Tata Docomo Launches Mobile-based Game Subscription Service ‘Let’s Play’

Tata Docomo, the unified telecom services brand of Tata Teleservices Ltd has partnered with Exent, a US-based  provider of games-on-demand, to launch an all-you-can-eat Mobile Game subscription service in India called ‘Let’s Play’.

Powered by Exent’s Game Tanium mobile service which offers unlimited play of popular Android games curated by in-house staff it also offers game recommendations, ratings, video trailers and claims to have a catalog of more than 75 game titles including Zenonia, Farm Frenzy, SpeedX 3D, Hotel Mogul, Wave Blazer and Edge, with new games added every week. The games cuts across various genres like action/adventure, arcade, puzzle and card/board.

The service will be available for all Tata Docomo customers having Android phones and users can register for this service by sending an SMS ‘Play’ to 53333. There will be an initial three-day free trial and following that, the service will be available for a monthly fee. It has not disclosed the fee that it would be charging.

“The emergence of sophisticated mobile devices at affordable prices and wider range of smartphones along with greater wireless mobile broadband penetration has led our customers to expect much more from their service beyond calling and texting. Android is believed to have a rich user interface that adds functionality to the device and increases the overall mobile experience, especially gaming,” said Sharad Arora, head Mobility – Wireless Solutions, Tata Teleservices Limited.

The development comes few days after the launch of location-based advertising service called ‘Offers Near Me’, location-based advertising service for its GSM customers in Andhra Pradesh circle. It is a location-based opt-in program that allows Tata Docomo GSM customers to receive deals, offers and discount coupons from their favorite retailers — FMCG brands, apparel companies, malls, restaurants, cinemas, coffee shops, auto dealers etc. Value deals and discounts offered depend on the location the customer is travelling in and individual retailer offers.

Unlike ‘Let’s Play’, this service is free, but to subscribe this service customers will have to dial the interactive portal at *533*9#.

A couple of months back, the teleservice provider collaborated with CanvasM Technologies, Tech Mahindra’s VAS subsidiary to launch ‘Saral Rozgar’ service. Thoough, CanvasM launched the service last year in June, 2011 in partnership with NGO Rashtriya Rozgar Mission to provide utility based services to bottom of the pyramid which is the blue-collar job segment. Using this service, a blue collar job seeker (like a driver, maid, plumber, electrician etc.) could create his/her resume and then apply for jobs through their mobile handsets.

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Free iPhone and iPad games: The Blocks Cometh, TI Mobile (Tactical Intervention)_PLUS

Welcome to this week's penultimate instalment of Pocket Gamer's free game round-up - a feature that highlights the top App Store titles that have been made free in the past 24 hours.

As we've stated many times before, prices in the App Store change frequently. Grab these freebies before you miss out on a top bargain.

Remember to let us and your fellow readers know about any other great free apps in our comments section below.

Additionally, you can find out about all the latest App Store updates, price drops, and more by using the cleverly hidden hyperlink in this paragraph.

And if you're craving even more quality freebies, be sure to check out our sister site Free App Alliance for daily recommendations of the best free apps the App Store has to offer.

The Blocks Cometh (iPhone)



The Blocks Cometh, which takes place in a world that's falling apart, is an endless-climber that tasks you with dodging descending blocks and surviving for as long as you possibly can.

There are numerous characters to unlock as you play, including special guests such as The Agent from pixel-art platformer League of Evil.

There's even support for Apple's Game Center, which means you can unlock more than 30 achievements as you hop, dodge, and jump through Arcade, Casual, and Gamebot game modes.

Download The Blocks Cometh
TI Mobile (Tactical Intervention)_PLUS (iPhone and iPad)



TI Mobile (Tactical Intervention)_PLUS is a Time Crisis-esque first-person shoot-'em-up from Counter-Strike creator Minh Le, which sees you become a member of a highly trained counter-terrorist unit.

If you're going to rid the world of extremists and fanatics, however, you're going to need a ton of weapons. Luckily, you have access to machine guns, RPGs, sniper rifles, tactical shields, and even grenades.

There are three different game modes: Story, Survival, and Time-trial.

