MBC Enters the Mobile Apps Market With Cold Feet

It’s not enough the mobile application industry is getting attention, but when a regional media behemoth like MBC Group starts to develop mobile applications you would hope they do it to show the rest how it should be done.

We all had high hopes when we heard of the launch of MoBC (MBC Group’s Mobile development division) back in 2007,  assuming it was going to change the game, proving that with its multi million dollar funding something interesting would emerge.

Sadly the only real noteworthy mobile application to be released in the past 3 years was ‘Who Wants to Be A Millionaire’ into what looked like an introduction to a possible launch of Social Applications targeting the mobile platform in the Middle East.

Again we were sadly mistaken when we received the appalling news that MBC has launched ‘Call of Duty – Modern Warfare Force Recon‘? I mean seriously, if a game has ever been destroyed from concept to implementation, it’s this one.

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Beginning with concept, the game was designed to be a hit in a Social multiplayer environment, yet they made it single player. MoBC had a great chance to utilize this, but failed terribly. Instead it went straight for the cash, under the influence of the 3.7 million mobile copies they sold of the earlier versions of the game, considering the average asking price to be 10 SAR (roughly $2.6 USD) earning them a hefty 9 million dollars.

Now to do the technical team justice the game isn’t all that bad, but is ‘not all that bad’ really what MBC Group wants to be known for in the mobile application industry? With their reach, potential number of viewers in the tens of millions, they could utilize Social Networking platforms like Facebook and Twitter to create applications that would give the region’s mobile industry a boost.

I hope the guys in upper management wake up and smell the coffee, because when you’re big it’s not always about catching up, you can actually raise the bar, and educate the market for a change.