop original titles."

That, naturally, relies on smart TVs taking off with consumers.

"We're optimistic, but it's early days."
Thanks to Oren for his time.