Games-Art Interviews PDAMill's Peter Balogh

[Pat Logsdon]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.games-art.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=8' target='_blank'>http://www.games-art.com/modules.ph...=showpage&pid=8</a><br /><br /></div>"Games-Art recently had the privilege to chat with Peter Balogh of PDAMill. For those of you living in a distant (and boring) universe, PDAMill is the maker of Snails and more recently Anthelion.<br /><br />Mr. Balogh has some interesting comments on the future of PDA gaming: "I think we'll see new devices (especially Sony's PSP) which will replicate the console gaming market. These devices will be flashy, powerful, targeted at the younger audiences and the big names from the console world will release all the brand-name games for them. Games will be distributed on memory cards or mini DVDs in retail shops. That basically means there won't be many independent developers, or small game companies; only the big ones. <br /><br />Parallel to this there'll still be a PDA market which isn't aimed at gaming, but with advanced functions and lots of CPU power and connectivity. These devices will be aimed at an older audience and will integrate the rich entertainment functions with business uses. I think this software market will be mostly online and we'll see more independent and small developers here."<br /><br />I agree with what he says about the PDA market; it seems likely that the Pocket PC platform will <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapeshifting">transmogrify</a> over time into something like the <a href="http://www.pocket-lint.co.uk/review.php?reviewId=363">Portable Media Center,</a> while games will be relegated to <a href="http://www.business2.com/b2/web/articles/print/0,17925,610581,00.html">dedicated handheld gaming devices</a>. What do you think?

[Kacey Green]

What about MS not releasing an xbox portable, and instead opted to develop a portable version of DirectX for all windows mobile devices (D3D api I belive)

[Stephen Beesley]

All I can say is hope that the PDA of the future will not be a games free zone. I use my Jornada for work related stuff about 50% of the time with the other 50% split between ebooks, games and a little bit of music. I love having games like Quake and Age of Empires in the palm of my hand so much that often I will play them on my PPC in preference to the Desktop even when I am at home.

While there is no doubt that a dedicated gaming device could do a better job - I do not want yet another device to be carrying around with me!

[pbalogh]

Even if the OS supports gaming, you need very different hardware design and have very different feature sets and prices. Likely differences:
- Screen orientation
- Buttons (number of them, arrangement)
- WiFi/BT/GPS/etc
- Touchscreen (yes, you could leave that out from a gaming machine. it's expensive, easy to break and not ideal for many genres of games. that is, if you have good buttons)

A gaming device should be very-very cheap, so the young audiences can afford them. Making a device which tries to serve both market and has all the hardware extras will cost too much to be succesful, imo.

But - as always - who knows what happens in a year or two :-)

[MichaelA]

Well, I think the Tapwave Zodiac (http://www.tapwave.com) is a great example of what future gaming PDAs will look like. I just wish there was a Pocket PC counterpart. The Gizmondo/Gametrac looks like a cheap toy and I wouldn't want to be seen with one of those things, even if it is running Windows CE!

[mechtronica]

look like cheap toys?! Which Cheap toy would you be referring to?

http://mechtronica.com/pixs/album03/gametracproto1.thumb.jpg http://mechtronica.com/pixs/album03/gametracproto2.thumb.jpg

http://mechtronica.com/pixs/album03/gametracproto3.thumb.jpghttp://mechtronica.com/pixs/album03/gametracproto4.thumb.jpg

http://mechtronica.com/pixs/teaser_skins/gizmondo_skin_teaser_00index.sized.jpg