Hi Everyone, Can anyone share any knowledge about game development for handhelds such as Palm and Handspring especially on the business front. I mean, what is the potential? Also, I have been searching for similar information for the Gamebody. Any input would be greatly appreciated Regards Nitish ============================ Nitish Jain CEO, Nazaragames.com E-mail: nitish@nazara.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Wireless gaming, PC / Console gaming and Internet based gaming! Let''s talk ============================

I did a little development for the Palm once back when the PalmIII was the newest model. I wrote a small game to get the hang of the platform and it was quite frankly awful (the game not the platform) but I uploaded it to palmgear.com as freeware and it had about 500 downloads within the first week. It slowed down after that (probably because it left the "New Titles" section) and I''ve stopped checking it these days but i''m pretty sure if i''d put a lot more time and effort into a game then released it as shareware it could have done okay.

There is a big market for Palm games and applications but the standard has risen considerably since I did any development for PalmOS so I doubt anything as basic as my game would do very well at all.

I know there are a lot of good shareware sites that will help with distribution and even collection shareware fees for you so getting your game noticed is probably a bit easier for Palm platforms that it is for anything else.

As far as I recall developing games for the system isn''t too much of a challenge. There is a good API and the system is quite versatile, now there is the colour version it would probably be a lot nicer to look at too. The main problem I found was the lack of any good books on the API - I got most of my information from the web.

Anyway, good luck - I hope this is helps,

-F

PDA development is getting to be a hot thing in the industry now that the PC games section is basically saturated. Read the news byte from a day or two ago on the main page for more on that. The demand? Why, kids of course. Come on, why did you really buy that PDA? Sure, you told your parents how it can do scheduling and keep notes and all that good stuff, when you''re really playing games all day in class. Admit it So there''s you market, high school and college kids looking for in-class entertainment. Go get em!

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