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Games Entertainment

Sega, Motorola To Load Games On New Phones 74

Posted by timothy from the not-just-snake-that-is dept.
[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.
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Sega, Motorola To Load Games On New Phones More

Sega, Motorola To Load Games On New Phones

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  • What about Trump? They have "T" trademarked!
  • 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?

  • Re:Cool! (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 21, 2001 @12:58PM (#492128)
    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 [motorola.com] Group

    Btw, the news is old (Nov 29th, 2000):
    MOTOROLA WIRELESS PHONES TO FEATURE SEGA GAMES [motorola.com]

    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 [motorola.com].
  • Slap me around and call me redundant... but I'm like several others that think this idea isn't a viable business deal. Speaking from a consumer's point of view... IMHO, Sega's potential Dreamcast on a chip, inside a DVD player may not be more or less profitable, but it's certainly a better idea than this.

    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*

  • J-Phone [j-phone.com] in Japan already does this. I count almost 50 games on their game list site [j-phone.com], with makers like Namco, Tomy, Capcom, and Konami in there.

    The game contents just started last year, so it's probably the smallest of content genre there.

    (Note, I don't have a J-Phone, or an i-mode for that matter (i-mode's voice mode is too poor quality for me). But the commercials sure are breaking down my resistance.)

  • Good... just what we need... another distraction for America's already shitty drivers.
  • How about a port of NetHack
  • right then

    you have a problem with mobile phones they cant store info so you must provide it to them over the ether so to speak

    so here's WML + iMode

    they get the text and convert that into apps

    you need to do something select on the relevent *link/button* and the server then servers up another stream for you (and only you)

    but wait you are just getting a serialized verion of the app and only parts of it great for text mode stuff where latancy is not a problem but whta about a game ?

    you move to the left to dodge the fireball and wait and wait... while the next part is sent Not Good

    so we find that you have to serialize the most important parts of the logic or all of it. Now what can be "sent over the wire" yep thats java you just download to your phone the app and frag those bad men in their flying machines ahahah

    colour as well and ajustable to screen relitively easy ! security for online buying built in, manages fonts and such well and vectors for victor are now in (after a deal with shockwave)

    yeah JAVA's cool yeah it rocks BUT

    its slow has garbage colection problems and needs quite alot of room (try telling the folks @ windriver about how little the KVM takes up and they can have a list of application an arms length that will ALL at once fit in the space )

    most mobile phones infact I am at a loss to say which ones dont use the ARM arch CPU at their core

    now the ARM Instruction Set maps apprently quite well to the java bytecodes so they can do that

    but what are they doing about libs will be intresting I would have said that this would be fairly easy but SUN have done some strange licanceing

    but it has good things for linux if they chose to implent the Frame buffer and use the pocketlinux distro and libs

    http://www.transvirtual.com/pocketlinux.htm [transvirtual.com]


    well I hope it all turns out intresting

    more info on ARM java [arm.com]

    have fun

    regards

    john jones

  • 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.

  • Yes. Kidding. See recent article on pillsbury sueing for using the term "bake-off".
  • (Hi from a Rice Alumnus!)

    For my current company, I had to take the Cup Test, but I wouldn't do it again.

    Aside from the obvious invasion of privacy, I was pretty nervous about taking the Cup Test, even though I don't drink and don't use any drugs! That combined with the annoyance have having to go somewhere at a particular time and be ready to flow was just too much. Happily my company is now more enlightened, and no longer requires the Cup Test for new employees so I can continue to work there with a clear concience.

    I think you made the right choice. If enough people just say "no thanks", the company WILL drop the test. I think that's what ended the practice where I work.

  • > (If you could I'd trademark E and sue everyone!)

    Microsoft is already ahead of you [uspto.gov].

