Is online gaming a good fit for handhelds?

[Fraser]

Sure some online aspects of handheld games are great, content sharing, DLC etc. But can handheld gaming ever really nail the 'jump in, jump out' quick-fire experiences the way games like Halo or Burnout have in the home console space?

Are pocket games better suited to single player gaming, where the experience doesn't have to be tethered to a WiFi access point?

Is a better online multiplayer infrastructure something that platforms like the new N-Gage should be shooting for, or is that missing the point of portable gaming?

As always, over to you...

[TazUK]

The game would need to be a short and sweet experience to make it more mobile gaming friendly. a good quality fast paced action/shoot-em-up type game with multiplayer would be a must for me.

Therefore, with this in mind I think mutliplayer games on mobile can work, but only if it is easy to access sessions that are running as soon as you connect. You don't really want to be searching for games to join or hanging around for 10 minutes waiting for someone else to come along.

However, devices such as the PSP which require a WiFi access point may find it harder to get beyond the single player aspect, mainly due to lack of network access when out and about.

Because of this, I can see mobile phones possibly dominating mutliplayer gaming for the next few years or so as they are always connected to a network in some way.

Taz - UK

[danskmacabre]

I think I would want Mobiles to be more powerful before I would want to play a mmorpg on them.

Maybe with a bigger screen and a touchscreen.

Hmm, starting to sound like an ipod actually, but I wouldn't spend that sort of money for a mobile that had gaming capabilities.

I reckon in a few years I'd probably be into it, once a standard contract phone was decent enough.

[SetsFireToPoshHammer]

I think that it should be a good fit, especially for playing handheld games in the house, but the problem is that there just isn't the sort of online following for the experience to be consistent.

There are no groups of hardcore followers clinging on to servers the way the Halo 2 or Counter Strike crowd still do. Worse still, even new titles seem to be forgotten quickly, I have yet to manage an infrastructure multiplayer game of Wipeout Pulse, as the servers are almost always empty.

Perhaps it will be a slow creep with this generation and then an explosion with the next, kind of like it has been with he PS2 and the Xbox and their subsequent replacements.

[Accelorata Jengold]

As always, it is about the games. There are no worthy handheld equivalents of Halo 2 or Counter Strike because FPS games don't really work that well on the hardware.

I think a simple MMO on either the DS or the PSP or mobile could be a real winner, perhaps with some level of interoperability with their big brother home consoles. Surely an Animal Crossing MMO for DS or a very simple MMO expansion for something like Vice City Stories on the PSP would be pretty easy to craft?