Mobile content is hitting its all-time stride in 2009, with technology opening up avenues for new and varied types of mobile content for increasingly-capable mobile phones. Even as the mobile phones themselves have time and again made the transition from chunky, cumbersome call-only units to diverse little gadgets that can seemingly do anything, the mobile content that the phones contain follows suit, expanding to include various new types of content. Whereas once the main foci for mobile content were ringtones and wallpapers, various companies have developed new types of content, such as mobile applications that occupy various business-related functions, and even games that bring console entertainment to mobile handsets.
One company that has made the most of this is Apple, who are credited by some analysts as being responsible for the current state of the mobile market with their revolutionary creations. First making their presence felt as a manufacturer of solid and dependable computer units that grew to rival eventual player Microsoft’s own, Apple reinvented themselves with the announcement of the iPod, a digital music player and storage device that changed the portable music game entirely. They eventually brought their crystal-clear playback and large storage capacity to mobile phones with the iPhone, which is now home to thousands and thousands of applications that populate the App Store.
Discovery Communications, touted as the world’s primary nonfiction media company, is currently taking steps to be part of that group of companies that has managed to reach out to mobile users via apps on their mobiles. Already operating more than 100 worldwide networks including TLC, Discovery Channel, Science Channel, Planet Green and Animal Planet, Discovery Communications is tying up with Capcom Interactive to release a mobile app for the Discovery program “Cash Cab.” Capcom Interactive, a 2005-born offshoot division of the longtime interactive entertainment developer and distributor Capcom, has released several mobile games based on well-known Capcom properties like Mega Man, Resident Evil and 1942.
Cash Cab, which the game is obviously based on, is a Discovery Channel program that first aired in December 2005. Hosted by comic-turned-cab-driver Ben Bailey, the show is an Emmy Award-winning series now running its fourth season. The show’s signature concept involves contestants riding in the back seat of a NYC cab and answering trivia questions as they near their stop. Three wrong answers lead to the passenger/player getting booted out of the cab, so contestants are constantly thinking as the meter runs and the questions get tougher, lest the cab pull over and eject them wherever they are in the city at that point.
This signature mechanic is what will be “driving” the app. The $4.99 app is available for the iPhone and Pod Touch and features an experience very close to that of the show, or at least as close as it can get without requiring the player to ride a cab. A wide variety of questions, 21 NYC landmarks, the option to post your high scores to Facebook, a “Ride with a Friend” feature and the ability to purchase question expansion sets within the application all make for endless replay value.
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