Microsoft, it seems, has also grasped the power of the casual game(er). In an interview with Chris Early, studio manager for the Microsoft Casual Games Group, Businessweek sumrises that "Redmond's next target is games for mobile phones, with plans to overhaul the business as we know it."
There are some interesting ideas in that interview: "What we’re looking to do from a casual-games standpoint is let people have one game experience across any device where Microsoft software works, be it the Xbox, their PC, or their cell phone. They will have one gaming identity on all those devices. They’ll be able to play across all those devices.
You can imagine playing chess on your mobile phone — it has a certain look to it — but your opponent is actually on the Xbox and is seeing much more advanced, three-dimensional graphics and sounds."
The question is - how are they going to do this? Java mobile games in general have been quite pathetic - not because of any failure or weakness of Java as a language, but because of the need to cater to the lowest common denominator. That is not about to change anytime soon, though there are initiatives in place to alleviate the situation.
A possibility is to use Windows Mobile 5.0 - which is likely to be an acceptable platform for gaming, but has a rather low market penetration comparatively.. And of course, Nokia could be considered the leading incumbent, and they are not likely to roll over and play dead...
Interesting times - can't wait for version 3.0 of the microsoft effort! (There is no real reason for the Xbox 360 photo up there. Well. Except that it's prettier than the previous iteration, and better engineered.)
[via Russell Beattie]
