Palm Pre Gaming to Bulk Up Soon

By  |  Wednesday, January 20, 2010 at 4:58 pm

During CES, I missed the news that Palm plans to release a development kit for 3D video games (as in, games from a 3D perspective, nothing stereoscopic) on its WebOS phones. At the time, Palm also announced a line-up of 3D games including the racer Asphalt 5, a hang-gliding game called Glyder 2 and The Sims 3.

Now, the folks at PreCentral have spotted Palm in the presentation line-up for March’s Game Developers Conference. “An Overview to Creating Games with Palm’s Plug-in Development Kit (PDK)” will be a technical session for game developers, teaching them how to make 3D games for WebOS.

The news fits in nicely with two other developments with Palm: Updated versions of the Pre and Pixi are coming to Verizon Wireless this month, and the WebOS software development kit is now open to the public. That means many more apps are on the way, especially if Verizon’s status as the nation’s largest wireless carrier boosts Pre and Pixi sales, luring in more developers.

Those two developments apply to more than just games, but Palm’s got the right idea by presenting at GDC. Surely, the company sees how games dominate the iPhone’s App Store, and wants gaming to play a big part in the WebOS App Catalog. Check out the landing page for Palm’s list of mobile WebOS applications: 3D games are front and center.

Obviously Palm has a long, long way to go before matching the iPhone’s library of games, so don’t expect Palm to diss Nintendo and Sony anytime soon, as Apple has. But competing with Android on the quantity and quality of games offered seems more realistic. At the very least, WebOS doesn’t suffer from a fragmented market of operating systems and phones, so it’s less likely to draw ire from game developers as Palm bulks up its library.

 
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  1. heulenwolf Says:
    January 21st, 2010 at 6:20 am

    I’m not sure what to think about this news. On the one hand, all developers like it when their platforms make their lives easier with solid dev support and fairly predictable hardware updates. The jury’s still out on whether Palm’s SDK and PDK are any good. On the other hand, developers, especially game developers, want to be where the action is. With Palm limiting its reach to CMDA networks (so far), their sales numbers just aren’t going to be as high as anything GSM-based. The addition of a Verizon version will expand its reach but I question whether that’s enough to make a developer would choose Palm over both iPhone and Android or to add Palm as a 3rd platform behind those two.

    Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see Palm get its mojo back. The Pre seems great and I may consider getting one on VZW. I also may wait a couple months and get an unlocked Nexus One or, depending on the plan prices, may do neither and stick with my phone being a phone and using my iPod Touch for fun and games.