Nick Jones

Several news reports claim that Sony is considering developing some form of hybrid device that will combine gaming and cellular capabilities. If this is Sony’s best idea of how to restore their waning fortunes in the mobile space then they are, IMHO, misguided.

Firstly there is almost no technical hardware difference between high end mobile phones and mobile games machines any more. It used to be that gaming APIs, graphics acceleration and warp speed processing were the hallmark of games gadgets, but that’s just the baseline expectation for a decent smartphone these days. One of the few things that games machines benefit from, and many phones don’t have, is analogue controls, but touch screens can take on that role too. I’ve seen reports that game developers believe the iPhone 3G S already exceeds the capability of the PSP. And looking at the roadmap from the chip manufacturers such as Qualcomm and Intel it’s clear the next generation of mobile devices will be even better. Wake up Sony, the iPhone, the N73 and the G1 already are games machines, it’s a bit late to be starting a project to develop a new one. 

Secondly the portable game business model has changed. Mobile app stores are already stuffed with games, the Apple store has hundreds, possibly thousands, many priced as low as 99c. Independent stores like Handango already stock thousands of games for popular platforms like Symbian. Nokia has a gaming sub-brand in nGage and the new Ovi store is starting to accumulate games.

So if these rumours are true it’s hard to see how Sony could make much impact on the cellular / gaming device market starting from where they are now.