  • chu chu rocket puzzle mode [with puzzle edit], NiGHTS [not 3d], and samba de amigo. it doesn't look like it will be coming to america, but if it does, i will be pleased, since the 3 games that are going to be on it look neat so far.

    dcign did a story [ign.com] on it a couple days ago

  • Plus the equivalent power to a 386 PC in terms of MIPS and RAM

    I had a 386 with 40 meg.... that seems a little excessive for a phone
  • This was announced way back in early June 2000 at the JavaOne Conference - apart from the plethora of Dreamcasts for convention goers to play on </drool>, that was Sega's sole purpose to be there, IIRC.

    The difference is that now there's an actual product there.

  • You do need to remember, that unlike Japan, American kids aren't as receptive to electronic fads. Pokemon is a rare exception to my broad generalization. Not only that... who would they be marketing this phone to? Cell phone users have to be at least eighteen to sign-up. True, parents typically buy their children a cell phone if they are underaged, but how many middle-school aged children carry cell phones? To my knowledge, very few. I grew up in an upper class neighborhood where high school kids typically drove around in BMWs and pricey SUVs... absolutely none of them cell phones. I asked my eighth-grade brother, and he confirmed this. Furthermore, kids where I grew up preferred to play their videogames in front of the TV... preferably with friends. Mario Kart, Contra, 007, Madden, blah, blah, blah, were all the rage.

    Someone with a Dreamcast VMU please back my up in that those silly little games you can download from Jet Grind Radio, Sega GT, and others, and IMHO...simply aren't all that they're cracked up to be...

    *funkdat*

  • Why not just spend $50 and get a gameboy? I understand it's cool to be able to toy around on your cell phone, but really, this seems like its just dumb, like the people who loaded games onto graphic calculators back in school.
  • Old news: http://pocket.ign.com/news/20447.html has screenshots of a cool golf game! Neato, has me sold.
  • but who really cares about gaming on a phone? For that matter, who really cares about web surfing on a phone. A phone is phone because we want to talk to someone. If I want to play games/surf the web, that's what a PC is for. Why do we have this desire for every single piece of equipment to be able to do every single function under the sun?

    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.
  • Now they're not only going to be talking when they're driving, they'll be warming up their road rage at the same time with a FPS...
  • Now I'm going to see the cars in front of me swerving all over the place because someone's playing Sonic the Hedgehog on their StarTAC.

    When it comes to cell phones in cars, I have only one policy: Drive Now, Talk Later! [cars.com]

  • ...than this [dailyradar.com]?

    -
    -Be a man. Insult me without using an AC.

  • IF Microsoft made games for these phones, you'd simply call a 1-900 ms games. Play as you pay. Just hope that your phone doesn't crash while playing, keeping the call alive and running while the CPU reboots.
  • And in the case of the iDen phones, MASS. These suckers are heavy, and their battery life is very short, compared to their lighter, smaller PCS brethren.
  • the motorola i3000 codename "condor" will feature java and the sega games. Good luck trying to get a date out of nextel for when they'll have it.
  • Just like putting games on a business computer is illogical.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • The SDK has been available for quite a while. You have to complete a free registration to download it. http://www.idendev.com
  • Just one more reason for my wife to say that I don't "need" a cell-phone
  • Here's my next phone [tu-ka-kansai.co.jp] complete with Konami's Golf, and my ex-boss has joined Digital Bridges [digitalbridges.com] to design the games for these (and other) phones.
  • So I'm browsing your site and read:

    "We are developing a Developer's Kit CD-ROM ... This CD will be distributed free of charge to developers registered with iDEN's® Developer Support Program."

    So once I'm registered I can just sit back and await its arrival?
  • Java is not a replacement for C or ASM, but imho it has a brilliant future in server-side programming and specially in small devices like this "telephone". For the gaming on phones topic, there are some companies that have been working on that for a while, check www.picofun.com [picofun.com].
  • 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. :)


    ---
  • I don't want Java in my cell phone. I don't want games. I don't want ads. I don't want to have to download software into the thing. I just want the thing to work reliably.

    Playing games on a 1" screen is pathetic.

    Smarter voice-driven features would be much more useful.

  • Well today I played Reversi (not really an A.I. but still cool) on some guy's Siemens GSM ... don't remember the model but it also had chess and a whole array of other games.

