March 20, 2001. Copyright 2001. Graphic News. All rights reserved.

Nintendo ignites biggest battle yet in the video game market

LONDON, March 20, Graphic News: The cell-phone is rapidly becoming the new battleground in JapanÕs gaming industry, but companies and analysts are still unsure how best to harness the nationÕs undoubted love affair with mobile communications.

The launch of Nintendo Co. LtdÕs new Game Boy Advance handheld console -- the long-awaited successor to the worldÕs top-selling Game Boy handheld machine -- promises to begin a new era in online gaming by allowing users to download games and characters from their Internet-capable handsets.

On the surface, the US$99.95 Game Boy Advance is a small and simple portable game machine just like its predecessor, Game Boy Color. But the screen is 50 percent bigger and its image processor is three-times faster, running a 16mhz, 32bit, RISC-chip, giving 32,000 colours -- enabling previously impossible scaling, rotating and transparency effects.

Nintendo, whose cumulative sales of the 11-year old Game Boy topped 100 million last year, plans to ship 1.1 million units of the new version in March with a target of 24 million by March 31, 2002.

But while Nintendo sees the cell-phone more as a medium for downloading games, a growing number of industry players are banking on it becoming a platform on which to play them.

This vision was behind the launch in January by JapanÕs leading mobile phone operator, NTT DoCoMo Inc., of handsets equipped with Java computer language, which enables mobile users to play games with relatively fast graphics.

The new handsets come as part of DoCoMoÕs efforts to extend its global reach in the face of increasing competition.

While big money is still to be made in the home console market for now, analysts say these companies are probably smart to claim an early foothold in what could turn into a massive market.

ÒItÕs probably best that the companies do get involved to some extent in network-based games at this point just to get themselves familiarised with the technological issues,Ó said Jay Defibaugh, an analyst at Credit Suisse First Boston.

Sony Computer Entertainment, SonyÕs game unit, recently gave a vote of confidence to mobile phones, saying it had no plans to develop a rival handheld console to the Game Boy as that would put it in direct competition with cell-phone games.

Sony plans to begin selling cables later this month to connect DoCoMoÕs Òi-modeÓ phones to its PlayStation2 game system. Users will then be able to play specially tailored PlayStation games on their handsets.

One attraction of the cell-phone games is that they are relatively simple and much cheaper to produce than those used in consoles like the PlayStation.

The development costs of a PlayStation2 game is estimated at between $1.6m-$2.4m, far above the $160,000-$500,000 for the new Game Boy.

ÒPokemon, which ran on the 8-bit machine carrying far less memory than PlayStation2, was the worldÕs top selling software last year,Ó Nintendo President Hiroshi Yamauchi said recently.

NintendoÕs 73-year-old president added: ÒSophisticated features such as beautiful pictures and heart-stopping sounds are not what gamers are really looking for. They just want to have fun.Ó
/ENDS
Sources: Reuters, Nintendo, NTT DoCoMo