Nintendo links with KDDI for networked gaming
By Yoshiko Hara
EE Times
(02/02/01, 5:07 p.m. EST)
TOKYO — Japan's two biggest game vendors have picked different horses to take their games onto mobile phones. Where Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. is riding NTT Docomo's i-Mode network expansion, Nintendo Co. Ltd. introduced an adapter this past week to hook its Game Boy to the rival network of the new carrier KDDI.
The Mobile Adapter GB links Game Boy Color, a pocket-size game machine that has sold 33 million units worldwide, to portable phones for what the company is calling a new form of networked game entertainment. The adapter is billed as giving Game Boy Color both communication capability and Internet access. It will also support Game Boy Advance, due out March 21. Nintendo said it will ship 24 million units of the new game machine in its first year of availability.
Limited access
"In terms of hardware, Game Boy connected to a mobile phone by the adapter can browse around the Internet," said Satoshi Yamato, general manager of Nintendo's special-planning and development department. "But Game Boy is for kids, so the access will be limited to Nintendo-provided home pages." KDDI and Nintendo are jointly developing Mobile Adapter GB-based services, for which Nintendo is preparing a modified version of HTML, he said.
Priced at roughly $50, the adapter was introduced through about 2,800 KDDI-group mobile phone stores nationwide in Japan as well as in conventional toy shops. It has a 32-bit CPU and buffer memory to process three-layer protocol conversion: Game Boy data, Internet TCP/IP and the mobile phone protocol.
Game Boy uses a six-pin SIO connector port to hook to a proprietary printer or to another Game Boy for two-person play. The speed is 256 kbits/second, though counterpart mobile phones operate at just 9.6 to 32 kbits/s, depending on the service.
The connection from the adapter first goes to a server in KDDI's Dion dial-up service network. Nintendo has released variations of the adapter to enable its use with all types of cell phones, including NTT's. On the service end, it links only to KDDI's Personal Handy Phone Service (PHS) at present.
KDDI was formed last October by the merger of three companies: KDD, the largest international carrier in Japan; DDI, a new domestic carrier; and IDO, a new mobile carrier. The name "KDDI Corp.," in fact, won't become the company's official moniker until April.
The merged company is the second-largest carrier in Japan. Its cdmaOne and Personal Digital Cellular format cellular services have more than 1.4 million subscribers and its PHS roughly 3.3 million. IDO and DDI, before the merger, started a Wireless Application Protocol-based service in April 1999, competing with NTT Docomo's i-Mode. "Game Boy is the precondition of this service," said Yamato. He maintained that the KDDI service delivered better game-playing performance than i-Mode.
Meanwhile, Docomo and Sony Computer Entertainment say they will expand services that combine Sony's first-generation Playstation, which the company plans to make its mobile platform, with the i-Mode 9,600-bit/s packet communications and Internet service into overseas markets.
The companies have signed a memorandum of understanding with six of Docomo's partners indicating their intent to jointly develop and market i-Mode services and related applications. The idea is to download packaged Playstation game titles and Java programs to a mobile phone, enabling users to play using both the console and handset.
Docomo recently added a Java-based service in Japan called i-Appli, which allows applications to be downloaded to users' terminals. For example, a downloaded application might allow content such as moving images to be used offline, or an agent function to make gaming possible over the network.
Yamato at Nintendo, however, questioned whether Java was ready for games. "Java has made progress, but we don't think the combination of current Java on a cellular phone can provide games worth paying money for," he said.
(Thanks saz13245 on Rocket)
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