    I just wonder why they don't run multiplayer competitions or something ... like GamesDomain Castle [gamesdomain.co.uk]. C'mon marketing, there's a lot of money in entertainment!

  • This section MIDP-Man [javaonthebrain.com] of the site Java On The Brain [javaonthebrain.com] contains a PacMan example with source and a description on why the MIDP + CLDC "stinks as a game platform". The biggest reason, no image transparency.
  • I wouldn't agree that American children "haven't been" as receptive to electronic fads. Think Gameboy. Who's to say what the future will bring? Like I said, it's all in the marketing. How many kids have or had pagers in your neighborhood? ( I suspect a larger number.. ) What if cell phone pricing becomes more competitive with pagers? Or what if those games make it to the pager? A whole bunch of people carry pagers everyplace they go now..

    I would never suggest that video games played on cell phone would replace a home console. I will suggest that some kids might want both. Particularly if Mattel, and the Power Rangers tell them how cool they will be if they have this new pager or cell phone that can do something different..

    Dreamcast VMU's are a different story.. You need to have a Dreamcast before you can do much with a VMU. Think Gameboy.

    It's not a one or the other situation. I never dreamed that I would find a Palmpilot usefull. I bought one just as a toy to play writing software for it. I use it every day.

  • I now have another way to kill my phone batteries!

    "Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
  • KVM (K Virtual Machine) which will work with only a small footprint allowing it to work on 128k of memory.

    Quick, before the trademark gets diluted, somebody from KDE (K desktop environment) needs to sue!

  • On the road (Score:3)

    by OO7david ( 159677 ) on Sunday January 21, 2001 @12:26PM (#492166) Homepage Journal
    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?
  • > ... to kill my phone batteries....

    actually, if iden is like the docomo japanese
    phones, it's really low power with many local
    relays. the battery lasts for days if not weeks
    because the radio transmitter in the phone is
    much much smaller.

    very cool - this is sort of a gameboy cellphone
  • I mean, seriously:
    • Memory
    • Snake
    • Logic
    • Dice
    • Rotation
    What other games do you need?!

    .. oh, wait, I get it now. =)

    ------------
    CitizenC
  • Seriously. I can play memory on level 5 for hours. :)

    Solitaire would be nice, tho...

    -Chris
    ...More Powerful than Otto Preminger...
  • I can see it now, in just a few short years we'll be playing Quake on our cell phones. Our clans will be noticed by the symbol on our cars. Nokia will become the #1 clan, followed by Motorolla. Our cell's internal memory will keep our frag count! Yeah!

  • Nintendo Gameboy (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Nintendo is really missing out by not licensing Gameboy tech to phone (and other handheld device) makers. Yes, they are currently on top in the handheld game market. But how long will that last. I see another NES-like eulogy in the future, if they refuse to let others share their tech.
  • Yeah. That's Daily Radar. They're EVIL.

  • They're already doing this Korea (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    here [phonegame.net]

    We're so behind in the west.
  • I can see justification for putting web capabilities into phones... or at least, Internet connectivity. After all, Internet phone technology is a reality these days, so transition devices are natural. But games? The logic is lost on me with that one...
  • While it may be useless to you, games on phones are tremendously popular in countries like Finland and Japan. I don't see any reason to doubt that it will eventually happen in North America.

  • Nah (Score:1)

    by Zico ( 14255 )

    It just depends how limited the games are vs. the annoyance of having to carry around an extra device. For example, on my Cassiopiea I've got a Color GameBoy emulator and Windows Media Player. There's some slowdown on the GB emulator on the most complex games, but it's not worth it to me to have to carry around yet another device plus cartridges. I might not get perfect playback from WMP when I'm playing my PDA at chess on the highest level (actually, I don't know whether or not this is true, I haven't tried it yet), but it's something I can live with so that I don't have to carry around an extra MP3 player.

    A well designed game doesn't have to have all the bells and whistles available to a GameBoy or PocketPC, either. A decent version of Tetris would be more than enough to keep a lot of people entertained on their cell phones on those long flights.

