Mobile Gaming with BREW

KeelSpawn writes "For the most of us who are bored with playing that game called "Snake" -- chasing a black dot with a string of lines -- that likely came standard with your cell phone, here's some interesting news. Try a round of golf instead, or a combat game called "Gladiator." Soon, even the ever popular "Dungeons & Dragons". All those will be playable through cellphones, wirelessly."

Comments

Can it play

[Genghis Troll]

pocket pool?

Re:Can it play

[L.Torvalds]

Linux can do that. Oh yes.

Linux is more then just another OS.

Linux is the way for hax0rz to sex0r each other.

Oh yes

Re:Can it play

[ElCagado]

You became a thrill seeker. kill for a thrill. thrill seeker comes from all walks of life. A home where the parents are too busy to show respect. respect. respect. [yeah!]

Re:Can it play

[Walt Dismal]

Hurmph. Who cares about, um, pocket pool. All *I* want is a cellphone game I can play while driving at 75 in heavy rain. While eating noodles with chopsticks. And blindfolded.

First Post?

[Drunken Coward]

I'm not drunk, yet. Plzfx, thanks!

Re:First Post?

[ElCagado]

I only kill to know I'm alive. So what?

Re:First Post?

[MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM]

In all the people you killed, who had the largest pants?

Re:First Post?

[ElCagado]

syd barret

brew is obsolete

[jeremyf]

BREW is obsolete, everyone is using java or symbian or proprietary systems. More phones use PalmOS or PPC (in the works) than BREW.

Re:brew is obsolete

[Anonymous Coward]

Symbian has wider acceptance in the marketplace, but I don't think it has a toehold yet. Palm OS is on a few models of cell phones. BREW is certainly ubiquitous, but I would heartily admit that it is obsolete and will soon be overtaken by systems targeted at this application.

Re:brew is obsolete

[Anonymous Coward]

symbian

Is that like the Symbian orgasm machine that those chicks use on those porno sites?

Re:brew is obsolete

[ElCagado]

killing time is appropriate to make a mess and fuck all the rest. we say: so what?

Re:brew is obsolete

[Anonymous Coward]

Batteries last longer with Symbian.

What about nethack?

[The FooMiester]

Will the world's most ported game be ported to the cellphone? I can't imagine a cellphone ascention. And since you'd only have the numberpad, I guess it would be hard to actually do anyhting except walk around the dungeon.

I guess you could use one of the keys as an option key to allow you to scroll thru the commands(apply, . , close, tAkeitalloff, ., Call), and you could just go up and down selecting inventory.

Just a thought

Begin Secret Code:
JHFG_#@9599f999f9amAMANN)@Ml)28fl2KKF03

Re:What about nethack?

[ElCagado]

I wanna know what is right. I'll kill them all if I like. I am a time bomb inside. No listens to reason and I am ready to fight. I am ready to fight. So what?

Re:What about nethack?

[MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM]

Hello, it's me again. I just want you to know that you look kinda cute in this diaper.

MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

This is very true. BREW is used on very few phones, and PalmOS is proliferating. Not to mention proprietary OSs from Motrola, Nokia, etc.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[BalkanBoy]

Yes, BREW's used (or can be) 'only' on umm, let's see every phone with a CDMA chip on it... Did I also mention Verizon Wireless and Sprint PCS are the biggest CDMA wireless carriers in the USA as well? So you see, it's not as dark as it seems for BREW. Plus, they already have a JVM that works on top of BREW - it's called Microchai from HP and there are some more in the works...

What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of these cellphone games are just crap.

Now if ...

[ProfMoriarty]

Sony could give us a port of Everquest ... :)

Re:Now if ...

[ByteHog]

Oh great. We do NOT need people playing everquest while driving, instead of just talking.

Re:Now if ...

[Anonymous Coward]

there were people from everquest at GDC's mobile conferences.

fantastic!

[TheQuantumShift]

Games on cell phones! I truly have no need of a life whatsover now. Of course not having a life would leave me no reason for a cell phone. Then again most people with cell phones... Hmm. I have no life and want to be able to play even the most mind numbing, ugly ass games wherever I go. Think I'll get me a PDA... Yeah, thats worth $250...

Advanced Games on Cellphones

[ClimberTech]

I read somewhere that these kind of things have been available in Japan for a while, ie: 3d games and multiplayer cell phone games.

I think they're available on the NTT DoCoMo phones, there's information at http://www.nttdocomo.com

Re:Advanced Games on Cellphones

[Anne Thwacks]

Advanced? Only retards would accept the price terms.

We have it here in the UK. At 10p per message, (ie per turn) its cheaper to buy a dedicated games machine than play a single game. Unless you are paying your phone bills with stolen credit cards, it makes no sense at all.

samurai romanesque

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the more popular games here in Japan is called samurai romanesque from Dwango. check it out if you want to have a taste of thing to come:
http://www.dwango.com/press/pr008.htm

Also if you would like to develop java applications check out Zentek's i-jade emulators:
http://www.zentek.com/i-JADE/en/downlo ad.html

still playing your phone ?

[Anonymous Coward]

wow!

Sigh... CNN.com's editing

[Anonymous Coward]

Quoth the article: "Although users could care less about which computer languages power their cell phone games, analysts are watching for technologies such as BREW to spawn increasingly sophisticated diversions as the wireless infrastructure becomes more robust."

"Could care less"? And this is on CNN's website? For shame, for shame.

Re:Sigh... CNN.com's editing

[Anonymous Coward]

I was commenting on the grammar, half-wit.

billed by the minute, of course

[Anonymous Coward]

Dungeons and Dragons(and other games) billed by the minute?(as most WAP/web-browsing is)

(runs off to go buy wireless provider stock)

:-)

Stay still with brew

[corebreech]

Mobile whatever is just plain bad. It's best to sit in a stationary position and pretend that you don't work for a company that thinks entry-level programmers should be confined to the header files.

I worked at such a company, and now I'm insane.

I tried to #include "beer.h", and it #included "coconut-strawberry-ring-dings.h"

Now I have an attorney.

I get it now!

[Joe Tie.]

Soon, even the ever popular "Dungeons & Dragons"

I thought the lack of Neverwinter builder tools for Linux and Mac was odd, but obviously attention is being focused on a hush hush port of Neverwinter to the cellphone. All joking aside, couldn't you see this happening at a board meeting?

"So, you want to allocate resources to these non windows thingamagigs, like that commie operating system and that apple thing? It'd never work, focus on the super popular cellphone gaming comunity!"

Re:I get it now!

[Anonymous Coward]

You're ascribing way to much Intelligence to the people in charge of D&D. The last revision of the game is a HUGE step backward. Hasbro has no clue and D&D will be dead as a table top RPG very soon. The West Coast Gamers Association, has about 20000 members and just did a horrible review of D&D 3rd Ed, and recommended GURPS as a MUCH better system. I wish Gary were still in charge :)

Gotta upgrade your phone...

[emag]

No one's yet pointed out that in order to even play these games, you need a BREW-enabled phone. Verizon's just started coming out with them according to the article, and there's no mention of any other US carrier offering them.

Not to mention that this usually locks you into another contract with substantial penalties for early withdrawal. I think I'll stick with snake if I feel the need to play a game on my cellphone. Or just stick with my PDA for games, especially when I'm stuck on an airplane.

Re:Gotta upgrade your phone...

