SAN JOSE, Calif. — Bored with playing that game called Snake — chasing a black dot with a string of lines — that likely came standard with your cell phone?

        Try a round of golf instead, or a combat game called Gladiator. Soon, even the ever popular Dungeons & Dragons will be playable on handsets.

        No longer a gimmick feature, cell phone games have become serious business for wireless carriers.

A prototype of “Tiger Woods PGA Tour Wireless Golf” is demonstrated on a computer and a Sharp screen. (Associated Press photo) | ZOOM |

        Eyeing a potential new revenue jackpot, many major U.S. carriers are expanding their wireless gaming options. Analysts think a new technology known as the BREW platform will help stir up the market by providing for more entertaining games.

        “It'll serve to jump-start mobile gaming by providing what carriers want,” said Michael King, a Gartner Dataquest analyst.

        The platform, developed and launched by Qualcomm Inc. a year ago, lays a software foundation that makes it easy for carriers to build game portfolios. The package also makes for flexible billing — customers can pay by the download, pay to play, or get monthly subscriptions.

        Essentially, BREW does much of the heavy lifting that wireless carriers prefer not to tackle. It is also an open standard that supports multiple languages including the Java platform — which means game developers don't have to worry about writing multiple versions for different devices.

        Verizon Wireless, the nation's largest wireless carrier, launched BREW-enabled phones for San Diego customers in March and plans a nationwide rollout in a month.

        Its customers can download games wherever they are, over the air. The fee — say for Electronic Arts' Tiger Woods PGA Tour Golf, which is $2.99 a month for Sharp phone users and $2.49 a month for Kyocera users — will show up on their bills.

        Verizon was the first U.S. carrier to commercially offer BREW-enabled phones, following Korea Telecom Freetel and KDDI in Japan. In Europe, other carriers have found success with such mobile games as “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”

        “We look to Europe and Japan as examples of real good revenue generation by third-party content, and we wanted to get into games in a big way,” said Paul Palmieri, Verizon's director Internet data services. “Clearly BREW brings us to the table.”

        With the new Tiger Woods golf game on Verizon's Sharp BREW-enabled phone, users can choose courses, wind speeds, the number of holes and clubs. The color display clearly distinguishes the trees from the fairway.

        While most cell phone games are downloaded and stored on handsets, some games now in development, chiefly the multiplayer variety, would involve air time. People would connect to a BREW server to play.

        Other efforts to bring more advanced gaming to cell phones exist, notably from Motorola Corp., which has pushed for data applications on Java-based platforms. But analysts say BREW now has the edge.

        Qualcomm says 16 carriers worldwide are interested in supporting it.

        Although users could not care less about which computer languages power their cell phone games, analysts are watching for technologies such as BREW to spawn increasingly sophisticated diversions as the wireless infrastructure becomes more robust.

        “The games that will be successful in 2004 haven't even been conceptualized yet, but those will be more graphical than the text- and trivia-based games we have today,” Mr. King said.

        Mobile gaming is already a hit in Asia — bringing in an estimated $827 million revenues in 2001, compared to $20 million in the United States, according to market researcher Datamonitor.

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