The Handheld War

The Escapist has an editorial up talking about the war currently raging in the trenches...and not the console war, for once. The new handhelds are duking it out for position, and he makes some interesting predictions. From the article: "Sony's stumble will clear the way for Nokia's N-Gage powered smartphones to be the #2 platform in handheld gaming. I see it developing into a PC-like platform. Think of it like this: Everybody has a PC. Everybody uses their PC for work and web. Some people also use it for gaming - enough people to make the PC, as a platform, the second biggest; it's the same concept with the smartphone."

Comments

Are you kidding me?

[ersgameboy]

The N-Gage is basically dead and buried. Nothing will bring it back.

Disparity

[vethia]

The problem with the idea of using a cellphone for handheld gaming is that the best features of a cellphone aren't necessarily the best features to have in a handheld. For instance, today's most popular cellphone models are too small to make effective handhelds, and the N-Gage is too large to be a worthwhile phone. Unless it has the same level of functionality as a Sidekick, nobody's going to want to use something that clunky as a telephone.

It's true that cellphones are tending more towards visuals and including more games, but I doubt the kind of games that cellphone users want to play are the same as the ones that handheld console owners want. Cellphone games are mostly a way to kill time, whereas most handheld gamers are looking for a little extra.

In short: people who want to play handheld games will just buy a handheld console, and people who want to play cellphone games are content with the existing, non-N-Gage options.

Re:As if the N-Gage comment didn't throw me off...

[Reorax]

Yeah, it's definitely a joke. Everyone knows 360 is TWO orders of magnitude bigger than 3.