[Anonymous Coward]

what about J2ME? Screw Brew! Check it out at www.sun.com.

Japan

[lycias]

Here in Japan we've had a bunch of cell-phone games, though most of them single-player, for years.

Yet another way to gouge customers

[Amoeba]

Ya know, it's not like these games will be free. How much you wanna bet that, in addition to the "pay-per-play" and other types of creative fees, you'll also be using up your minutes? Talk about a great way to increase your profi... Oooh! Dungeons & Dragons!

Re:Yet another way to gouge customers

[BalkanBoy]

Doesn't Palm offer some sort of unlimited wireless (bandwidth) usage service in many areas with their latest wireless PDA? That should open the door for wireless games off your PDA, dont you think? Except that it doesn't run on BREW, but on PalmOS, but nevertheless, the platform should not matter when it comes to multiplayer games anyway - it should be possible to do it crossplatform, whether running on BREW , J2ME or Palm...

PureVis is another entry in this field

[Allen Varney]

Bunches of cellphone game makers have gone under (e.g., Unplugged Games, www.ungames.com), and the rest have been treading water by selling their backend technology. Telecom companies are understandably risk-averse right now (something about laying off a quarter or more of your staff will do that), and they haven't wanted to hear about games.

One company still hanging in there, waiting for the drought to end, is PureVis. They do a completely visual programming environment that was originally intended for easy production of online games. They started out as GameWorld.com; the name change is a sign of the times.

MAME on cell phones would be nice

[antdude]

Simple graphics and fun games. :)

Bad things BREWing

[Anonymous Coward]

Be warned, BREW is a joint venture between Microsoft & Qualcomm. I fear this is the mechanism by which M$ locks phones in to Microsoft back-end services.Forget how M$ screwed Netscape - this is their real opportunity.

Brew might be obsolete (when compared with Symbian & Java), but the fact remains that Qualcomm is the biggest phone chip player in the USA. Their chipset includes Snaptrack GPS support (probably the only cellphone GPS solution worth anything for 911 location), so soon we might see BREW-based location-aware phone services all locked in to M$.

I can't wait!

Macromedia Flash for games on devices

[Anonymous Coward]

I was at a conference last week and saw Macromedia Flash on many phones, PDAs and smartphones. It's pretty easy to develop content with Macromedia Flash, so making games looks easy too. Here is a site with lots of games.

http://www.flashenabled.com/mobile/

Plagiarism

[Thomas M Hughes]

Quote: "Plagiarism is using others' ideas and words without clearly acknowledging the source of that information."

Source: http://www.indiana.edu/~wts/wts/plagiarism.html

The writeup for this story was, word for word, lifted from the story on CNN, without a single reference made to CNN. Slashdot is very sensitive to such things as copyright (even when it does not agree with them). The submitter should know better that, and the editors should as well. It is suggested that a direct reference to where the quote was lifted be added to this story writeup.

Re:Plagiarism

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod the parent up!

I was hoping someone would catch this. It is a verbatim copy of the CNN lead in for their article. I don't really blame the Slashdot editors (maybe they don't read every single article on CNN.com), however it would probably be wise of the Slashdot editors to amend the story to give credit to CNN.com (maybe take away KeelSpawn's karma for being a bad little monkey), or to simply replace the current submission.

Re:Plagiarism

[Anonymous Coward]

without a single reference made to CNN

Except for the link to them.

Re:Plagiarism

[MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM]

You must be new to slashdot. This is called a troll. Janitors have been trolled. It rarely happens in front page stories, but almost all +5 comment are direct cut n' past from usenet. You will get used to it.

Money Making?

[Peridriga]

I'm shocked to hear that no company has stepped up fill the wireless void in gambling...

With so much money there I'm shocked no one has done it...

With like 10 cents a bet over the phone you could rake in some money.

btw... I just patented that idea :-)

nnonononon NO DAMNIT

[Com2Kid]

NO!

Cellphones == for TALKING on, perferably NOT in the middle of F*cking finals.

I swear. The damn things should be banned. Do you realize that people have ran into SCHOOL BUSES while talking on those things? HOW THE FUCKING HELL do you NOT notice a SCHOOL BUS?

Ugh.

Once again, cell phones are for TALKING on,

spending $300 on one of the fuckers is an immense move of stupididy.

Yeesh. buy a PDA (though with the recent story on PDA reliability I could see why you would be tempted not to. ^_^ ) for about the same price. Bigger screen, faster proccesor, more memory.

Then choose whatever cell phone plan gives you a free phone.

I actualy have a problem in that my AT
err

well lets see I haven't actualy USED the accursed thing in like 4 months;

so yah, 70 minutes should last me until sometime SLIGHTLY after I die.

Which means it is a serious pain in the ass to have to spend $20 every 3 months just on the off chance that Something Bad Might Happen to me and I may need to use my cellphone to Call Someone To Save My Ass.

As I said, a royal pain.

(and no I am not antisocial, I just perfer to talk to people IN PERSON. You know, real life? Bleh. Cell phones are evil, I _HATE_ the damn f*cking things, HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE them.

Ugh.

Re:nnonononon NO DAMNIT

[Com2Kid]

Where the hell did the rest of my post go?

Supposed to be

----
I actualy have a problem in that my AT

err;

well lets see I haven't actualy USED the accursed thing in like 4 months;

so yah, 70 minutes should last me until sometime SLIGHTLY after I die.
-----

and so forth

Re:nnonononon NO DAMNIT

[Com2Kid]

::looks around:: Why is /. freaking out cuz of an amphersand?

......

try this again
------

I actualy have a problem in that my ATT prepaid phone expires minutes after 3 months. Additionaly I have to purchase minutes in $20 increments, which amounts to about 70 minutes of talk time.

Which will last me;

err;

well lets see I haven't actualy USED the accursed thing in like 4 months;

so yah, 70 minutes should last me until sometime SLIGHTLY after I die.

---
and so forth

Re:nnonononon NO DAMNIT

[Peridriga]

Because the ampersand itself it a HTML and perl marking for coding purposes...

Yes Stupid choice for a charecter but, ya gotta live with it...

For future reference... to write an ampersand write

&#038

Information Here

Re:nnonononon NO DAMNIT

[Anonymous Coward]

Try &

Re:nnonononon NO DAMNIT

[Anonymous Coward]

And computers are for computing? "Do not play games on them! Only use them to perform calculations!" Right? You're a true visionary!

Re:nnonononon NO DAMNIT

[Com2Kid]

Because the ampersand itself it a HTML and perl marking for coding purposes...

Yes Stupid choice for a charecter but, ya gotta live with it...

For future reference... to write an ampersand write

&#038

Weird thanks, I always thought that I only had to be careful of stuff in between brackets. ^_^

Of course now with half an assed brain I realize my mistake, it is what it seen when Unicode characters are based into a textbox and then returned by the server (Japanese text with Google for instance)

::sighs::

Re:nnonononon NO DAMNIT

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the perfect day. You got a mod point for telling someone the code for an ampersand.

Re:nnonononon NO DAMNIT

[Com2Kid]

And computers are for computing? "Do not play games on them! Only use them to perform calculations!" Right? You're a true visionary!

Hey jackass, guess what, that is what they ARE being used for.

It just so happens to be faster and easier to have a computer keep track of all of the various numbers in a DnD game and do the math for them then it is to do it by hand.

