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Sega, Motorola To Load Games On New Phones
[Galaxie] writes: "Motorola's new iDEN handset, which is a damn cool product, allowing text paging, internet-ready, digital phone, and 2 way radio has something new to add to there list.
The phone is built on top of the Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition (J2METM) technology (here) using the KVM (K Virtual Machine) which will work with only a small footprint allowing it to work on 128k of memory.
Looks like they have teamed up with sega to produce the ultimate handheld wireless phone gaming machine! (here)
Also application ability will rock with these phones, hell, if you can play a game or 2 at a decent res, then why not load up gcc :)" 3G, iMode, Javaphones ... any phone maker who isn't putting games on their phones deserves to listen to some juicy voice menus for a while.
by Motorolla, but they insisted on mandatory drug testing.
so I told them no thanks.
really, does it bother anyone else that a company even has the ability to require people to piss in a cup for them?
-I go to Rice, so figure out my email address
Well, I noticed the sega link seems broken. But what really irks me is the lack of a link to the iDEN page. So I went and found it:
Motorola iDEN Group
Btw, the news is old (Nov 29th, 2000):
MOTOROLA WIRELESS PHONES TO FEATURE SEGA GAMES
And, yes, the phones are low power, so you don't have to worry as much about your batteries, although they do invariably run down. Why doesn't anyone put some solar cells on these things? (Or a minature cold-fusion core, goddammit.)
Any more questions are probably answered here.
On a somewhat similar train of thought, cell phone makers need to figure out some other issues before this potential Sega/Motorola thing sparks off a cellphone gaming blitz.
Phonebook: I love the idea behind fusionone.com, although it's not implemented that well. Get a way to centralize my Visor/Cell/Computer phone books so I don't have three different personal lists... Having a Nokia 6180 list, then a list in my Handspring became very annoying... "Hey! I have your number! Oh wait, I guess I left it on the Visor... whoops... can I have it again?"
Traveling features: Am I the only one who isn't annoyed by the fact that I can roam all over my state for free, but when I leave my "home" base market area, I lose the ability to recieve mail alerts, caller ID, et cetera? If I can roam and make/recieve calls, I should be able to keep my "home" features as well. (Sure! SprintPCS does this... but Sprint's coverage area and service are a joke.) I'm not an expert in cellular communications, protocols, et cetera... but my guess is that this could be very easliy implimented, seeing that damn near everyone I know has a Nokia 6180 or it's close cousins, on different networks. I venture to guess that there is only one way to trigger a phone to signal a voicemail alert, display Caller ID information... yadda yadda yadda...
I could go on about WAP, but that would just be long rant about it's pointlessness...
*funkdat*
Yes, but convergence also gave us a touch screen on our fridge with the intention of having us surf the net in our kitchen while we cook. Convergence is all well and good, but I don't want a web interface and touch screen built into my sneakers, regardless of whether it's possible or not. It needs to be useful or in demand for convergence to be worthwhile. Having said that, I can see this market being saturated with younger teens using it to play MUSHs and the like.
This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.
Yes. Kidding. See recent article on pillsbury sueing for using the term "bake-off".
Be ot or bot ne ot, taht is the nestquoi.
Adding more complexity to our equipment makes it harder to use, harder to code, harder to service, more confusing, and more expensive.
While I'm definitely not enspousing that all equipment should be singular in purpose, I fail to see how gaming on a phone would be fun or entertaining (yeah squinting at a 2cm by 2cm screen is fun).
I would put phone gaming in the same category as WAP. Sure, it has it's pluses, but as a whole, it's not going to be a category killer.
I'm not sure if I should say this or not... I interviewed with Motorola recently and I saw some of the cool stuff they are working on. A lot of it was really cool and some of it was a long ways from being ready for market. Anyway, as far as these phones go, I was told that Motorola was considering releasing an SDK so you can write your own apps for these things. And with the wireless internet capabilities, sharing the apps would be very easy.
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-Be a man. Insult me without using an AC.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Agreed. iDEN has really taken off in the business market - and Nextel is really pushing it mainly at those areas, because that's where the two-way calling is most beneficial. There is already enough growth just through those markets to keep us working on adding system capacity to the boxes as fast as we can, in hopes that we can get the software out to Nextel before they have to start turning people away.
:(
:)
It doesn't have quite the use for private individuals, especially since Nextel doesn't seem all that interested in aiming any pricing plans in that direction. But then again, they've made no effort to even give us people at Motorola who make the damn things any special plans either.
