Image: The Register

Sony Upgrades PSP Firmware

In addition to launching a new service called "Portable TV" which will provide Japanese consumers with downloadable video content for the PlayStation Portable, Sony has also added the ATRAC3plus music format to the PSP in today's 2.00 firmware upgrade - which will enable users to purchase music from Sony's Connect Music Store for playback on the PSP.

[...] However, users can't browse the music store on their consoles yet, but that functionality could be added in the near future. The convergence of gaming and free/paid multimedia content on the same portable device is here folks...Depending on consumer uptake, Sony could be positioning itself to hit big initially in the Far East.

I just finished downloading the korean mobile game Skipping Stone from I-play apparently one of the most critically acclaimed mobile title to launch this year. We'll see...

What you get, effectively, is a game that combines the powerbar timing skills of, say, a golf game or Hyper Sports-style sports sim, with the timing requirements of a rhythm action romp. It's a strangely compelling and utterly immediate concept. And like those instant-gratification minigames that make up the genius of Wario Ware Inc., anyone can grab the concept and run with it. This is inclusive gaming par excellence.

[...] You might, for example, encounter a whale, which blasts you upward on a water spurt from its blowhole. There's also an octopus and a strange superdeformed man in what appears to be a chicken outfit (later he turns up again as a reindeer).

From Gamespot Review

Seamful Game is a GPS and WiFi based game exploring the concept of seamfulness, in which we harness negative aspects of infrastructure technologies, which are normally concealed and unexplained, and present them as game features allowing users to explore and understand them.

Via Martin

From Martin's post:

Seamfulness creates consciousness: Hackers, advanced users are always actively looking for the "seams", and trying to make use out of it.

The Media Narcissus doesn't do that: He is numb, because he experiences the media environment as a seamless system.
As an extension of himself.

He ignores the boundaries and tensions that only create meaning.

Casual Gaming

Casual games are a much better match with mobile phones: typefied by long but shallow learning curves ("a minute to learn, a lifetime to master"), they use easily understood or familiar concepts, and can fit around the lives of their players rather than imposing on them. They're popular precisely because they're the opposite of "immersive" -- their familiarity and non-threatening nature provides an opportunity for games companies to extend their audience out beyond the traditional gamer demographic, and encourage those furthest from the profile of "early adopter" to do more with their mobile.

You'll already be familiar with some forms of casual games: crosswords and puzzles. These are of educational value (for instance, crosswords build on universal language skills, developing vocabulary and spelling), generate revenues through repeated play and appeal to a broad cross-section of society.

Via Mobilegirl

See also:
Soracity
Customize your character and build a community! In SORA you can meet new friends, invite them to virtual group activities, post blogs, message each other, keep up with what your Soran's been doing... and more!

Human Pacman

Permeation of technology into everyday life is made easier when the human experience it creates is made associable with day-to-day encounters. Human Pacman, based on the popular arcade Pacman from the 1980s, is a novel and entertaining game which seeks to bring about such association through stimulating multiple human senses and perception.It is a real-world-physical, social, and wide area mobile entertainment system that is built upon the concepts of ubiquitous computing, tangible human-computer interaction, and wide-area entertainment networks. Human Pacman is pioneering a new form of gaming that anchors on physicality, mobility, social interaction, and ubiquitous computing.

According to today's NZZ am Sonntag*, the game should also be available in about two years on GPS enabled mobile phones.

* «Pacman im Freien», Andreas Grote, NZZ am Sonntag, December 5, 2004, p. 79

Justin Hall reports back from Tokyo Game Show 2004:

Flat-rate services have arrived just in time; last year game developers at the Tokyo Game Show were complaining that high packet fees were stalling innovation. Now with the chance to take photos inside games and mail them around without running up big bills, future games might begin to incorporate mobile multimedia.

See also: mo:Blog - Mobile Blogging for Palm.

This is an interesting read: Doing Business With the Telecom Industry.

Dan Scherlis on Telco vs. Games Cultures
presented originally at GDC 2003

Dan has thought about, written about and lived these issues for the last three years. In this presentation, he summarizes the issues that both sides face in dealing with each other. A fantastic presentation.