And so to the final session of the day - The future of the mobile gaming experience.
"Thin clients will be more relevant in terms of dealing with power consumption on future mobile devices," reckons Mike Fotoohi, MD of Micazook.
Xavier Carrillo Costa, CEO of Spanish developer Digital Legends disagrees:
"I think we will soon have more processing power than we can use. Graphics will enable us to target the mass market in terms of providing stunning visuals for more casual games.
"Within two years, I think you will play a game on your phone and then switch it to a tablet when you're on the train and then switch to the plane's in-flight entertainment system, and then on your home screen. The content will adapt to the screen."
Michael Schade, CEO of German developer Fishlabs, takes a history lesson.
"When we started doing 3G graphics, the screen resolution was smaller than an iPhone icon," he says.
"In three to five years, I don't think games won't be console or mobile games. Just games. The challenge will be on what platforms we release on and how will we monetise this?"
Stuart Duncan, CEO of Canadian developer Bight Games argues against Schade's vision.
"I hope we will stop the relentless drive of 3D graphics," he says. "Hopefully we will have the freedom to make art and that doesn't necessarily mean 3D."
Of course, ARM's technical marketing manager, Media Processing Division, Ed Plowman is all for as much technology as possible.
"I'm the technology guy so I'm excited about the relentless march towards more performance in a mobile devices no matter what people think is reasonable," he enthuses.
"People said 3D wasn't possible in mobile because of power restrictions, but we've done 3D for fixed pipeline graphics, and now we're doing it for shaders."
Future visions - mobile wins
So to end the day, a question - What will be the next big thing?
Xavier Carrillo Costa starts: "The mobile space is already multi-channel. The handheld market is similar and moving into digital distribution, so that will be big. Then there's the tablet market. Then there's the set top box market, which will be integrated into the TV, and it will have an app store. And all of this is based on mobile technology, so we need to think about how will be make content for all of these devices."
"That's an evolution. It's not disruptive," says Michael Schade.
"What is disruptive for mobile are the Zynga's of the world and the money we're making is peanuts compared to Call of Duty [on console]. This is where the big money is so if Activision decides to take mobile seriously with a very high production value, that will be very disruptive."
The generally argumentative Stuart Duncan begs to differ.
"I disagree that Activision will eat our lunch because it had the opportunity when iPhone launched but it didn't," he states. "Now I think it's more likely that mobile games will move to console, so we might eat their lunch."
Schade indeed hopes this will be so.
More good news comes from Ed Plowman.
"One of the biggest things mobile has going for it is that you can offset the cost of the device with a multi-year contract. That's hard to do with consoles," he says.
Michael Schade is still worried about those consoles though.
"Digital content doesn't have perceived value. That's why I like Microsoft's approach with Windows Phone 7's premium channel," he says.
Xavier Carrillo Costa is sure the wind is with mobile.
"The risk for console developers is moving towards to the sort of risk experienced by the movie industry," he says.
Schade won't be pacified.
"Angry Birds and Doodle Jump are casual and everyone likes them: that's the type of game the App Store promotes," he questions. "But how much room is there to be another Angry Birds?"
But we'll leave the last word to the optimistic Carrillo Costa
"Triple-A games do very well on the App Store," he says. "Look at companies such as EA and Gameloft. As a developer, it's also something that works for us. We need a business model that's repeatable, which trying to do another Angry Birds isnt. We can do high quality production and work on big IPs. That's our solution."
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Contributing Editor
A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.
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