The pretty little graphics that accompy everything are just extra frills.

Same with board games or math or such, the computre is used as an AID to something else.

Eventualy they spread out into broad based wide spectrum multipurpose tools; ok great; now we have computers, and hopefuly soon they will be able to make breakfast (err, or maybe hopefuly not!)

But a CellPHONE is exactly that, A SPECIALIZED TOOL DESIGNED FOR ONE PURPOSE Shoving more features into it then it was originaly designed for ends up:

A: Driving your price up higher then if you redesigned a tool from the ground up for the desired purposes

B: Makes the user interface suck

and

C: Reduces overall maximum product potential

Which all SUCK.

People pay HUNDREDS of dollars for a cell phone with VERY BASIC and low level PDA functions when it would be easier to get a small cheapish PDA and glue a cheap cellphone on to the back of it (not over the battery casing!) and have all of your problems solved at once.

But noooo, people have to continue to act STUPID.

Not to mention that now I will have to put up with some ASSHOLE having even MORE bleeps and bloops going from their phones during class.

May I give a quick Amen to the proffesors out there who auto-boot anybody STUPID enough to bring a cellphone into class?

Like of them said;

"You ever heard the expression 'Treat every gun like a loaded gun'? Well I have the same rule of cellphones, 'treat every cell phone like it is on'. No cellphone is ever really off, so to prevent any troules just do not bring them into my classroom at all."

Love that policy.

Re:nnonononon NO DAMNIT

[Peridriga]

You must remember that back in the day computers where "A SPECIALIZED TOOL DESIGNED FOR ONE PURPOSE ", being a calculator....

Becareful of your statments... not everything fits into the boxes you draw for them.

Re:nnonononon NO DAMNIT

[Com2Kid]

Uh, they where original intended for doing ballistics CALCULATIONS. (amongst other things)

Not currently playing FPSs they are still doing that; just with weird physics.

::Grins::

Homebrew Programs?

[ianpatt]

This might be a nice platform to make homebrew games on, but it looks like the fees required could be prohibitive for non-commercial programmers:

• $400 - fee for 100 authentications with VeriSign, required for becoming an "Authenticated Developer," which you need to do to obtain a ClassID and get the rest of the developer tools.
• $1500 - cost of ARM BREW Builder, required to build your applet for a phone
• $unknown - Microsoft Visual Studio

The SDK is free to download, so there's something to work with. Anyone know any free ways to do this? More developer info here: http://www.qualcomm.com/brew/

Re:Homebrew Programs?

[Eharley]

A couple of my friends here at Harvey Mudd College created a development chain for BREW applications using GCC. The project description is here

They ended up patching GCC's ARM support a lot. The phones use a offset based memory layout, but GCC ARM outputs position independent code. By the end of the project they'd gotten a large number of pre-existing games to compile and load onto the phone.

Look for these tools soon.

Re:Homebrew Programs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, expensive! And then throw in the fact that the tools *only* run on Windows NT and Windows 2000 (the SDK refuses to install if it detects you're not running either).

Sun's free J2ME Micro Edition toolkit, however, runs on just about every operation system out there. And on top of that you have the choice of using the full-blown developer Micro Edition tools supplied by numerous other vendors. And it's piss-easy to get started and load applications right onto your handset.

Frankly I just don't think QualComm *gets* it. It's as if they're *trying* to piss off the developers. This whole BREW thing is a complete joke.

Re:Homebrew Programs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh how freeking typical. Ive been trying to get one of their devs to fix something similar in a different product. Took me 3 months to get them to even ack it. And I WORK there. Dont ask me to try to fix it. TRUST me its not worth it.

I dont represent them i just work there.

Re:Homebrew Programs?

[Anonymous Coward]

try developer.tirawireless.com
they dont charge for certification of the applications...

ATTN MODS

[Anonymous Coward]

useless rant..... do not mod up... see it for what it is

I wish...

[ElCagado]

I had Jessie's girl. Why can't I find a woman like that?

Re:I wish...

[MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM]

Because you don't have enough money.

P.S. Yes, I'm stalking you.

Dungeons & Dragons: Good excuse

[MavEtJu]

Now I'll have a good excuse why I didn't answer my mobile[*]: I was too busy fighting the dragon to get that +5/+5 blessed rustproof platinum longsword.

[*] I don't have a mobile in real life, but it was too tempting not to post this.

What about J2ME

[welshdave]

Games on phones (and more) that you can download have been around for a while. Sun's J2ME is implemented on quite a few mobile phones. I've got a Siemens SL45i that runs J2ME applications (not only games) pretty well. If you want a look at the sort of stuff available for these phones try midletcentral.com and Micro Java.

Re:What about J2ME

[rbeattie]

J2ME doesn't have multimedia capabilities just yet. There are multimedia extensions in the works right now, but it'll be a year or more before we see them in mobile phones.

The BREW stuff is Qualcomm's proprietary method for doing this stuff and IMHO not going to be around for the long haul, once Sun gets the multimedia stuff worked out.

-Russ

Re:What about J2ME

[pyrros]

The BREW stuff is Qualcomm's proprietary method for doing this stuff and IMHO not going to be around for the long haul, once Sun gets the multimedia stuff worked out.

I couldn't agree more. You can't pull off propertiary stunts like that, unless you have an ungodly market share. Now considering the fact that nokia too has jumped on the J2ME bandwagon, i don't think BREW will be remembered a couple of years from now.

The lesson companies should learn from WAP, is that people will not go out of their way (or pay) for any "value added" crap. If i got games on my phone i'll play them (maybe). If not, i'm sure as hell not going to change my phone and pay monthly for something that makes GBA games look like doom 3.

While i don't see java as being attractive to consumers initially, it has a lot of things going for it: backing from sun, siemens and nokia, a broader scope, an established name in the programming community and will be possible to write non-professional software as far as i understand.

Re:What about J2ME

[GeorgieBoy]

Actually, J2ME support (MIDP) will be offered on BREW in the future anyway, so that midlets can be run on the device alongside "native" applications. After Sun gets their next version of MIDP finished, they'll likely move onto that as well. Qualcomm is working with Java vendors.

conspiracy theory

[Jucius Maximus]

Some people say that these games appear on your cellphones so you will wear out the buttons and have to buy new phones.

Re:conspiracy theory

[MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM]

Are you insinuating that if I masturbate too much, my penis will fall off?

Lets look at the definition of those two words!

[L.Torvalds]

ASS:
1 A often vulgar : BUTTOCKS -- often used in emphatic reference to a specific person b often vulgar : ANUS

PIRATE
1 : to commit piracy on
2 : to take or appropriate by piracy : as a : to reproduce without authorization especially in infringement of copyright b : to lure away from another employer by offers of betterment
intransitive senses : to commit or practice piracy

So do you now see why being an ASS PIRATE is bad?

Re:Lets look at the definition of those two words!

[Anonymous Coward]

ASS:
1 A donkey.

ARSE:
1 buttocks

No Shit

[Anonymous Coward]

"Playable through cellphones, wirelessly"

Sherlock.. Cellphones wireless, really? You have got to be kidding me!

What the fuck...leeching news from elsewhere????

