Trend: Carriers look to text games for revenue

Carriers are looking for way to emulate the success of Cingular's "American Idol" text messaging campaign, and some say Verizon Wireless' latest launch with Vibes is such an attempt: the text-based adventure game based on Pirates of the Caribbean. Cingular tallied 64.5 million text messages during its most recent reason of AI, including votes, trivia and sweepstakes offers. Last year Cingular facilitated 41.5 million text messages for the show, 2004 brought in 13.5 million and 2003 saw 7.5 million.

According to a report in the Chicago Tribune, 44 percent of mobile users in the U.S. send text messages. Recent reports from Europe claim messaging is all users want when it comes to mobile content services. Apparently, Verizon Wireless thinks the same holds true for the U.S., so its using text-based games like the Pirates 2 Text-Ur-Adventure game to introduce consumers to premium content services by rewarding players with free songs, pictures, wallpaper and ringtones.

For more on the text-game trend:
- read this article from the Chicago Tribune