Mobile Device convergence - is gaming on phone devices a step to far?

I am being terribly lazy and rather than write an article about Nokia, Apple and Sony's push for a mobile device that can effectively be used for communication and gaming, I have simply copied pasted the conversation that inspired it here: ========== Karen Friar: hey--meant to ask you...what do you make of the rumours of a PlayStation Phone? Dave: PlayStation phone - I imagine it will be similar to the PSP or simply an ad-on for the PSP Karen Friar: I wonder if it's worth them doing it Dave: the PSP already has viop features Dave: so it's not such a big leap Dave: With Nokia and Apple really pushing the level/quality of games on their mobile phones their clearly is a market for convergence of mobile gaming and mobile communication devices

Karen Friar: hmmm interesting Dave: Nokia are spending a fortune on promoting their new N-Gage platform and compatible handsets Dave: and Apple showed as many Games in their App store demos as they did other apps Karen Friar: hmm Karen Friar: good to know Dave: I think they view it as the next "music convergance". Karen Friar: thanks--that's an interesting point Karen Friar: one box to do it all--in your hand Dave: Apple got so worried about the iPod monoply when sony ericsoon and the like started adding music capabilities to their phones that they created the iPhone Karen Friar: I didn't realise that was the case Dave: imagine if your phone had all the iPod capabilities - who is going to spend an extra £100-200 for an iPod. Dave: so now they see handhelds like the PSP adding VoIP and the Nintendo DS outselling iPod, iPhone combined (which according to Andrew Lim could become a mobile phone device too) Dave: Nokia tried with the N-Gage about 5 years ago and it was a flop - the device was too big for a phone and the games were of too poor quality to be considered as good as the gameboy Karen Friar: it all depends on the chip as much as anything Dave: Now games like Spore are coming to Mobile handsets we can take it more seriously Dave: well Apples iPhone 1 only has a 412mhz processor and 112mb or Ram and no 3D chip and yet it showed it could run a fairly decent game on it Dave: Google Andriod will support 3D hardware acceleration so we should see some serious gaming potential on their platform Karen Friar: depends whether they want to go for business or gaming markets... Dave: but it all depends on whether the manufactures build the hardware to support it - the prototype Android devices have been very poor so far Dave: Well Apple were hurt the first time round by their lack of business app support. this time round they've addressed a lot of those issues Dave: They haven't really done anything for gaming like adding 3D acceleration but they have a solid SDK which will make producing game content for developers much easier Karen Friar: yeah--the demo looked good Dave: I think convergence is good and I love to be able to multiple things on a single device - but I think Gaming has such different requirements to a Mobile communication device that you are likely to end with something that does one thing well and the other poorly or some hybrid that does both things shoddily

========== Thanks to Community manager Karen for letting me post this.

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