Cell phone based games. I don’t get them. I don’t know that I ever will. Oh sure, secretly the N-Gage kind of intrigued me, but they butchered that so badly in no way was I going to invest my money on something so sad and uninspired. And I’m not saying little puzzle games meant to pass the time aren’t a really useful feature, they probably make the phone worth the purchase in some situations. (Waiting for your plane to board, waiting for your parole hearing, the list is endless) But todays cell phones seem to be turning into all in one beasts, with phones and video screens for pictures and games, along with storage for MP3s.
I’ve seen people, important people in the games industry, looking at mobile phone games as a big part of their future. John Carmack of Doom and Quake fame has spent the past few months, while not burping and changing his new baby and trying to build rockets, making little games for cellphones, refreshing his creative juices. He completed a Doom RPG and unleashed it into the world. And judging from the Gameboy Micro, it wont be long before mobile phones are capable of doing more than what looks to be 8 bit graphics they do right now. The N-Gage itself had something of a 3D processing unit going, with games like Tony Hawk and Tomb Raider making use of the third demension on screen.
I guess the question is do people really want to play games on their cell phones? Or make phone calls on their PSP? I suppose a feature that allowed the DS or PSP to use their wireless connections to make phone calls would be fairly cool, but I really can’t see cell phones in their current form being a good ‘real” gaming platform. The only advantage to having all in one devices is the reduction of items in your bad when you are headed to class or something. Riding the subway to work is probably easier without 4 or 5 electronic items all jumbled into your briefcase.
So I guess what I’m saying is pick something else to make your games on. Make it easy to use the current portables as cellphones instead of making cellphones into something they aren’t. Gaming platforms. Powering Down.