[Anonymous Coward]

You people fucking suck. For the past year, all I have seen is news leeched from other sources and re branded as 'your own'. Why the fuck should anyone pay for this shitty 'service'? News for nerds? More like 'news for plagiarists'. Pieces of leeching loser garbage. Here you go assholes:

http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/ptech/06/01/cell.ga me s.ap/index.html

quote, unquote

Cellphone games: ruins productivity

[GoatPigSheep]

As a student I have noticed a disturbing trend among my peers. I would say that at least 75% of them have cell phones. I often notice in class that many people are playing 'snake' and other cell phone games in class instead of paying attention. Although we would find it odd if someone brought a gameboy to class and began playing it while the teacher was explaining something, nobody seems to mind if someone is playing 'snake' on their cell phone. Personally I find these games to be academically destructive.

With the latest advances in cell phones, where they are quickly reaching PDA level, I believe it is time to ban their use in schools. Games like snake cause extreme academic decline. Cell phones are often used to cheat in class. Everyone forgets to turn them off (and games like snake ENCOURAGE people to leave them on!). Most institutions have sufficiant amounts of pay phones that people do not need cell phones. It baffles me why they are allowed in schools in the first place. Silly games like snake are just another reason why they should not be allowed.

Re:Cellphone games: ruins productivity

[Peridriga]

And all of the students that didn't have cell phones in class that used to be playing snake would now (thanks to banning them, in your dreamworld) would now be talking with their friends, doodling, fiddling with other crap, or simply sleeping.

Cell phones aren't the cause of academic decline, it's apathy...

Oh btw... I carry my cell phone on me 24/7... Including class. Ya know what I do, I put it on silent... So I can play snake if I wish and if someone calls, my phone still won't make a peep.

Re:Cellphone games: ruins productivity

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy shit, is it really that bad?

I've been in Japan for 3 years and will be going home soon. I've been dreaming about being in any public place and not seeing 75% of the people playing games and surfing the web on their keitais. Say it ain't so.

Yesterday I was watching a movie and some kid in the row in front of me was playing some kind of cool platform game on his phone. Since the film was that Michael Douglas snoozer "Don't Say a Word" (AKA "Sound of Silence" here in Nihon) I DIDN'T surrepticiously throw popcorn kernel-by-kernel onto him like I usually do in these situations... but instead enjoyed watching the kid trying to manuever his Mario over a big pit but the character kept falling into it.

By the way, I'm all for porting Angband to phones. The lack of keys on the phone isn't as big a problem as you might think with the "unified use" command.

Sorry, but i must correct you

[Anonymous Coward]

Snake should not be called snake but rather NIBBLES. The original game the first of its kind was made by Bill Gates in QBasic. Duh! Bill should sue all these open source companies for ripping off Microsoft. Everyone knows these facts, along with the fact that Bill Gates is the best programmer of all time!

-Bill Gat.....err!.....Gables

Ya know what my phone can do?

[Anonymous Coward]

its got the best feature... I can call people up... and talk to them.

Snake

[mu_wtfo]

Hey, I enjoyed Snake, it was fun. Actually, I'm sure it still is, I just need to find my old Nokia to play it. Now "Brick Attack", the "breakout" clone that came with my Kyocera - blecchh. Not nearly as good. Ah, well.

expansion for cellphones?

[KeelSpawn]

i'm wondering if we would ever expand cellphones to a point where there would be expansion slots for us to like for example, turning our cellphone into a extream mobile gaming device (like with a bigger screen, connection, sounds, graphics, etc.) i mean a pda can do that already, i think a cellphone is certainly getting there.. =)

Who cares? I do.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do those who make it care?

Do those who will empty-minded buy it care?

Do I, running Linux and happy as a clam, care about it, since I'd probably buy a PS2 + Linux Kit?

Well, I care. It's a curiosity. The other day I saw this female elephant giving birth, kinda beautiful...

Another beer, please... Ah, Links pre 6, wow, just downloaded pre3!

Don't these guys know about girls?

You'll care

[bildstorm]

You'll definitely care if your favourite app isn't run on your device. BREW isn't run on a whole heck of a lot, though in the US, Verizon seems to be a big fan.

Personally, I'm a big fan of J2ME, though no one seems to have figured out how to make money selling those games. I think the coolest stuff will end up on i-Mode for a while, since AT&T's mMode allows for billing by bandwidth usage.

Re:You'll care

[Cato]

GPRS also allows for billing by bandwidth usage - the real innovation in NTT DoCoMo's i-mode was the business model (NTT only taking 9% of total revenues vs 50% in Europe), which stimulated a lot of new content providers. Official providers bill based on content, via NTT. (I think CDMA2000 1x will also bill by bandwidth used, but it depends on the operator).

Other innovations that helped i-mode include the end-to-end design (handset, protocols, infrastructure, billing, business model, content selection and marketing all from a single company) - like the Macintosh, the result is an easy to use and attractive product, although quite proprietary. Another key factor is that many Japanese commuters spend 2 to 4 hours per day on overground trains, making i-mode ideal for killing time. There is probably also some truth in the idea that PCs and fixed line Internet didn't take off so fast in Japan, so i-mode phones were filling a gap, and also fitted into smaller Japanese apartments.

Some of these factors can be replicated in the US and Europe - I'm interested in trying something that actually works consistently and has usable and interesting content (i.e. nothing like WAP...).

Even more destructive

[dstone]

nobody seems to mind if someone is playing 'snake' on their cell phone ... Games like snake cause extreme academic decline.

No. It's too late. I have to inform you that academia has already declined beyond hope. And it has been due to an even more harmful, destructive habit by students in lecture halls over the past century. It's far more widespread than phone games, and the economies of the situation ensure that it always will be. The tools of destruction? A blank pad of paper, a pencil, and the desire to draw amusing and unrelated pictures while the professor is talking. Horrible thing, that. My informal observations indicate that the deadly paper/pencil/imagination combination has even greater penetration rates in the student market than mobile phones. The numbers approach 100% and show little sign of ever declining. Besides, I find the swooping and jerking motions of doodling to be far more offensive and distracting than the relatively restrained thumb movements of playing Snake.

3d gaming on cell-phones

[YeeHaW_Jelte]

Check these guys, www.fathammer.com, they produce an engine for 3d-gaming on cellphones and pda's.

Re:3d gaming on cell-phones

[Anonymous Coward]

WOW!! That is *AWESOME*!!!!!

Re:3d gaming on cell-phones

[CuriousKangaroo]

I met these guys about a year and a half ago in NYC when I worked for a gaming company - at the time they were bank-rolled by a certain cell-phone company. They said that while their engine was being developed on an iPAQ, the eventual target platform was cellphones 3 years in the future that were then on the drawing boards - they didn't even plan to release anything until then. I was flabbergasted, I was so blown away by the demo they gave us. The first thing I asked was why they didn't show/sell this to Compaq, because it would be an incredible marketing tool for the iPAQ (no other PocketPC had the iPAQ's performance numbers at the time). In fact, it made me go out and buy one almost immediately thereafter, having seen what an iPAQ was capable of (I immediately ditched my old Palm V I bought at that JavaOne so long ago).

It seems at some point they did decide that perhaps selling it on the platform they developed it on was a good idea. Maybe they no longer have the funding from the cellphone company? I don't know.

These guys were once part of the hardcore demo scene, too, as is probably obvious from the performance they eek out of that tiny machine.

