Crave Talk: Nintendo must make a mobile phone

From Crave -



In a recent post, Crave's Andrew Lim discussed the merits of Nintendo making a mobile phone, even supply a photoshopped pic seen above.

As he pointed out, most mobile phone manufacturers -- in particular Nokia -- are taking gaming very seriously. This could dramatically affect the market, in the same way that the massive proliferation of music phones persuaded Apple to make the iPhone.

There are also Sony PSP phone rumors, which if true, could prove a genuine challenge to Nintendo's future portable consoles. So it is only natural for Nintendo to make a mobile phone, or perhaps partner up with a mobile manufacturer.

Nintendo has already demonstrated with the DS and Wii that it understands usability and aesthetics to such an extent that any phone it would produce would not only look beautiful, but would also be extremely usable in terms of hardware and software. The Nintendo DS already has the potential to be a PDA. At the moment you can use your DS (via an extra cartridge) to listen to music and browse the Internet over Wi-Fi using an Opera-based browser. It wouldn't take much to extend its functions.

Nintendo also understands casual, time-limited gaming better than any other company. If it could continue the quality of games it has produced for the DS on to a mobile, it would easily be the best phone gaming experience ever created. And that's the point: Nintendo makes consoles and is extremely good at it, so who would you rather have making your gaming phone?