    Hell, I'm down to travelling with just my cell phone and PocketPC (and sometimes the laptop, if it's a longer trip), and I still feel like I'm burdened with too many items. If someone would combine high-speed wireless with the Cassiopeia, I'd shell out some serious dough for that.

    (There's also another advantage that the GameBoy emulator has that would probably resonate with folks around here but which I'll not comment on. :) You can just download the ROMs to your PocketPC instead of paying for and carrying around all those cartridges.)


    Cheers,

  • I think you've watched 'Hackers' one too many times...

    --
  • You are so clueless! How can you asume that a person uses drugs just because he finds mandatory drug testing invasive and offensive. I don't use drugs (unless you count beer), but I would never work for a company that treated their empolyees that badly. It's about a persons rights, not drugs. By your way of thinking, the police should be able to search your home without a warrant just in case you are doing something illegal. What? No? What are you hiding you criminal?!!?
  • It's real and it's almost here, and they aren't talking about the former iDEN phones, but the new "Condor" phone that is planned for release sometime in the near future. See idendev.com [idendev.com]
  • In Japan the imode phone from NTT DoCoMo is hugely popular with teen girls. They had a service that 1 million customers ( as of last Feb ) paid $1 per month to get. The product was a single screen ASCII character cartoon sent daily.

    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.

  • Full details on iDEN phones and J2ME. (Score:3)

    by Jose.LacalMOT ( 307751 ) on Sunday January 21, 2001 @04:54PM (#492181)

    [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 [motorola.com].

    So what is so exciting about running J2ME apps on the iDEN phones? Let's see:

    • You get a full-blown cell phone, with pager, WAP, and 02-way radio capabilities
    • Plus the equivalent power to a 386 PC in terms of MIPS and RAM
    • Able to run J2ME apps. J2ME is a subset of Java, with 02 million plus developers out there
    • Al this power in the palm of your hand, with wireless data capabilities (19.4 kbps) at 1/100th the weight of a 386 PC and 1/10th the cost

    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 [motorola.com] for regular updates

    What kind of wireless mobile IT solutions can you build with the iDEN J2ME-powered phones? For example:

    • Server-based solutions where you can replicate a portion of the corporate database in your iDEN phone for off-line access.
    • Stand-alone applications where all the business and presentation logic reside on the local app. Once the app completes the data processing, it can quickly send / receive updates via the wire
    • Highly-interactive games that can stay in touch with your game server, allowing you to stay up to date on the "state" of your game.

    So, why should developers partner with iDEN to create such wireless solutions? iDEN offers its registered developers:

    • A free CD-ROM loaded with 03 Java IDEs, Apache, Enhydra, Sun's J2ME documentation, an Open Source RDBMS, plus debuggers and emulators. For both Win32 and GNU/Linux.
    • Access to a multimedia J2ME training and certification program
    • Access to e-mail, web, and telephone technical suport
    • Once the developer creates an application, iDEN can distribute the app worldwide through its carriers (Nextel in the US, Clearnet in Canada, plus operators in Latin America, Middle East and Far East).

    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.

  • It's all in the niche. Just because *YOU* can't see it or won't use it, doesn't mean a good business opportunity isn't there.

    I wrote this above:

    In Japan the imode phone from NTT DoCoMo is hugely popular with teen girls. They had a service that 1 million customers ( as of last Feb ) paid $1 per month to get. The product was a single screen ASCII character cartoon sent daily.

    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.

  • ..that means all phones will turn into PDA's.
    people won't just be happy with games.
    TV & movies come next!
  • Actually, I've never seen it.
  • This has *nothing* to do with Gameboy. You don't go out with your mom or dad ( if you're underaged ) to sign a one-year contract for a Gameboy, along with a $35/month usage fee. Kids don't buy cellphones. Kids CAN NOT buy cellphones without their parents consent, with the *possible* execption of pickup-an-go prepaid cellular. Even when I turned eighteen, I failed the credit check, since I had a non-existant credit rating. I for one, can not see children buying cellphones in the near future. The only way this concept would fly, is the removal of the age restriction, which is currently eighteen years of age, plus credit checks. Furthermore, you have to be eighteen to sign any contract in the first place. Kids typically don't buy Handsprings to play videogames when their GameBoy has an actual control set, is $80 less... yadda yadda yadda...

