Good Looking Games Go Mobile

"A British company is looking to woo mobile phone makers with technology it says can turn handsets into portable games consoles.

Cambridge-based TTPCom has developed software that significantly improves the graphic handling ability of a handset and makes it easy to translate games into a phone-friendly format.

The company said any handset maker or mobile operator adopting its software could attract new customers and generate more money from existing users who started playing and downloading games....

Danielle Jones, director of business development at TTPCom, said its engineers were prompted to develop the graphics software when they realised that the core of the chip powering Nintendo's Gameboy Advance was the same as found in 80% of the world's phones....

By the end of 2003 Dr Cronk predicted that people will see "incredible stuff" on the most expensive phones.

He said Arm has got Playstation 1 games such as Tomb Raider running on handset chips in its laboratory." [BBC News: Sci/Tech, via Lockergnome Bytes]

While it's true that you can already play somewhat decent games on some cell phones (in Europe and Asia, NOT in the U.S.), whichever company comes out with a Gameboy-quality smartphone will easily become a flagship product for Gen Xers (like me) and Net Gens (like my kids). This is going to be a huge market in the future.