Cellular Gaming Phones

Thursday, June 15, 2006

Will Cell phones and Handheld Gaming Consoles combine?

Cell phones have become increasingly advanced over the past few years and due to these technological improvements they have seen a growth of cellular games. Although a lot of the games resemble games with inferior graphics similar to that of the original Nintendo Gameboy that does not make them unpopular.

Comparing cellular games to those that you may see on the PSP there is a huge difference in quality and cell phone games have a long way to go. Cell manufacturers currently lack the technology to create such sophisticated games that can match current handheld gaming consoles.

Despite the overwhelming quality of handheld gaming consoles compared to cellular games there is still a large cell phone gaming market. The survey found the percentage who play games on cell phones worldwide include South Korea, 33%; Japan, 16%; Germany, 10%; U.K., 13%; Canada, 8%; and U.S., 9%. The mobile gaming market in general has surpassed $1 billion with retail sales in the US reaching $1.4 billion last year.

The problem with cellular gaming is often the lack of decent controls with the cell phone screen being very small and controls fiddly. This could see the introduction of specific cellular gaming phones with larger handsets including bigger buttons and a larger screen to cater for the cellular gaming market.

On the other hand with cellular manufacturers being so far behind current gaming technology we could see the handheld gaming manufacturers such as Sony and Nintendo integrating cellular capabilities into their handheld gaming devices which would see cell phones and hand held gaming consoles combine. Sony have already announced VOIP functionality in the Sony PSP and Nintendo are also using VOIP in the new Wii console.

There is also a possible alternative that handheld cell phone companies may team up with gaming console manufactures to produce a cellular gaming console that combines the best of both technologies. Currently however we shall expect the two devices to remain quite distinct with gaming console remaining dominant in the mobile gaming market.