I must admit, this is the first I've heard of the games on the iDEN phone. Of course, I don't work on the subscriber unit, so that's probably the reason I'm out of the loop - I was at Office Depot the other day and saw like three models of the phone that I never even knew existed.
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"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
Playing games on a 1" screen is pathetic.
Smarter voice-driven features would be much more useful.
It's annoying enough to have people that can't drive while on the phone but now we have people engrossed in games while on the phone while driving?
- Memory
- Snake
- Logic
- Dice
- Rotation
What other games do you need?!------------
CitizenC
I suspect it might not take much of a game to get serious business in specific markets. It's all in the marketing. What if this phone is the only device on which you can play the "Back Street Boys Game" or the "Beenie Baby Game." Pick a popular craze and build a product around it, and make a million bucks a month.
"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"-B.Franklin
[Disclaimer: I run iDEN's Developer Support program.]
As an introduction, iDEN is a unit of Motorola based in SoFla that produces a handset that combines cell phone, 02-way radio, pager and WAP capabilities. Our largest customers include Nextel in the US, Clearnet in Canada, and other operators in Latin America, the Middle East and Far East. http://www.motorola.com/iden.
So what is so exciting about running J2ME apps on the iDEN phones? Let's see:
The bottom line: J2ME-powered devices are not just game-enabled phones. With these devices you can create complete, server-based wireless mobile IT applications. iDEN will make more announcements in these directions in the next few weeks. Please visit http://www.motorola.com/idendev for regular updates
What kind of wireless mobile IT solutions can you build with the iDEN J2ME-powered phones? For example:
So, why should developers partner with iDEN to create such wireless solutions? iDEN offers its registered developers:
By working with iDEN, developers focus on whjat they do best (designing apps, coding, creating), while iDEMN handles the rest (app certification, distribution, merchandising and e-commerce back-end). iDEN is committed to help developers become more successful in the emerging Wireless Java Internet space.
By the way, current iDEN phones (like the i1000+) do not support J2ME apps. You will need to buy one of the upcoming "Condor" series phones, available int he US market by Q01 2001.
For additional info:
Thank you for reading. Regards.
the first thing I thought was "how on earth can Sun and Sega get past all the trolltech licensing issues"...
then i read it and realized it has nothing to do with trolltech or KDE.
(j++)vm...
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
You guys ARE kidding aren't you?
Otherwise here's a news falsh for ya-- you can't trademark a single letter of the alphabet.
(If you could I'd trademark E and sue everyone!)
Cheers,
I have a Motorola i1000Plus iDEN phone linked with Clearnet (whom I have to have some serious discussions with given my current reception - but thats another story). And I have to wonder, why make an iDEN phone the 'ultimate' for phone gaming?
iDEN phones are typically targeted at the 'Business' and 'Professional' market, people who are willing to pay more for their service and airtime than you would for a standard PCS service. You get the additional features, but you pay for it.
This is not to say that these markets would not be interested in having good gaming on their phones - given that many are geeks, I'm sure a large percentage would love to have this capability. However, given that there are far fewer iDEN phones out there than TDMA/CDMA standard PCS phones (I'm talking North America here, not you lucky Europians who get GSM). Would it not make more sense for Motorola to target this towards the average cellular market? The available pool is much larger, filled with people more likely to make a purchasing decision based whether the phone plays the games they want or not. (If your planning to go iDEN it's probably because you need some of the specific features. While gaming might be a nice perk, it isn't likely to seriously affect your purchasing decision.)
Thats my take anyhow...
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
I am not a huge gamer- I get very involved in certain >role playing games but do not play them except at home.
I am very interested in the phone as a little computer, and the possibility of sharing data alongside voice conversation.
I am imagining someone driving around, using such a phone to find the personal ad of someone looking for a date,
traveling performers and sales people beaming a peddler's pitch to the computers of homes and businesses as they head into town,
live, coordinated field research between distant scientists, and group work between students in different countries.
All stuff we have now, in a much cruder form.
When intranets and the internet shift primary focus onto telephones and away from desk and laptop machines, there will be a subtle, slightly magical transformation. It won't be just more convenient- much of the information added to the net will be localized, much more intensely than it was before.
A person's computers are their individual "nodes" in the "ether" right now, but most computers are not tied to the home phone number or cell phone number. What happens if most consumer connections to the Internet go through a telephone?
Of course, the "fingerprint IP" or IPv6 technology is perfectly suited to a world in which everyone is connected, but everyone is potentially visible.
Goat sex free since 2001