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Mobile Game Development

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Digital Chocolate, CrowdStar, Gamevil, MocoSpace and PerBlue announced for Mobile Gaming USA 2012

The first Mobile Gaming USA event is gearing up ready to descend upon San Francisco from 9-10 May 2012, with an agenda packed with speakers announced.

The event claims to be the "first US-based conference devoted exclusively to the discussion of smartphone and tablet gaming," and will focus on a range of mobile gaming topics including cross-platform play, moving from console to mobile, and the ever present free-to-play debate.

Talk to us

The first day of the event will kick off with Jason Loia, COO of Digital Chocolate, with a keynote entitled Bridging the Mobile Gaming Divide, with a focus on cross-platform play between tablets and smartphones.

Eyal Rabinovich, co-founder of MoMinis and Mitchell Weisman, CEO of LifeStreet Media will take on a debate of freemium business models, in their talk entitled Taking the Free out of Freemium: Discussing today's best practices for monetising FTP mobile games through in-game payments and virtual goods.

There will also be a talk from location-based gaming specialist PerBlue as CEO Justin Beck takes to the stage on the second day.

Other speakers include VP of Gamevil Kyu Lee, MocoSpace CTO Jamie Hall and CrowdStar's director of biz dev Randy Lee.

Executives from Atari, Playmatics, WildTangent and Arkadium will also be talking.

Should you want to find out more about the event, then you can visit the Mobile Gaming USA website.

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Mobile Game Development

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Gaming focus for HTC with PlayStation certification

Great news is coming this year for HTC smartphone and tablet owners as an announcement is expected on Sony PlayStation certified games coming to these devices in the future. Classic PSOne games like Crash Bandicoot will be accessible as well as new games and apps.

Those who are excited already will find that HTC will be one of the first companies barring Sony themselves to obtain PlayStation certification for its mobile devices and in an article on Pocket-lint they talk about the announcement expected this year. Hopefully this statement will be made at the upcoming Mobile World Congress in Barcelona as the actual Sony PlayStation certification program was announced more than a year ago when the PS Vita was launched in Japan.

With the PlayStation Suite SDK in closed beta already, HTC users will be able to play, not only PSone classics but also new games and apps are also expected, and Kaz Hirai the Sony Computer Entertainment CEO mentions this expansion as a cross-platform initiative for Android tablets and smartphones. Could this be a welcome addition to the demanding world of mobile gaming?

This opportunity will give HTC more that just music to concentrate on and the chance to compete with Samsung and Apple who have had all the attention when it comes to the lasts year’s sales. We remember some of those good old PlayStation One games that seem to have been left by the wayside, this will be the ideal opportunity to rekindle our love for some of those games that we miss, and ask ourselves why has this not been thought of before?

HTC has not commented when they were asked about the connection between their devices and the PlayStation certification although it is suggested that the certification will be awarded in the latter part of this year. Comments suggest that the PSP and PS Vita will always be preferred although some feel that the PSOne games will not be the only PlayStation titles on offer, as there could also be PSP, PS2 and PS3 digital downloads.

Many people who own a HTC device will see this as a win win situation so those who are not in possession may well contemplate getting one just for this feature alone. If this is just the first of many deals like this, how will this effect Apple with their gaming apps?

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Mobile Game Development

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PS Vita keeps mobile gaming, PS3 connectivity at heart of US push

As the PlayStation Vita readies its big release here in the United States, we’ve got more than enough reason to want to pick one up and not stop playing for days on end. And as the advertising world begins to size up the situation, they’ve decided to target the gamers amongst use with a tendency to not stop playing unless they must. PlayStation Vita is a gaming system that’ll allow you to play your PlayStation 3 games at home, convert your save to your PS Vita machine, continue to play, and play again when you’re back to your system – there’s no need to play outside every again!


