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Is there a future for casual games on digital cameras? December 30, 2006 - by Ian Bogost
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. 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:
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. POST A COMMENT
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