Sponsored Profile: Progressive Media
While a lot of mobile game developers aim to tackle the difficult mobile marketplace by putting as many new titles out as possible, Danish software studio Progressive Media is very selective about the games it releases.
Formed in 2002, Progressive Media has worked with the industry's leading publishers, hardware manufacturers, media companies and service providers to deliver both original and branded content to the market.
"The founders were self-taught hobbyists at the time, who were still studying or had IT work," explains Progressive Media founder Thomas Nielsen. "Today were a mix of experienced gaming industry professionals, mobile handset and software engineers, artists, student workers, project managers, and so forth."
Games such as Mystery Mania, Sheep Mania, Slinky and SolaRola have won significant acclaim within the gaming media, while the latter title has also become something of a renowned work of brilliance among the industry.
Mobile game development veterans Digital Chocolate and Mr Goodliving have both publicly and happily admitted that they wished they could have published SolaRola, around the same time as Pocket Gamer granted it the highly acclaimed Game of the Year award in 2007.
"Digital Chocloate saying that has to be the highlight of our career!" laughs Nielsen. "No seriously, SolaRola as a whole has to be the highlight so far. Everything just seemed to come together for that title, and its still fun to play today.
"Pocket Gamer awarding it a 10/10 was one of the first indications we received that we had done something decent, so that day I can still remember. There have been other business-highlights, but at the end of the day, people liking what we do is why were in it. Money cant buy that."
But Progressive Media's talents run deeper than game design. Recently it unveiled a complete development platform intended to help industry members design and deploy mobile software across multiple platforms.
This new system, dubbed RocketFuel, provides tools allowing developers to build their products from the ground up with fragmentation in mind, helping them to overcome the single greatest obstacle mobile game developers face. The platform is already in use on a number of Progressive Media products, and is intended to be rolled out toward the end of 2009.
Having built solid working relationships with the industry's major players - such as EA, thanks to the overwhelming success of the unique point-and-click adventure game Mystery Mania - Progressive Media is actively working toward bringing its products to new mobile and portable platforms.
"We're determined to evolve Progressive Media into one of the world's leading independent cross-platform game specialists, and our move into Nintendo DS is a big step in that direction," Progressive Media CEO Thomas Nielsen told Pocket Gamer when asked about the company's intention to move toward the new generation of digitally distributed software systems.
"We're already working with ambitious partners to bring out new titles across a wide range of j2me devices, iPhone, BREW, Android, BlackBerry, Symbian, Windows Mobile, Sony PSP and Nintendo DS(i) - and we'll be making several cross-platform launch announcements later this year.
"Were working on six or seven different titles, but its all very hush-hush, as always in this business. One thing I can say, though: You havent seen the last of the SolaRola universe, and something is on its way thats going to be awesome - for a number of different platforms," says Nielsen with a wink.
For more information on Progressive Media, visit the official website, and keep an eye on Pocket Gamer and PocketGamer.biz.