Should Nintendo Enter the Phone Market?

The iPhone has its quirks, but it certainly has made an impact on the mobile phone market by expanding people’s expectations as to what a a cell phone can do. Several years ago Nokia first tried its hand at making a cell phone game device, but a terrible initial design killed all hopes that the N-Gage could succeed, and only scant few titles were released for it. The N-Gage is still around, but it has, for the most part, failed as a standalone device.

But mobile gaming is certainly not a passing fad, as the Nintendo Gameboy and the DS has proven. And cell phone games up until now simply haven’t been able up to the level of Nintendo’s dedicated systems. CNET Crave thinks Nintendo is going to have to enter the mobile phone market at some point, and will be successful whenever they do.

There are some big questions that must be raised, however, namely, what kind of device do you expect people to carry around? A DS would not make a good phone, as the size is just too large to have it in your pocket all the time. But trim that down to a portable mobile-phone size and you start losing what makes the DS so good. Without a large screen and a comfortable form factor, a device would simply not be well-suited to gaming.

If someone can combine playability, portability, low-cost and a good game library all into a single device, it certainly could be successful. It’s only a matter of time until somebody tries again.