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The Wireless Arcade
KeelSpawn writes "Techreiview has an article on Wireless gaming through handhelds. Quoted from article: "They don't have fancy 3-D graphics, but video games for handheld devices stand poised to capture a huge U.S. market. Why? Because we all have to wait." There are a lot of "Small" games that could be great time killers in lines if ported to cel
phones, and made multiplayer, and cheap. Perhaps something like the Game Boy's Pokemon Crystal, but with hooks to play perhaps the people within X miles of you ;)
Wonderful! Now, not only do we have people yakking all day walking down the street on their phones, they're alsso playing Pokemon! Just when you thought big-city life couldn't get more annoying, comes the daily squeek of "Pikachu!" from a hundred thousand cell phones!!
FP BTW
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
People run MAME and NES Emulators (even Atari Emulators). Graphics do *NOT* define the game!
Take Doom3 for example. Sure it looks pretty, but if its just another FPS DM game, no one will enjoy it. Its all about gameplay and innovation. These wireless games could become very popular as long as they have good gameplay and innovate the game for the new platform.
I hope this sparks gameplay and innovation on all platforms...
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
if wireless was a feature on the ti-83, tetris would've been so much more fun during calc class back in high school.
Efren Belizario
headspeak.com
Great games dont need great graphics, they need great playability. Take Monkey Island, KSirtet, Sokoban and Supaplex.
Life isn't like a box of chocolates. It's more like a jar of jalapenos. What you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow.
please include a pause button. The first person who holds up my grocery line while he finishes up a level will get beaten to death with a baguette.
The particular Sprint phone I have doesn't have any games preloaded on it - you must use their wireless web to access games. Problem is, it's billed as a call the entire time you play. Not very fun.
I'm not sure multiplayer as described would be that big of a hit. My guess is that most people who'd play games on their cell phones want something they can pick and put down quickly, with a minimum of hassle. Unless you can streamline a matchmaking interface so that it takes less than 30 seconds, I doubt you'll see much use for it. If you only have five minutes to play a game, and 3 of those are spent finding someone to play with, you're not going to bother.
"Moderate drinking can help prevent amputated limbs" -- Abigail Zuger, NYTimes, 12/31/02
Imagine how much this will cost you - without you knowing it. Here in Belgium, these SMS games cost you 1 per message. A simple Login-Question-Answer-Score round would cost you 4. There was a guy who lost 6000 because he played a lottery 3000 times. Now he's complaining he didn't read the fine print.
We need flat-fee access! How long will it take before we can get mobile Internet for a fixed price?
Teenagers these days don't have as much sex as they want each other to think they do.
I must say this is something I have been wanting. I bought a Palm VIIx about a year ago, when the big promotion came out from Palm. I used the thing fr HOURS the first month, MINUTES the second month, and then barely at all after that. Wound up cancelling service as soon as was possible under the terms of my contract. The thing is, with high-speed internet at work, an Airport network at home, and dial-ups available while on the road, there was not much that I had left to do with a wireless unit which only did low-tech, no-color internet.
But if it had been able to do wireless gaming, I suspect I would still be an owner and an enthusiastic user. Even without the graphics, even without sound effects, the ability to play new games all the time and to play against real people is compelling.
Too bad it's only in Japan right now.
Coming to the US faster than you think.
Check it out
Yeah, I'm gonna sound like a snob, but I'd really like to read a book while waiting instead of turning my brain off for yet another Tetris clone. Trouble is, many of the books I'd like to read are too big to fit nicely in one of my pockets. If only I could put them in a palmtop or cellphone... Sure, this method of entertainment is clever and cool, but geez, I play enough games already.
Lately democracy seems to be based on the skybox, the Happy Meal box, the X-box, and the idiot box.
...while waiting in line, on the subway, on hold...
...
:-)
10) Pong
9) Backgammon
8) Nethack
7) Poker
6) Bomberman
5) Scrabble
4) Hearts
3) Columns
2) Go
and
1) FreeCiv
that would make me want to wait on long lines.
-Max
Once I thought I was wrong, but I was mistaken.
Its seems to me that people are missing the boat a bit. The largest growing martket for cell phones and PDAs is the 12-16 year old tweens. These kids already play their gameboy advance interminably. Why don't they start with a gameboy and add cell phone features. This would be pretty easy, even if they had to add a nother processor, they would make up for it in air time. It would bigger. heck call it gameboy.NET...oh wait.
I think this article was missing some fundamental problems with wireless games on PDAs... graphics do not matter THAT much, but they certainly do matter... in anything other than a text mode role playing game.
I think anyone who uses a PDA, especially a PocketPC based platform, is well aware of the machine's hardware capability. There is just no excuse for not making some games that look half way decent, and are interesting.
