The Development of Mobile Apps and Game Apps From Primitive Stage to Now
Humble Beginnings
The development of Mobile applications have come a long way. Apps are evolving day by day. Mobile apps and game apps came into existence even before the creation of multi-touch smartphones. The creation of mobile games has revolutionized the industry.
The true origin of mobile gaming can be traced back to the Nokia handset released in 1997. The game was called ‘Snake’. The Snake was nothing more than a few black pixels moving over a few green pixels. Even the mobile apps offered were very limited. They ranged from calculators, ringtone makers, etc. From the smart calculator to the ‘Snake’ game, it was the humble beginning of the mobile app and gaming industry.
This was before the WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) came into existence — the next step in mobile application revolution.
WAP (Wireless Application Protocol)
With the help of WAP, the primitive phone was now connected to the WWW (World Wide Web). Before the existence of smartphones that could access the web with the help of cellular connections, WAP helped the customers install the apps and games offered by the phone manufacturer. The web wasn’t endless back then, but WAP did give many opportunities. The mobile games of that era were generally confined to the play board and turn-based games. Users were very highly charged by phone manufacturers to download the apps and games to their mobile phones. Thus, users gave up downloading any extra content to their devices.
J2ME, BREW and N-Gage experiment
Due to the limitations of WAP, two new technologies were introduced — J2ME (Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition) and BREW (Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless).
Java ME started as JSR 68. It quickly became popular by replacing personal Java. It evolved into numerous standards across phone, PDAs and embedded devices. These two new platforms made drastic changes in the field of mobile gaming and mobile apps. JME was ruling the mobile phone industry. It was used in Symbian and Bada operating systems and implementation existed for Windows CE, Windows phones, and Android.
After realizing the tremendous future in the mobile gaming industry, Nokia created N-Gage — a mobile phone. This new experiment of the Finnish company was a disaster. It was costly and criticized by the people. Thus Nokia had to thrash its N-Gage device. Nokia officially closed the N-Gage platform at the end of 2010.
App Store Revolution
Very soon it became clear that for having a good gaming experience or an application experience doesn’t just need a decent hardware.Nokia even launched a new N-Gage gaming platform in 2008 but was again criticized by people. This platform was overshadowed by the launch of the Apple’s App Store.
Mobile App developers and designers of games on mobile phones went gaga after the launch of Apple in 2007 at Apple Worldwide Developers Conference. This was when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone for the first time and changed the way mobile apps and games were designed and developed. It gave a whole new layer for the UX design. Even the app marketplace was created in such a way that the app developers have a clear path of creating and marketing their products.
The first commercially android device, HTC Dream, was launched in 2008. At that time there were many operating systems. Symbian still powered many phones. There was a powerful operating system of Blackberry too.
Microsoft also launched Windows phones. They were highly praised by the designers for its wonderful user-friendly design. But it failed against the giants Android and IOS.
Mobile app and gaming industry have changed a lot now. There are millions of apps and games available in the Play Store of Google and App Store of Apple. Expert developers and designers are changing the scenario of the application and the gaming industry by continuously increasing their level and performance.
