Man United jumps into bed with game Indian

A HITHERTO largely unknown games producer, Jump Games, has just landed the rights to produce games based on the Manchester United brand on a global basis for three years.

Jump Games is part of the Reliance Group which is one of India's biggest mobile network operators. An insider told the INQ that even if Jump only succeeds in its home country, it's still good news because one third of all United fans live in the subcontinent.

That's highly unlikely to happen anyway, given that its games can be accessed and played on about 80 networks across 40 countries including the USA. Four out of the six biggest UK operators are Jump customers.

Our source told the INQ that signing up Jump has ended a two year search for a mobile games partner. Jump is both keen for the business and hungry to prove itself, he claimed.

By contrast, Manchester United had feared that if it sold rights to a major name mobile game supplier, that company would just sit on them rather than give MU its full attention.

Jump is promising to create no fewer than six games for the English soccer club in 2008 alone. The first such game – Word It! - is actually a 'casual' word game rather than any kind of 3D, all-action, back-of-the-net thriller.

This actually reflects the fact that the majority of mobile handset owners would rather play Suduko than Tomb Raider.

At the press launch, the INQ also discovered that Man Utd has an official mobile service called Mumobile which can be found here. µ