For it’s truly the everywhere gaming model that Sony is latching onto here, with gamers that want an unending stream of games at their fingertips at the heart of it all. It’s not just gaming on the go that these players desire, Sony has decided, its inexpensive gaming, games that can be downloaded and accessed anywhere, all the greatness of the mobile world that’s been missing in the hardware world. Smartphones and tablets are the opponents of the PS Vita, so says Sony.
The folks at Interpublic Group of Companies group Deutsch’s executive vice president and creative director, mister Jason Elm, spoke with the NYTimes about the campaign they’d whipped up for the current continuation of the worldwide release of the PS Vita. He’s got no qualms with wanting the gamers of the earth to plug in and tune out:

“[This campaign's audience is] very socially plugged in, mobile, out and about, both physically and on the Internet. Gaming is no longer playing alone in a basement by one person with one machine; it’s all networked.” – Elm

The operating system on the device has been suggested as being a viable candidate for additional wireless-data-connected devices as well, with Yoshio Matsumoto, Director of Business and Sony Computer Entertainment SVP, speaking on how this device is just the thin edge of the wedge:

“[Translated:] I’d like to point out that I mentioned the first thing Vita is is a hardware that provides digital entertainment only, and there there is the Vita OS which at the moment is just the OS made to provide it. The OS will continue to provide entertainment of all kinds, and though it’s made here to provide for a portable machine the best gaming experience for game enthusiasts, this is the thing edge of the wedge first.” – Matsumoto

So what we’ve got here is the successes of the mobile world in a smartphone-esque operating system running on a fully PlayStation 3 connected handheld gaming powerhouse. It’s as if it couldn’t possibly fail, yes? We’ll see how the PS Vita fares here in the USA after it’s been out for an extended period – soon!
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Mobile Game Development

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Mobile Gaming, In-app Purchases on the Rise as Tablet, Smartphone Adoption Surges: Study Read more

Increasing popularity of tablets and Smartphones have led to a surge in mobile game downloads along with in-app purchases if findings of a recent report published by Park Associates are to be believed.
According to the study in last three years the percentage of gamers in US who tend to download games onto their mobile devices has risen from 7 per cent in 2008 to eighteen per cent in 2011. In addition, gaming applications seem to significantly contribute to the earnings of Facebook games.

Amongst tablet users, the number of people playing games for at least an hour in a month stood at 71 per cent for adults while the same in case of teenagers stood at 79 per cent. With improved versions of tablets like iPad2 hitting the market, the choice of games for this genre is likely to grow in near future and quite expectedly game publishers are looking to introduce more complex and engaging game titles specifically tailored towards such devices.

The report stressed on the fact that in-app purchases are changing the way gaming industry can look to monetise their products in coming days. Explaining the rationale behind the view, Pietro Macchiarella from Park Associates mentioned "In-app purchases greatly expand monetization of the free-to-play model, thanks to seamless payments. Already, most of the top grossing games on iTunes and Android can be downloaded for free and generate the majority of their revenues via virtual purchases."

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Mobile Game Development

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Tencent mobile game platform hits 200M users

Chinese social giant Tencent now has 200-million registered users on its mobile gaming platform Mobile QQ Game Hall.

Accroding to Marbridge Consulting, the Shenzen-based tech companysome 13-million of those users log onto the platform on a daily basis. At times there are up to a million people on the network at the same time.
A large part of Mobile QQ Game’s success comes from the fact that it caters for China’s largely fragmented mobile ecosystem. Users can access Symbian, KJava, Android, iOS, Windows Phone 7, and HTML 5 versions of the platform.

The most notweworthy thing about those numbers, however, is the fact that the platform only offers “several dozen casual games” at present.

A large proportion of those games are casual card and board games such as Dou Dizhu, Chinese chess, and Tetris.

One thing in Tencent’s favour, however, is that it has linked Mobile QQ Games to its weibo service for the Symbian and Android clients, which has over 250-million users.

For some perspective on just how impressive the numbers coming out Tencent are, it’s worth taking a look at the ones from Facebook.

After all, the world’s most popular social network recently announced that it would undertake a massive push in the mobile social gaming arena.

At the moment it has around 60-million people interacting with its apps. Bear in mind that those apps cover a number of areas outside the social gaming space (although Zynga accounts for around 19% of its revenue) and you get a glimpse of just how far ahead China’s web space really is.

