Mobile God Of War
I know GDC is old news, but at moments it lives large for me again. Moments like reading about Sony's plans to take the God of War franchise onto the mobile gaming stage. Firstly, Sony has an ambitious list of games to be mobile-ized: Spider-Man 3, Spider-Man Puzzle, Jeopardy! 2007, Jump That Car, Snoop Dogg Cruisin' and, of course, God of War: Betrayal. Before I get to the Snoop joke that you know has to be coming, let me get back on track: GDC Mobile, which happened early on in the week of the conference and was relatively unattended, was in fact a great snapshot into an industry on the brink.
Mobile gaming can go two ways, ultimately - it can linger on as an atrophied, forgettable adjunct to the real game industry, beleaguered by the conflicting interests of mobile carrier policies, pricing structures, and lack of interest and quality products, or it can make a strong comeback with codified "platform"-style basic play mechanics and financial models. In other words, if mobile gaming can lock down a solid "one-hand" play style (think of a phone game you can play with one thumb, or a thumb and a finger on a side-button, that kind of simplified basic interface) and get higher billing in mobile devices' feature sets and firmware, it could be okay. With some of the mobile graphics capabilities I saw at GDC, like the nVidia GoForce 5500, the next generation of mobile devices certainly have the possibility of being, you know, playable.
That said, I'm not sure about God of War: Betrayal, which takes place between God of War and God of War II. The game supposedly boasts a framerate three times as high as "recent competitive titles," but at this point I'm less concerned with technology and more concerned with how, or even if, this next roll of mobile games can improve upon the very human issues that have kept mobile gaming from taking off.
GoD: Sony Announces Mobile God Of War [Gamasutra]
tiny dancer
Posted to Video Games on 9 May 2007
Other stuff like this: god of war: betrayal, mobile games, sony