BREW is just one platform among many

[Burnon]

Wow, that article sure was light on detail. It read like someone trying to sell the casual reader on how cool BREW is going to be, casually ignoring the fact that every handset vendor on the face of the earth is shooting for the same market with their own technologies. The article mentioned that Motorola was competing with BREW on Java support, as if no other vendors have Java-enabled hansets (not even remotely true). Check out this link, found at the top of a Google search on "Java-enabled phone", for a list of a bunch of Java-enabled phones. The downloads page there lists a whole bunch of Java-based games for handsets.

Last time I looked at the public info on BREW (from the downloadable API documentation), it didn't look like it had any world-beating features to enable gaming. From the article, you'd think that BREW had the inside track on becoming the game development platform of choice for mobile phones.

IMHO, BREW looks like an awfully lightweight, low-feature application-development toolkit, appropriate to use in a low-memory handset. There's nothing here that Nokia isn't offering with their Series 60 platform, or that any of the other big players aren't doing with their own proprietary toolkits, I would expect.

The trick is that BREW has had a Java virtual machine ported to it, and game developers will develop to THAT, not to anything that is really BREW-specific, or even really enabled by BREW. But every handset vendor is doing the same thing with their own toolkit.

Verizon to Offer Java On Top of BREW

[Kerg]

WirelessWeek: "Until recently, it seemed as if Verizon Wireless had turned up its nose at Java in favor of BREW. But the carrier has changed its attitude and recently confirmed it plans to offer Java-based applications, which it expects to hit the market in early 2003.

Ironically, the word comes as Verizon started giving its customers a sip of BREW, Qualcomm's binary runtime environment for wireless. The company began selling BREW applications to its 2G customers in San Diego in the first quarter as part of the first phase of a nationwide BREW deployment."

Read the rest here:
Verizon's Change of Heart

Dungeons and Dragons?

[AndyChrist]

How would D&D be the same without being in a room full of your fellow dorks, playing with brightly colored funny shaped dice, and possibly wearing costumes? How can a cell phone provide that?

Nevermind that you could probably play it over the phone ANYWAY...

Lagging, because we were ahead

[AndyChrist]

" America lags partly because only half of its adult population has cell phones, compared to 65 percent in Japan and 70 percent in Taiwan and Hong Kong. "

Most likely because unlike many countries, the land-line phone system in the US does not suck. AT&T at it's worst was never the pain in the ass that NTT is/was.

Re:Lagging, because we were ahead

[Cato]

Yes, the US phone system is so great that I regularly get just 20 to 25 Kbps on a 56K modem there, whereas in the UK it's always over 40 Kbps. (Irony alert...)

The best thing about the US phone system is the flat-rate for local phone calls, but that's also why cellular operators have to charge for incoming phone calls to mobile phones in the US (otherwise they'd lose money on every call). And this incoming call charging is a key reason why US residents don't give out their cell phone numbers, reducing the overall size of the cellular market and thus mobile penetration. This is the real reason for low mobile phone usage, it has very little to do with the quality of land lines, only their cost vs cell phones.

Japan is the only country where I saw ISDN data sockets on payphones everywhere, even tiny ski resorts, and voice quality was fine when I was there. If you really want to talk crap land line systems, try India - the GSM coverage is not too great but at least it works better than the very noisy land lines.

Re:Lagging, because we were ahead

[AndyChrist]

other broadband services were late (but admittedly quick once they started) in coming to Japan, probably due to the almost unbelievable coverage that ISDN has there.

But anyhow, you're looking at the PAYPHONES. They aren't going to have ISDN sockets EVERYWHERE, BTW, that's mainly in train stations and airports. (But this is in a country with thousands and thousands of train stations...)

I hear secondhand that to get a phone line IN YOUR HOUSE will cost about 800 dollars. 800. That's one hell of a disincentive to use land line phones right there, considering you can get started with your cell phone for as little as 1 yen. (Why they don't just say "free" I don't know...) Oh, and the land line phone is metered, too, so there goes that advantage, too.

It's not just the quality of the lines, it'S the pricing structure, and the coverage. In Japan, I know for a fact that all the advantages go to mobile phones...and at least some of those advantages go to them in most countries. In the US, it's much more split. The advantage isn't nearly so decisive.

Re:Lagging, because we were ahead

[AndyChrist]

Oh, and BTW, good point, about the numbers and charging for incoming calls. Didn'T think of that.

Re:Lagging, because we were ahead

[Graspee_Leemoor]

The price for putting a phone in a house in Japan is a lot but what people do when they leave is pass it on to the next person to move in, so the person leaving gets most of their money back.

graspee

Re:Lagging, because we were ahead

[plumby]

Personally I find it difficult to use my land-line phone on the bus or when I'm in the pub.

There are certainly countries where mobile usage has picked up due to poor fixed line infrastructure (in some of the Eastern European countries you can have a 6 month - a year wait for a land line), but the takeup in most places is nothing to do with this.

why modded down?

[Anonymous Coward]

please. stop. read. think. don't give -1 because you don't believe in copyright rules. THANX

Penises?

[Serial Troller]

_ _
_ /\) /\)
_ (/\ / / / / _
/\) \ \ ( Y) / / (/\
/ / \ \ "" / / \ \
( Y) (Y ) ( Y) (Y )
"" "" "" ""
Suck onto my penises.

Oh, and here's some filler: 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375 10582097494459230781640628620899862803482534211706 79821480865132823066470938446095505822317253594081 28481117450284102701938521105559644622948954930381 96442881097566593344612847564823378678316527120190 91456485669234603486104543266482133936072602491412 73724587006606315588174881520920962829254091715364 36789259036001133053054882046652138414695194151160 94330572703657595919530921861173819326117931051185 48074462379962749567351885752724891227938183011949 12983367336244065664308602139494639522473719070217 98609437027705392171762931767523846748184676694051 32000568127145263560827785771342757789609173637178 72146844090122495343014654958537105079227968925892 35420199561121290219608640344181598136297747713099 60518707211349999998372978049951059731732816096318 59502445945534690830264252230825334468503526193118 81710100031378387528865875332083814206171776691473 03598253490428755468731159562863882353787593751957 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Yet Another Way...

[Anonymous Coward]

...to part stupid people from their money. Just like idiotic ring tones, crappy SMS pictures and pretty mobile phone face-plates.

When I have kids, I'm banning them from having a mobile phone.

Re:Yet Another Way...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am still amazed at the irrational hatred some people feel towards cellphones and even the people who own such a nice, useful gadget.

Just like idiotic ring tones, crappy SMS pictures and pretty mobile phone face-plates

All of which are optional, of course.

I bet you complain about HTML in e-mails, colourful GUIs and colours in IRC too.

When I have kids, I'm banning them from having a mobile phone.

You're in a good crowd with the people who don't inoculate their children, don't let their kids participate the sex-ed classes in school and ban them from going out on a date until they're 18.

Have you ever used a cellphone? I guess not. Thus you are not qualified of whether the cellphones are just for "parting stupid people from their money".

Cellphones give me far more freedom than a landline phone. I can always be reached by phone -- if I want to. I don't have to babysit the landline phone if I am expecting a call -- if I don't want to. I'm outside and see a crime in progress, I can call in the cops. I have an accident in the middle of nowhere, I can call for help.

WOW DUDE

[Anonymous Coward]

CHILL OUT!!!

MOD PARENT UP!!

