What The Nexus One Means For Android Gaming


Fast: The Nexus One sports a 1GHz Snapdragon processor from Qualcomm, and has on-chip graphical capabilities.  This device is capable of some promising 3D potential.  Future Android phones are likely to match or upgrade the speed to compete with HTC's newest phone.
Pretty: OLED screens are quite pretty, and have incredible contrast ratios.  The Nexus One is equipped with such a screen, running at a 480x800 resolution and 3.7 inches.  That's about 25% greater pixel density than Sony's beautiful 11-inch 1080p OLED screen.
Fractured: The big problem facing Android is consistency.  The Nexus One doesn't have a keyboard.  The Droid does.  Upcoming Android phones will have keypads.  Screen sizes vary.  Internal speeds vary.  This is a developer's nightmare, and is particularly painful for game development.
Third partied: On the other hand, one of Android's advantages, namely backgrounding apps, could come to the rescue.  We're starting to see hardware accessories for the iPhone go hand-in-hand with a software package on the device, but this only works when that app is open.  On Android, we might see third-party accessories that hook into games via a backgrounding "connector" app.  If a company like MadCatz made a slick controller that went along with an API to control games, and that became an industry standard, it could give Android gaming a major edge.
Ultimately, I think the direction Android is going will attract some great games.  It's a powerful platform, and the upcoming devices are, as Google coined, "superphones."  There's a problem with the fractured versions of hardware and Android revisions, but if the market is fertile enough, developers will bite the bullet.

Posted by Coolbreeze on Friday, January 08, 2010

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Nexus One Accessories

Twitter