The Analysts Agree About Gaming Potential

[Brad Adrian]

<a href="http://www.wirelessnewsfactor.com/perl/story/17984.html">http://www.wirelessnewsfactor.com/perl/story/17984.html</a><br /><br />Here's just a little article from WirelessNewsFactor that includes comments from several market analysts about the use of Pocket PCs for playing games.<br /><br />"Game developers are taking advantage of the processing power of Pocket PC handhelds with games and entertainment that range from arcade favorites to increasingly complex multimedia applications...Analysts agree that Microsoft's Pocket PC platform allows for a more immersive and advanced gaming experience on handhelds because it has more processing power and memory...while Palm has a much better relationship with the game developer community -- which 'loves to hate Microsoft' -- Pocket PC will benefit from larger players, such as Electronic Arts and Sony, entering the market with new games."<br /><br />I know that WE all get how great these devices are for playing games, but it's just nice to see that THEY are finally getting it, too.

[Pony99CA]

"...Pocket PC will benefit from larger players, such as Electronic Arts and Sony, entering the market with new games."

I know that WE all get how great these devices are for playing games, but it's just nice to see that THEY are finally getting it, too.
Do they really get it? I'm not sure that Sony will enter the Pocket PC gaming market considering that Sony makes Palm-based PDAs. If "Software Matters", will Sony produce software for a competitor? It's not impossible, of course, but it is food for thought.

With Palm OS 5 around the corner and ARM Palm PDAs coming, the processing advantage of the Pocket PC should disappear (I assume Palm's with XScale or similar speeds will come out eventually). So if a company only has resources to target one platform, it becomes more a matter of which platform makes it easier for devleopers and which has the biggest market for sales.

Steve

[Paragon]

Here is my favorite quote from the artical

"Among the best offerings available for Pocket PC devices, according to Jupiter Media Metrix (Nasdaq: JMXI) research director Michael Gartenberg, are Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) arcade game emulators, which include such classics as PacMan and DigDug."


Oh Ya.... don't you just love the way PacMan shows of the qualities of the Pocket PC. All those 3D graghics, and those high quality sounds :D

Imagine if this guy saw something like Chopper Alley on a PPC, I think he would pee his pants :)

Looks as though PPCs are only going to get better in this area as Xscale devices begin to surface. Hopefully someone will use the API chip that HP was going to use in the 570. I would assume that would make a very large difference in the quality of gaming on PPCs

Dave

[mike6024]

I just wish there was still a PPC with the nintendo gamepad style buttons like my old Cassiopeia E-125. I really liked that design and just *can't* play Turjah or any fast paced games like that anymore.

[Inaki C]

Electronic Arts is already selling games for Pocket PC. One of them is Simcity 2000 which was source code licensed to ZioSoft (yes, SC2000 is not owned anymore by Maxis).

Mike, Casio E10x were the best machines to date for developing games, because they are the only Windows CE PDAs with several video pages (12 pages to be precise!).
To my knowledge JS was the only one to take benefit of it. Sadly this feature is missing in all current machines.(Despite the fact that it is possible to use multiple video pages on ARM machines too, with some problems)

Having into account that big game developers/distributors sell titles only if they estimate to sell more than 150 thousand units, I think they will not
enter this market in short term.

I would like to comment that BIG game developers do not have signs to 'hate' Microsoft. This 'feature' is most typical of little , independent, single individual developers. Microsoft domain is very profitable to ignore it.

[Will T Smith]

Until 3d/2d graphics are accelerated in hardware, the market for games will be stagnate. Without 3d acceleration, coplex graphics and multimedia simply are NOT possible.