TheNextWeb reports, however, that Mobile QQ games may soon have a significant rival in the space.
Japanese platforms DeNA and GREE — both multimillion dollar companies in their own right — are already active in the Chinese market. The latter, meanwhile, recently greed a deal to bring its platform to Baidu Yi
devices, building on a similar deal with Alibaba to take its gaming platform to Aliyun OS devices.

Tencent has one of the largest social portfolios in the world. Aside from its weibo, its properties include the massively popular QQ instant messaging service, which is the world’s largest online community.
Emerging markets media giant Naspers has a stake in the company.

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Mobile Super Bowl Apps Score With Football Fans

This year, getting ready for the Super Bowl includes more than putting on your team’s colors and buying lots of chips and dip. Now, football fans are doing something else in preparation for the big game: downloading mobile super bowl apps!

According to Mobile Marketer, Shazam, is a mobile app that many football fans will be downloading. Shazam is an app that captures music, gives you information about songs, and lets you buy songs directly. Mobile Marketer says, “With Shazam’s 175 million users, marketers can assume a significant overlap with their customers. So it makes sense that one-third of the Super Bowl ads on Sunday, Feb. 5 will be Shazamable.”
The article went on to say, “Consumers who use the Shazam app to capture audio from these commercials will be able to enter sweepstakes for major prizes, view special content, and receive free music. The results are impressive: Shazam-enabled ads are claimed to deliver 350 percent higher engagement over ads whose only call to action is “Follow us.”

In addition to all the football fans downloading Shazam, they’ll also be downloading the Chevy Game Time app that gives users a chance to win free prizes (including Chevy vehicles) by answering trivia and questions during the game.

Mobile Marketer says, “The Adbowl 2012 mobile app lets you vote [on your favorite Super Bowl commercials] and view results from the comfort of your couch. Will it be Geico’s gecko or Kia’s hamster? The nation awaits the results.”

PepsiCo is also encouraging mobile check-ins with social TV and user interaction during Super Bowl XLVI using the aforementioned Shazam. Notes Mobile Marketer, “The brand’s TV commercials are focused around Pepsi’s sponsorship and work with Fox’s The X Factor show. The ads will feature a Shazam logo in the bottom corner of the screen that users can snap with the Shazam app. Viewers who use the Shazam app can watch a music video during the show.”

“Pepsi is also using GetGlue to interact with users during the Super Bowl game. Users who check-in to the game can access additional content and receive coupons for buy-one-get-one-free Pepsi products.”
The Coke polar bears will be reacting to game plays and Super Bowl commercials in real-time on the company’s micro-site. Fans can visit Coke’s Facebook page to RSVP for their mobile-friendly Coke Polar Bowl.

I spoke with Bryan Laurienti, co-owner of BBB Systems and he said, “The Super Bowl is already a very social event, so adding mobile technology into the mix presents brands with an exciting opportunity. They’ll be able to reach more users by word of mouth and they’ll see a big jump of pre and mid-game mobile app downloads thanks to social sharing.”

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Mobile Game Development

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iOS Game Design This Home Lets You Construct And Create Your Dream Abode

Design This Home, the latest game title from iOS mobile game development studio App Minis, is debuting as a new way to add gaming elements to designing your dream house, keeping your residents happy, and completing tasks. As App Minis founder Alex Ahlund explains, “Think The Sims with a greater emphasis on home decor and design.”

Design This Home, which is currently available for download in the App Store, allows you choose from a number of architectural styles of homes including modern, traditional, country, Southwestern, European, Asian, and Victorian. You then have nine different rooms to decorate and can customize every element of your home such as arranging furniture, putting up cabinets, painting the walls, renovating the floors and more. As you complete more tasks, you increase your home’s value and collect more income from your residents.
At launch, the game includes 500 items of customization. Ahlund says the studio places a heavy focus on visual design in crafting the graphic rich and animated 2D iOS title.

You may remember Ahlund from his former company, mobile app directory AppVee, which was sold to Appolicious in 2010. A former video game designer, Ahlund decided to go back to his roots to launch an iOS game development studio. The studio’s current offering of games have 7 million downloads in total. The startup itself is composed of former employees from Electronic Arts, Atari, PlayFirst, Floodgate and Google.

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