[Anonymous Coward]

(no text)

I hate phone calls

[nullard]

You know what I hate? When I'm in the middle of raking it in in Slot Machine or beating my high score in Crab Catch on me cell (Sanyo 4500) and some insensitive prick calls my phone and the game quits. Like I care who's calling me. Sheesh, I was playing a game dammit! What else is my cell phone good for.

but does it run on Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

But does it run on Linux? :)

Re:but does it run on Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Fathammer, which makes a 3D engine that can be customized for use in different games, makes versions for Linux and Pocket PC as well as Symbian OS, and the company also fine-tunes the versions for different hardware platforms.

"We have to put our eggs in all of the baskets," said Ville Vaten, Fathammer project manager"

Source:
http://zdnet.com.com/2102-1104-890948.html

What about solitaire?

[nullard]

Truthfully, I'd rather have solitaire. That's what I used my PDA for. Since Sprint service in my area is pretty bad, I'm out of range a lot. If I've got a couple of minutes to kill and I'm out of range anyway, I might as well play something that does not require much time or thought. The game should save state between invocations so that it could be stopped and restarted at any time. I've played solitaire on a calculator before, so I know that it can be implemented using just a few keys for input, unlike NetHack.

Re:What about solitaire?

[pyrros]

(sony)ericsson have had solitaire on phones since the t28, which came out more than two years ago.

Re:What about solitaire?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well guess what! my brew phone also has soliaire

pfft... I made something much better

[Anonymous Coward]

I double sided taped (the good stuff though zip ties can work as well) my mobile phone to the back of a GameBoy Advance. Only problem is finding a case to fit.... had to resort to the cool-to-be-hip-looking bum bug. Once Nintendo make a flash cart to download games from the phone I can do awy with the need to carry game carts (though pirate multi game cards cut my sotrage needs in half).

Re:What the fuck...leeching news from elsewhere???

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the link but it's already linked to - FROM THE ARTICLE. :)

Attention nerds!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ich habe einen außergewöhnlich großen Penis!

Who cares?

[surfacearea]

I have an Ericsson T28w, meaning I can play a fully functional version of tetris and solitaire. Anyway, I play 99.9% of said games on my cell phone while waiting in the subway for my train. Now, maybe if the MTA could install some high powered cell transceivers in the tunnels to bounce around calls/data...

All of these games have dirty names.

[DarkHelmet]

I love the names of all of these phone games.

Because the line "Wanna play with my Gladiator?" gets the same dirty look as "Wanna play with my Snake?"

Of course, then I'd whip it out... My phone, that is...

Re:All of these games have dirty names.

[Anonymous Coward]

excuse me while i whip this out...
crowd cringes back

Let's all play CANCER

[Qrlx]

Before you mod me down, go talk on your goddam cell phone for a half an hour. Notice how one side of your head is all hot? That's the MICROWAVES COOKING YOU HEAD.

Or, if you have one of those belt clip things, it's only your OVARIES/TESTES that are being cooked.

Sure, I'm an alamrist. And no studies have ever shown that non-ionizing radiation poses a health risk. Well, how would you even conduct such a study in today's world? Find me a control group. In the early days of radio, a five watt signal from New York could be heard in Miami. Now you need 100,000 watts just to walk over your nearest competitor.

Yeah, it's off-topic. Especially if you have enough of a fucking life to play real pnp dnd with real people instead of over your cell phone.

Vacations on Tape
Instant Happiness

Re:Let's all play CANCER

[Anonymous Coward]

Idiot.

Why don't you and the rest of your rabid anti-cellphone cohorts try finding out facts about cellphones before complaining about them?

100000 watts? The cellphones emissions are in the MILLIWATT (1/1000 of a Watt) range!

Re:Let's all play CANCER

[lanalyst]

Umm... all of these games involve looking at the screen on the phone with the antenna directed away from you. I can't see how they would be played by holding the phone to ones ear :)

Perhaps you could champion the ergonomic issues of repetetive thumb motion on the keyboard...

Re:Let's all play CANCER

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh i had better put my phone down then. Oh its plugged into the wall. hmm maybe it has something to do with heat being held in by a piece of plastic? Before you get all alarmest try this little experiment. Take a ordinary phone. unplug it from the wall. hold it next to your head for a half hour. Notice something about the side of your head?

pda is better

[calarts_nutmeg]

I'd rather just play games on my zaurus or handspring, at least I won't get charged, as there's tons of freeware games around.

You mean like the Nokia 9210/9290?

[Subcarrier]

MAME on cell phones would be nice

Here it is:

http://koti.mbnet.fi/~haviital/

Probably won't be long before it's available for other Symbian phones as well, like the Nokia 7650 or Ericssony P800.

Re:You mean like the Nokia 9210/9290?

[antdude]

Wow! And it has the original sound and/or music?

Re:You mean like the Nokia 9210/9290?

[HeUnique]

Try to check this out - see why I want to buy a Nokia 9210? :)

Re:You mean like the Nokia 9210/9290?

[Graspee_Leemoor]

But the Nokia Communicator is bigger than my ipaq, and my ipaq can do all this and more. I personally have nethack and a Spectrum emulator on it.

graspee

Re:You mean like the Nokia 9210/9290?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but you can't call on your iPAQ.

Plus the communicator has a handy dandy speaker which I just love, nothing like having it on the table and speakin' to your friends without the unnecessary hands free or keeping your hand busy.

- Coward /w Communicator

Re:You mean like the Nokia 9210/9290?

[kontakt]

You will be able to soon - Pocket PC Phone Edition

Re:You mean like the Nokia 9210/9290?

[Graspee_Leemoor]

"Yes, but you can't call on your iPAQ."

I count this as another advantage.

Most people like to be "in" when they're out, I like to be "out" when I'm in.

graspee

Wow

[t_allardyce]

Oh My God!!!! i think im going to cum with excitement. Is it at all possible to play Golf!?! on a phone?!?! never before have i seen such incredible technology come into play (no pun intended). It certainly isnt possible to download games like this onto any of the PDAs out there, and of course, none of those PDAs can talk to each other anyway because no-one has invented infra red, cell-phone connectivity, GSM cards, or connecting cables. Wow, i have to hand it to them. I would never have been able to come up with the following ideas on my own:

1) A phone thats like a PDA in that you can connect it to your PC and download 3rd party software onto it.

2) A phone thats like a PDA in that it _is_ a phone and a PDA in the same device.

3) Developing more games for phones.

hmmm

[brewman123]

You want to play with me? :)

Operator control

[Ben Hutchings]

BREW is a way to run native code on ARM-based phones. BREW applications have a huge amount of control over what the phone does. Therefore, access to this environment is strictly controlled - a BREW-supporting handset will not run an application unless it's signed by the operator. I believe BREW is primarily aimed at network operators, who currently have no way to add features and applications across all handsets on their network. Independent developers can make a pitch to the operators, but they cannot deliver any BREW apps without official blessing.

On the contrary...

[Kylow]

Actually, Gladiator and the like are on the Wireless Web, so any Web enabled Sprint phone could access them.

J2ME games already abound

[Atryn]

Games on wireless phones have been around for quite a while already. I'm not talking about snake or tic tac toe, but golf, motorcycle games, bowling, wrestling, etc. Sun's J2ME has been providing this technology on Nextel phones since March of 2001.

If you check out the games section of the iDEN Update Application Catalog you can see that many, many games can be downloaded to your phone today.

