Our regular readers will know that I am both interested in and disappointed with current opportunities for independent handheld games -- cf. my previous opinions on mobile phones and iPods. My interest in devices like these revolves around two factors: general mass-market use and openness of platform. Thus far, everything has problems. The GameBoy Advance and Nintendo DS invite the level of abstraction I prefer as a designer and player, but they are both closed platforms and also game specific. The iPod is tremendously widespread but equally closed. Mobile phones are open(ish) but terrible to distribute for.

In my occasional yet ongoing search for an ideal mobile indie game device, I stumbled upon the Fujifilm Finepix V10 Digital Camera, which is apparently the only digital camera to come with games you can play on its rather large LCD screen. The idea made me wonder... is there a future for casual games on digital cameras?

The Finepix is only one in the noisy digital camera marketplace, but the idea of a game playing point-and-shoot is rather compelling. Yes, I know one could argue that cameraphones already realize this possibility, but as I've argued before, porting and distribution make phone games a nightmare, and cameraphones are still struggling to pass for cameras anyway -- certainly the suburban set doesn't consider them a replacement for snapshooters. The Finepix is rather uniquely positioned for games among point-and-shoots -- it has an enormous 3" LCD display that takes up the entire back of the device. This is probably the reason Fuji thought to bundle games with the thing, as an additional way to draw marketing attention to the large screen. So, what we have here is a very portable, rather attractive, above average quality (review) portable digital camera that also plays games.

Admittedly, the games themselves aren't anything special (click the thumbnail image at right for bigger screenshots). There's a slide puzzle game, a breakout game, a Pac Man-like maze game, and a scrolling shooter. But the point is there's some potential here. Think about it:

• Market research firm NPD predicts that 30 million digital cameras were sold in 2006 in the U.S. alone. By contrast, the immensely popular Nintendo DS has sold less than 8 million units in the States since its release two years ago.
• Digital cameras, by definition, connect to a personal computer for transferring files, making downloads and installs of new games much more feasible than mobile phones or game consoles.
• Digital cameras, by definition, accept standard memory card formats like CF and SD (this Finepix uses the less standard xD, but it's still nonproprietary), making distribution of games on such cards at least theoretically possible.
• Unlike PDAs and handheld computers (which share the above two properties), everyone can see the benefit of owning a digital camera. Like the iPod, a digital camera
• Digital cameras have more reason to include greater processing power since on-camera image manipulation requires more processing than, say, streaming music off a hard disk.

That said, there are a number of downsides to this platform too. Digital cameras risk the same model-to-model differences that plague games for mobile phones. Controls are different, LCD screen sizes are different, and so forth. But digital cameras are also less fragmented a market than phones. According to the NPD report, Kodak and Canon both own just shy of 20% of the digicam market each. That makes those two manufacturers touch 1.5x the number of DS owners in the U.S. alone. And both of those manufacturers have been standardizing features across their lines, including convenient input designs like d-pads. Openness is another problem, but I find the idea of an open dev kit for Canon or Kodak much less unlikely than an open dev kit for PSP or DS. These companies are interested in selling cameras, not games. It would seem like the differentiation alone would be beneficial. Or one could set up a download store and take commissions. A third problem is adoption: people aren't going to buy a new digital camera just to play games, especially not the same lame ones they can play anywhere. But real material improvements in digicams, as well as consistently lower prices, make upgrades more common.

It's not going to happen right away, but I can imagine it happening someday. And when I think about the kind of people who tend to appreciate my games, I think they're much more likely to have a digital point-and-shoot in their purse or briefcase than a Nintendo DS.

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