    I'm thinking GameBoy, and your analogy doesn't make sense whatsoever.

  • What I'm really looking forward to is the day where my palmtop can download banner ads.
  • You're not buying the phone solely for the gaming capabilities. These games are supposed to be time-wasters when you're standing in line at the bank. You're already carrying a phone, and those marketing droids know that adding this ability would make a particular model a lot more attractive. If Nokia can sell a weak phone just because you can change the faceplate color, imagine what games will do for it.

    As for WAP, I think its biggest problem is that is was hyped so much before anything got implemented. WAP is most definitely going to take off, in one form or another... the only problems is with i-mode/cHTML and if WAP 2.0 can catch up (I think it can). WAP is not the primary reason for getting a wireless phone; it is a bonus. You don't want to carry an extra device.

    It's somewhat amusing to hear all the hype, then the backlash, against WAP. It's very similar to what happened to the Web and HTML in 1994-5. If you missed the first chance, this is possibly another.

  • 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.

    Do you have any idea [berkeley.edu] how much I'd love that?

    So I'm lazy, but printing those things out just annoys me...
    --
  • 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...

  • With games supported like this featured one [sun.com], I am positive that these phones will turn out to be the ultimate in portable gaming!

    -gerbik
  • 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!)

  • Seems pretty limited (Score:3)

    by Zico ( 14255 ) on Sunday January 21, 2001 @12:47PM (#492193)
    If you're really wanting to do gaming on your phone, you might want to check out Mitsubishi's Mondo Trium (info here [trium.net], picture here [zdnet.com]). It's a phone + PocketPC, so along with the other cool non-gaming stuff that comes with it (Internet Explorer, Outlook, Word, Excel, Windows Media Player, MS Reader, etc.), you can just fire up MAME for CE or a CE-based NES emulator and blast away.

    Cheers,

  • For those of you who haven't heard of iDEN phones, iDEN is a variation of the TDMA (Time Domain Multiple Access) digital cellular protocal which allows for additional features - primarily the 2 Way Radio (Direct Connect) feature. In Canada the iDEN carrier is Clearnet [clearnet.com] (they call the service "Mike"). In the US it's Nextel [nextel.com].

    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...

  • If I want to play games/surf the web, that's what a PC is for.

    Well sure, a PC is nice at home to fire up a little Grim Fandango or Need For Speed V, but it's a little burdensome to lug your PC around with you in a plane or limo. I don't think these guys are trying to make your home computers obsolete. Those folks would be in Sony's PlayStation division. :)


    Cheers,

  • Havent you heard of convergance?

  • The little computer (Score:3)

    by perdida ( 251676 ) <thethreatproject.yahoo@com> on Sunday January 21, 2001 @12:48PM (#492197) Homepage Journal
    I am not a huge gamer- I get very involved in certain >role playing games [squaresoft.com] 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.

  • This is apparently vaporware, becuase I have no clue what they're talking about. I'm currently signed up with the nextel (unlimited! YAY) service in CA, and I recently got the nextelized i1000plus. The only games that I've been able to find on the fsking thing are those at go2(somthing or other).... This is definatly vaporware. (at least for me). I'm also not sure what they're talking about when they say "high resolution." Thats completely contrary to what I get (whereas it seems my old nokia 6160 had a better res), I get all of 6 lines with 16 characters on them for viewing. All in all, the concept seems pretty neat, but its not there yet. Don't buy an IDEN phone becasue of this press release. (Whomever developed the UI must have been drunk, mutter mutter mutter..... )
  • And don't forget Tic Tac Toe: Game of the Year Edition, in glorious 3D and with an AI to put Chessmaster 2000 to shame!

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