Now, graphically, these are nice. They will become compelling when Nextel releases it's next phone, the i95cl (press release here) which we should expect within the next 1-2 months. The primary benefit of the new phone being not only the color screen, but the ability to store many more applications through memory improvements as well as processor speed improvements.

I have seen GPS enabled multiplayer games in the works, and many other cool things to come from the Nextel developer community. If you are a developer, please check out the Nextel Developer Program and Motorola's iDEN Developer Program. Both sites have free registration, resources, and special pricing on some equipment for developers. Both also have procedures to establish co-marketing relationships.

BREW is not all it's cracked up to be

[ColGraff]

A friend of mine works for a company that was, for a time, seriously working on games for BREW cellphones. Programming-wise, everything you need, all the functions and graphical abilities, are there. The problem is that it's just too damn slow. BREW can't compete with Symbian, Palm OS, and Wince cellphones, I'm afraid.

Re:BREW is not all it's cracked up to be

[Anonymous Coward]

probley because its a interpeted language. and most proccessors on a phone are not up to doing both phone stuff and running a interperted language. But considering that most phones are commodity items. I am willing to bet you will not see this in low end phones.

Re:BREW is not all it's cracked up to be

[markb]

You are very wrong. BREW is definitely not interpreted. BREW is just an API. BREW apps are native ARM code, generally compiled from C and C++ source code.

If you enjoy suffering...

[ColGraff]

You can download the SDK here: https://brewx.qualcomm.com/developer/sdk/download. jsp

BREW will falter

[rkischuk]

BREW will fail in the mainstream, almost without a doubt. The obstacle is the same as many similar products before it (such as DivX) - the vendor (Qualcomm) has designed a system where they want to control it all. You have to download the software from your carrier, and your carrier can't offer it unless it's approved by Qualcomm.

While this sort of strategy gets the execs all excited because they get to stick their hand out for money at every step, these ploys fail because, in the end, there's nothing in it for the consumer. The developers are sick of it because they have to be certified against standards that even Qualcomm's own BREW demo apps don't pass, and they have to pay to recertify every time the standards are changed or their app fails. The consumer doesn't want it because this "walled garden" approach by the vendors has no value for them.

Good concept, bad business decisions.

Re:BREW will falter

[Flarb]

I'm actually working on a book about BREW development and I disagree. BREW may fail, but not for these reasons. J2ME works in the same way--only worse. You have to get your application certified by every single carrier you wish to carry it. Nevermind the fact that carrier relationships are increasingly harder to get these days. With BREW, you just need to get True Brew Certrified by Qualcomm's hired testing lab, and that's it. You still need to get carrier relationships, but all BREW carriers adhere to the True Brew testing standards. The biggest problem with BREW (aside from the lousy hardware) is the development tools. You have to pay for a $1500 compiler that should be free (why not use GCC for ARM?) and a $400 Verisign account for no apparent reason. I understand the need to digitally sign your applet for distribution, but you still need to generate certificates just to test it. The emulator is totally inaccurate, and there is no way to debug your code on hardware. Unlike Java, BREW is a C/C++ API cross-compiled for the chipset. So you're likely to get crashes on the device that you don't get in the emulator. The problem is, there's no way to step through code on the device. You can't even so much as get a printf from the handset to the host PC. (J2ME does this at least! Some J2ME devices even have debug VMs that let you stetp through code on the device!) The API is actually way better than J2ME for games. J2ME is still a zillion easier to get running on a real handset, and thus I'll have to give the nod to J2ME early on as a develoment environment. But don't count BREW out. After all, Verizon Wireless is the #1 carrier in America. And BREW is already #2 in Korea, which is the second largest mobile gaming market on the planet. And probably will be for quite some time.

Re:BREW will falter

[Anonymous Coward]

To add to that line of argument. I don't have first hand experience, but I have some friends who have several months of experience developing apps and games with both. BREW is a total pain. It takes twice the effort develop the same app on BREW than Java. Sure the java version is slower, considerably slower, but when you consider the network is unreliable to begin with, wireless network games aren't going to work correctly.

Anyone that thinks wireless download of games or apps is going to work is sadly mistaken. Wireless data transmission is far from reliable enough to work consistently 95% of the time. Until wireless reliability is equal to land lines, anyone trying to do wireless application updates is in for a huge case of "wup ass". When 1/3 of the users cancel the service and tell everyone they know how bad it is, the whole wireless data market will have a huge battle of public perception.

Add to that, data connections currently take up two channels. And no one has deployed the latest network gear or handsets on CDMA to use 1 channel for data. GSM/TDMA has a lower capacity, so a lot of work still needs to be done to get network reliability and performance to an acceptable level. Don't buy into the hype. Realistically, the industry is still 8-10 years away from the point. Only early adopters will try out the services, only to cancell because of totally unreliable service.

Re:BREW will falter

[markb]

Anyone that thinks wireless download of games or apps is going to work is sadly mistaken. Wireless data transmission is far from reliable enough to work consistently 95% of the time.

You are blatantly wrong. BREW app downloads work very well on Verizon in San Diego. Application downloads are just as reliable as voice calls.

Phantom Fiber is doing this ...

[ian stevens]

Phantom Fiber Inc. is currently working with a number of gaming companies to wirelessly enable their games. Their focus is currently Palm and PocketPC but they are working on RIM and the new breed of J2ME phones running SymbianOS. So far, they have built some casino games for Palm and PocketPC devices, including multi-player interactive games like poker. At a recent international gaming convention in Toronto, they were the only wireless players showcasing their products.

ian.

I hope some other platform wins!

[Anonymous Coward]

Did anyone here actually try BREW (go to www.qualcomm.com/brew/ for info)? They will charge monthly fees for users to have a program, developers need to pay thousands of bucks for a compiler and verisign keys and for all that you get something that looks like COM. Better write those games in J2ME :-)

Top Snake Score?

[rosewood]

I am very proud of my 999 on the Nokia 6190 - but I often have wondered if 999 was the cap, because I played for a VERY long time and ive gotten into the 900s many times before that w/o much time spent. Oh course, that is on the fastest speed.

I now have a samsung phone with 0 games, sigh -- my old samsung at least had othello, which I had over a 1000 wins in.

My mom's cricket phone has snake but it tends to get 'bogged down' and even on the fastest setting, at times it goes stupid slow and has issues responding. who woulda thunk it that a cell phone would run low on memmory

J2ME more likely.

[app]

Many of these types of games and more where being demonstrated on JavaONE this year on J2ME devices so I would get too hung up on BREW. In fact I wouldn't even bother with that technology.

BREW is currently a CDMA only technology. The majority of the world uses GSM thought. (Americans sometimes forget this since CDMA has a larger, but weakening, footprint in the US.) The majority of carriers and handset manufacturers are committed to J2ME in someway. Motorola has gone so far as to pledge that all of its phones will ship with J2ME by the end of this year. Even CDMA carrier Sprint PCS have decided to forego BREW for J2ME when they launch thier new service this August.

If your a developers, where would you put your efort first?

J2ME has its limtiations though. Then again so do these devices -- With a screen not much larger then an airmail stamp we're not even talking game boy here. The limitations of J2ME are currently being addressed with initatives such as Project Monty (a new high performance virtual machine), Mobile Game API and the Mobile Media API.

