All it takes is one genius developer (Score 1)

It's interesting to see so many people complaining about the hardware. Are we all so spoiled by the endless polygons and physics and 5.1 DTS sound that a good old fashioned "game" is no fun anymore?

I think not.

Of course a one inch screen will never deliver a gaming experience that anyone would call "immersive", but doesn't mean that its a bad gaming platform. There is only one problem for wireless gaming :

There is no money in it!

There are some companies out there trying to make a go of it right now. Most prominently, John Romero's Monkeybone, but also Jamdat which has a small hit with it's "gladiator" game, and Ungames .

Both Jamdat and Ungames are working on a business model that revolves around licensing software to wireless carriers. They call it a "game platform", but it looks to me much more like a rather lame billing system. Then they make some games "on the side" to show how excellent their platform could be if only people would develop for it. So why are game developers trying to sell game "platforms"? Becuase there is no revenue model for wireless gaming .

No room for advertising.
No carrier willing to give away any of the fee for data minutes.
No consumers willing to pay subscription fees

So there you are...

There is a chance (a very small one, I think) that one of these companies will come up with a hit that is so successful that the carriers fall over each other trying to offer it on their system. Then maybe they'll give away some of the money they make on the minutes (like AOL did in the very beginning).

More likely, it will be some lone engineer who reads /. working away on the weekend on a cool idea.

It only takes one before everyone "gets" the potential. After that, things have a way of working themselves out.

-rg