Sony Ericsson More On Top Of Gaming Than Nokia?
Sony Ericsson recently announced that they’ll be bundling the Zeemote Bluetooth remote control with the W760i in the Netherlands. The W760i will come with 2 Zeemote-compatible games preinstalled, and an additional 14 games will be made available on the Sony Ericsson mobile phone portal.
I’ve covered the Zeemote Bluetooth controller before, mainly because I’ve played with it, and it’s something that I’ve been wanting to see for a long, long time. With this announcement from Sony Ericsson, I have to wonder if Nokia has something in the works with Zeemote, and if not, why the heck not?
I realize that, despite saying earlier on that there would not be another N-Gage *device*, there have a been a few handsets, such as the N81, which offer dedicated gaming keys, and other devices such as the N95 8GB which allow you to use other buttons as gaming keys. However, with TV-Out becoming more and more prevalent, I can’t help but wonder why Nokia hasn’t announced any Bluetooth gaming controller accessories for its N-Gage gaming service.
Hence, the Zeemote. I’d *love* to see a white, orange, and blue version with N-Gage branding on it. I’d even pay up to $35 for it, as I think it would be an awesome little gadget to have with me. Even better would be if somehow, Nokia and Zeemote could get together and allow the Zeemote’s batteries to be recharged using the Nokia 2mm power plug.
What do you think? Is the Zeemote simply a gimmicky extra, or do you think it could add real value to the N-Gage gaming experience? Would you like to see it bundled with a few N-Gage devices?
Definitely a win if Nokia would bundle it with some of their phones.
Fix games so it can be played in landscape mode on N82 (available through hack) and I can use the controller and play games on it while lying my phone on the side.
(Or just connect it to my TV)
What games are sony ericson bundling that are Zeemote compatible ?
The games on tv-out look awful.
Would be nice if the phone comes with it, I would not pay extra.
For this thing to be a hit, nokia must advertise their phones as a CONSOLE (that the consumer knows they can connect their nokias to the tv and use them as a wii) and Nokia must improve 100% the TV-OUT feature, that the tv shows the game like on the phone. And the zeemote must be bundled with the phone
It is *really* called the Zeemote?!?
How sad…
@edward
I do agree that using the TV-out can make the pictures / screen shown a bit pixelated, but by changing the aspect ration it should be just find to have fullscreen on your TV showing the same as on your phone.
In addition I see the TV-out as an extra for Nokia’s multimedia computers. However I think they are starting to be outrun in the area. Mostly I’ve experienced that memory have been full, which makes me think that maybe RAM size should be increased soon.
It’d be awesome if Nokia and Sony would work together. They both run Symbian platforms. Sony’s got the edge in gaming considering Playstation. A mutual partnership could work wonders for both.
Aug 15th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
[...] this is stinking *awesome* news! Hot on the heels of Sony Ericsson’s announcement that it would be offering the Zeemote as a bundled deal with its gaming phones, Nokia follows suit [...]