<tim/>
---
http://tima.mplode.com/

Re:J2ME more likely.

[markb]

If your a developers, where would you put your efort first?

I'd put my effort into BREW, where I can write my apps in ARM assembly and squeeze every last bit of performance out of the processor. That's really important for games. What I would not want is the overhead of a Java Virtual Machine.

Re:J2ME more likely.

[Anonymous Coward]

Brew does perform better, but it's not a scalable platform. Development on BREW is very expensive time and effort wise. I seriously doubt either BREW or J2ME will do the job in the US market in it's current form. When the hardware is twice as powerful, I would lean towards an optimized version of J2ME on wireless. BREW simply is a pain in the but and hardware manufacturers have yet to come to some kind of standard on keys and features. Offering the same application on multiple phones is a lot harder. The parent post obviously doesn't understand the main challenge of wireless development. BREW would be a no-brainer, if all the hardware were equal. It's not.

Writing abstraction layers is easier in Java. You can do it in BREW, but again it's more work and too time consuming. Developing games on wireless takes expertise in several disciplines. Anyone that thinks designing a game for a console and phone are the same is smoking crack.

Re:J2ME more likely.

[markb]

Brew does perform better, but it's not a scalable platform.

I don't understand what you're trying to say here.

Writing abstraction layers is easier in Java.

BREW is an abstraction layer.

Re:J2ME more likely.

[app]

I understand the main challenge quite well. I've developed J2ME (and WAP) applications already.

Interfaces and devices capacities make "write once, run anywhere" unrealistic. However if you code yourapplication properly and abstract your logic from display some level of reusabability can be achieved. To what degree will depend and there hasn't been enough history to come up with an estimated range. From personal experience I estimated 60-80%, but this comes from applications that where not games. I would expect games to be lower.

What type of games are we talking about here that performance is such an overiding factor? Who wants to play Quake or Unreal on a mobile phone?

BREW enabled phones

[Anonymous Coward]

Should be available at any Verizon dealer over the next couple of months. I know the dealer I work for is expecting 3 or 4 models by the end of July.

Should be some good stuff! And a lot of the applications will have "DEMO" capability, where you won't have to pay to try them out!

Pretty neat sounding stuff, from what I hear.. A lot cooler than "oh boy, with 3G i can laptop surf at 56k.. yippee"

Stop right there.

[SHEENmaster]

We don't want gnome for windows because we would be less superior. We don't want IIS to actually run, because we would be less superior.

And I don't want nethack on cellphones because it would make my agenda vr3 less superior.

Nope

[Kylow]

No one's yet pointed out that in order to even play these games, you need a BREW-enabled phone. Verizon's just started coming out with them according to the article, and there's no mention of any other US carrier offering them.

Not to mention that this usually locks you into another contract with substantial penalties for early withdrawal. I think I'll stick with snake if I feel the need to play a game on my cellphone. Or just stick with my PDA for games, especially when I'm stuck on an airplane."

No, you're wrong. Jam Dat Mobile Inc. has been providing Gladiator to Sprint for quite some time. Porting it to BREW is a brand new innovation and doesn't change the fact that its already out there.

http://www.jamdatmobile.com/

Re:Nope

[emag]

No, you're wrong. Jam Dat Mobile Inc. has been providing Gladiator to Sprint for quite some time. Porting it to BREW is a brand new innovation and doesn't change the fact that its already out there.

Funny, I thought the article in question is discussing BREW, which also mentions that BREW-enabled phones have only really recently started to be rolled out on a "limited" basis. So, that would mean that, yes, you would need to upgrade your phone in order to play BREW games.

Re:Nope

[Kylow]

Yes, but you're missing the point...

The exact same game that is being discussed is already on Sprint phones. Gladiator is NOT a BREW game, but rather a cell phone game that will now be inserted into BREW. You stated, and I quote:

No one's yet pointed out that in order to even play these games, you need a BREW-enabled phone.

That statement, on its face, is not correct. I can play Gladiator on my Sprint Touchpoint 1100, and it is not BREW enabled, as you state a phone must be to play these games.

Re:Nope

[emag]

Perhaps English isn't your primary language. Perhaps you're just like most people who do speak it as their primary language and don't understand the finer points. "Gladiator" is but a single game. Single. Singular. Meaning one. If Electronic Arts' "Tiger Woods PGA Tour Golf", or "Dungeons & Dragons" (the other two games specifically mentioned in the article) are available for non-BREW phones, then you have a point. A single game that's already available for Web-enabled phones doesn't mean that any and all games being provided via BREW are already available. As such, the statement "No one's yet pointed out that in order to even play these games, you need a BREW-enabled phone." still stands.

Re:Nope

[Kylow]

"If Electronic Arts' "Tiger Woods PGA Tour Golf", or "Dungeons & Dragons" (the other two games specifically mentioned in the article) are available for non-BREW phones, then you have a point."

Tiger Woods PGA Tour Golf is, in fact, available. http://www.jamdat.com/ Do I have a point yet?

More things to do in your Car

[Splezunk]

Now, not only can drivers be distracted by talking on their Mobiles while driving, now they can play games as well.

Driving along and playing a racing game.... my head hurts just thinking about...

Which's BREW?

[FrankDrebin]

Essentially, BREW does much of the heavy lifting that wireless carriers prefer not to tackle. It is also an open standard that supports multiple languages including the Java platform -- which means game developers don't have to worry about writing multiple versions for different devices.

This statement is misleading. BREW is a "Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless" by Qualcomm. It is just a friggin' API for phones with an ARM CPU! The only reason they claim Java - which does not ship by the way - is that is is conceivable to port and run Java under any environment. Putting a JVM on top of BREW is totally useless since the JVM does not need BREW whatsoever to run on an ARM - it's all marketing hype promoting the false associating with Write-Once Run-Anywhere. BREW competes with Java and locks you into the Qualcomm licensing machine. BREW is not open (or maybe it is, check for yourself here), not cross-platform (ARM only), and does about as much for reducing the need for different software versions as Win32 - or any other proprietary "environment" - does for the desktop.

Re:Which's BREW?

[markb]

It's makes a lot of sense to write a JVM on top of BREW. Without the abstraction of BREW, writing a JVM to run on many different phones is a real pain in the ass. But if you make your JVM a BREW app, it will run on a bunch of phones.

Re:Which's BREW?

[FrankDrebin]

But BREW is just on the Qualcomm (ARM CPU) chips. To port BREW to any other chip/architecture means (1) the B(inary) in BREW isn't the same without ARM, and (2) it is *MORE* work to do the JVM since it must run on another CPU. The BREW APIs are just sugar on top of a native API for the phone. The JVM is *MORE* efficient running on the native API than through the BREW layer. It's just not that compelling to use BREW.

Re:Which's BREW?

[markb]

A JVM is barely more efficient running on the native API rather than BREW. BREW really doesn't add much overhead. And if you are writing a JVM for a phone that supports BREW, it's worth it to write it on top of BREW since this will let your JVM run on other phones that support BREW. (There are many differences between phones besides the chipset, and this is where the BREW API is going to help you out a lot.) And down the road, it is possible that you'll see BREW on ARM phones that don't use Qualcomm's chipsets. It is also possible that you will see BREW on non-ARM phones, in which case porting will be as easy as recompiling.

What about other types of "mobile devices?"

[HistoryNerd]

But can the games be played on this type of palm?