GDC 2007: Converge your mobile and DS games says Ideaworks3D
Now is the time to maximise marketing and development costs
It's not exactly the headline our bank manager's going to love, but we didn't make it up. Merging DS and mobile development is the theory of the future according to Thor Gunnarsson of Ideaworks3D.
He predicts 2007 will be the year the convergence of mobile and handheld gaming will become truly significant.
"You get to maximise your development and your marketing budgets," Gunnarsson told his GDC audience. "Publishers we're talking to say this has been a trigger point, particularly to increase the budgets for mobile games."
On main reason is the technical convergence between devices. The PSP has a 333 MHz CPU plus a graphics processor, while high-end mobile phones can boast 250 MHz CPUs and a graphics processor. Indeed Gunnarsson says he expects some phones to exceed the PSP in terms of processing ability by the end of the year.
Even low-end mobiles with 150 MHz CPUs compare well to the DS, which contains two 100 MHz ARM processors, although it does have optimised 3D capabilities that phones don't.
Mobiles are also catching up in terms of screen orientation, screen size and other features such as the availability of touchscreens. One DoCoMo phone just out in Japan has dual touchscreens, for example. And, of course, phones are always-connected devices that don't require Wi-Fi hotspots.
One challenge for developers is how to technically deal with all these different features in a logical manner. Ideasworks3D does this using its Airplay 3.0 technology. This enables gamemakers to create a single game binary that the internal cleverness of the Airplay system can then translate into different versions to make full use of the target platforms' features.
Airplay covers high-end mobile phones as well as the DS – basically any device that uses ARM chips.
Supporting the PSP is more difficult, Gunnarsson explained, because of its custom processor, so conversion isn't automatic as in the case of ARM handhelds.
Technology aside, he stressed, what will be critical in this new world is how developers shape their game designs to take advantage of the specific strengths of each device they are targeting. "If we have to hire more designers, that's a small price to pay," he said.
One thing left unsaid however was how Ideaworks3D is using these cross-platform capabilities. It's worked on mobiles games such as The Sims 2 and Need For Speed but hasn't yet released any handheld games yet. Watch this space.
