Received an email from Russia offering business opportunity

[ghostdust]

Hi all,

I'm new to these boards, was pointed here by a person on an Indie Game mailing list I'm on.

Anyway, I received an interesting email just the other day, and I'm not sure what to make of it. My instincts tell me it is probably not legitimate, but then again, maybe it is. Would appreciate advice on how I should go about replying to the email.

As a bit of context, I do have one game currently published and for sale through Nokia Software Market (currently only for Nokia Series 40 phones) but I'm looking to publish the game for other phones and for other markets.

Regards,

Gabriel


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Dear Sirs,

This is a business proposal.

Intertech Ltd. (Russian Federation) is a content provider of various services based on SMS, MMS and WAP to mobile carriers, as well as a localizer and publisher of Java games.

We co-operate with the biggest mobile operators in Russia: MTS, Megafon, Bee Line GSM (including their affiliates), whose total subscribers' number now exceeds 30 million people and is steadily growing.

Our intention is to market and promote your Java games and other mobile content in Russia. Taking into consideration the present market conditions, we would recommend setting the retail price per Java game download at $2.00, and we offer you 50% of the revenue collected from an operator.

You are hereby kindly requested to take up our offer and tell us your comments. We are always ready to answer your possible questions and negotiate about any counter-offers of yours.

Sincerely yours,

Michael Ushenin
Intertech Ltd.

[MirekCz]

I guess you would do better with your question on cellphone dev. forums.

Yet another way would be to ask them for some refference to developers that co-work with them (or find it out yourself using their www page) and ask those developers how's cooperation with this company going.

[serg3d]

I guess you would do better with your question on cellphone dev. forums.


Hmm, are there any marketing oriented forums beside wgamer.com ?

[MirekCz]

Serg:I guess not, but there surelly are some ppl around normal dev forums which have got some knowledge about it :)

[NuriumGames]

I would ask them if they could provide a contact information for some people in their cooperators list, and then ask they about Intertech.

[ghostdust]

Thanks all for your suggestions and advice.

[Sunshine]

I tryed to do that, but the API for that phone was HUGE. I had to get a CD copy of it since it would've taken years to DL on my line.

After messing with it for a while I decided that it was just not the right direction that I wanted to take. The learning curve was pretty high and although the profit potential seemed pretty good, I guess I just had the feeling that the current set of tools, API's, and Op Systems for todays phones will quickly disappear and be replaced by somthing radically diffrent and much much better.

[take into account that I live in America where we still have the phones that the cavemen used] :D