It is really a damn shame when my (formerly) $500 Casio E125 with a 16-bit color screen, a 150mhz MIPS processor, 32 megs of ram, and a 256 meg flash card can't produce a single game comparable to a game on my $69 Game Boy Advance.
Has anyone seen Microsoft's Entertainment Pack for PocketPC??? That hing is a joke, it is like a video game rendition of Office Space.
The article is right about one thing, adults are somewhat ignored by the market. I don't think that is the problem with PDAs, I think software developers just think there a) are not enough of them out there and b) people just use them as a rolodex.
These same marketeers have to sit on a subway car during rush hour in Chicago and they will realize nearly one in three yuppies has a PDA.
Once we have a game that is fun to play, then we can talk about wireless. Its the old chicken before the egg scenario here folks.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
It has everything this article mentioned except wireless: portability, cheap graphics, multiplayer, and the air of dignity from my sleek black calc. It is also (IMO) the greatest version of Tetris ever made.
It has gotten me through the most boring classes and the longest waits. It doesn't eat batteries like some other TI games I could mention *coughbreakoutcough*, yet it is still endlessly fast and challenging. The two-player battle mode is perfectly balanced, with all sorts of different tactics my Chemistry buddies and I developed in high school. I would seriously consider teaching a class on Tetris Theory if someone would pay me.
So I'll leave my phone in my pocket, thank you. TI has me covered.
Co-founder of GerbilMechs
Did anyone else use to log onto their favorite BBS every day just to take their turn at L.O.R.D, Global Wars, etc?
That would be a killer network app on these things.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
- Enjoyable gameplay is not necessarily dependant on flashy graphics (just as enjoyable movie viewing is not necessarily dependant on flashy graphics - see Hollywood.)
- Multiplayer games on PDAs, cell-phones are somewhat limited by
- cost in phone minutes
- People-on-the-run finding the setup time inconvenient
The tremendous market I see is in multiplayer games of chance, for money. That is to say, let's set up a multiplayer poker game for real stakes (or head-to-head Pong tourney for cash). GAMBLE ON YOUR PDA/PHONE, my friends! All human opponents! Best odds! Get your fix on Route 66 (literally)!Hmmm.. how to authenticate though... sadly, 'wireless security' is an oxymoron, and where there's a bill, there's a way.
oh boy the cell phone makes get to play "how many version of tetris can thier possibly be"
then one of the cell phone makers is gonna come up with a version of tetrinet so you can curse at your phone for lossing to someone with wit teh h4x on thier phone.
It may bring snickers and jeers from some of you,
but a very portable machine that had a 100% working
implementation of the game Nethack would be wonderful to have.
I would actually like to buy a portable for the express
purpose of running nethack 3.4. That's the killer app for me,
and the only app that has to run to satisfy me, but it must
run well, and be both stable and playable. Any other addicts
out there who can point me to a machine worth buying for this purpose?
but games on my PDA suck. They are pointless adaptations of pointless games, I'd much rather read a good book, and I don't mean a lousy e-book.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
The game in the upper left hand corner that is show isn't mulitplayer or wireless. It was just a demo of hammerhead's 3d engine (which by the way kicks ass). Gotta love the writers for picking the picture that is pretty rather then the right one. Don't know about the other 3 though.
-Benjamin Meyer
Do you changes clothes while making the "chee-chee-cha-cha-choh" transformation sound?
Putting a game on a cell phone is roughly equivalent to playing Quake 3 on a high-volume Exchange server. Your average cell phone has barely enough CPU cycles to manage the cell phone connection, much less handle real-time input needed for a game.
Let's take an example: my cell phone has the game "snake" on it (also sometimes called "nibbles"). I prefer to play it on the highest difficulty, which means the snake moves around pretty fast.
Most of the time.
There are times where the game completely ignores my commands, or decides to respond a fraction of a second after when the button is pressed. Sometimes the snake itself will slow down, only to have a sudden speed boost when the CPU becomes available.
The result is that the game's difficulty comes not from the challenge of avoiding walls and yourself, but from the maddeningly inconsistent performance and response time.
You'd think that the game would become more playable when in a tunnel (or other service-blocking zone), but actually the opposite happens because the CPU spends all its time trying to connect to the phone network.
So, given the choice, I would much rather have a dedicated gaming device such as a Gameboy Advance than eat the battery life of my cell phone with a shoddy gaming experience.
Nathan
That's a neat idea! I could go to Game Traders and get a SNES controller for pretty cheap. Before I do that, is anybody aware of a SNES - Paralell adapter?
Thanks for the sugg!
"Derp de derp."