Actually they have already forecasted 130 million netbooks in a few years. So yeah, it has a huge market potential. And if Nvidia's Ion takes off or AMD's version with DX10 support in a small netbook rolls out, make a very nice game machine for on the go all in one box, plus you can hook up a external monitor to these and a wireless keyboard, mouse and game on a TV! :)

My last post kind of got distracted from my main point which was that developing games for a netbook is not much different to developing games for a notebook, which is not much different to developing games for a desktop.

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Original post by Codeka My last post kind of got distracted from my main point which was that developing games for a netbook is not much different to developing games for a notebook, which is not much different to developing games for a desktop.

Yes, but there is still a market for a 'netbook focused' game industry. I can play most java based cellphone games on the beowulf cluster in the physics department here,... and get yelled at it for running something desinged for a handheld on a near supercomputer,... But we still see people focusing development toward the cellphone market. Why? Because people looking for a game want to be able to go somewhere, click a link, read a quick description and know it is going to work on their machine.

To be honest my EeePC900 can be made to cry playing flash games that my desktop laughs at. (Really, I need a new soundcard, the onboard one I have now adds weird line noise and it can sound like my system is quietly laughing to itself.)


I would love to go to "netbookgamecentral.com" and be able to select whatever range my netbook falls into, as some are far more powerful than others, and know that any game in that section is going to run just fine on my system.

Why design for netbooks rather than just general low end PC? Don't forget about screen size and resolution. There are a lot of low end games that aren't going to be fun on a netbook due to the odd sized display.

Then there is also the issue of crossplatform games, as don't forget a vast portion of the netbook userbase is running some form of Linux.

While the specs aren't that bad, there are other things to consider. Firstly, by default, they have a very small storage capacity (inline w/ iPods as no HDD) The one I have is, I think ~10GB total storage (don't hold me to that, not on it at the moment). Also, the processors aren't great, starting up applications can be slow and flash applications can lag. Finally they have, by virtual definition, small monitors. You will have to be much more screen real-eastate-aware.

Also, from a design perspective, you have to treat them more like mobiles than laptops. Laptops have become portable desktops, it is not very expensive to get a same spec laptop as a desktop. This is not the case with Netbooks. As a result, their purpose is somewhat different, different people will own these too people who own XPS laptops that weight almost as much as the desktop counterpart.

You must also consider that people might be playing the games between stops on the tube, so maybe 5 minute sessions. Apart from technical reasons, Crysis and the like just aren't suited to such small sessions.

I just can't see carrying around a netbook and a cell phone, when I can get a smartphone for about the same price and have the features of both...and with the speed smartphones are advanceing, in a few more years the netbooks will only have thier physical size as an advantage.

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Original post by Talroth Yes, but there is still a market for a 'netbook focused' game industry. ... Because people looking for a game want to be able to go somewhere, click a link, read a quick description and know it is going to work on their machine. I would love to go to "netbookgamecentral.com" and be able to select whatever range my netbook falls into, as some are far more powerful than others, and know that any game in that section is going to run just fine on my system. Why design for netbooks rather than just general low end PC? Don't forget about screen size and resolution. There are a lot of low end games that aren't going to be fun on a netbook due to the odd sized display. Then there is also the issue of crossplatform games, as don't forget a vast portion of the netbook userbase is running some form of Linux.

All amazing and dead on points. The last few points are why I feel MUDs and browser based flash/java games are really well suited to the netbook. Those are cross platform games that also do not suffer from the smaller screen real estate and non-standard aspect ratio.

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Original post by MSW I just can't see carrying around a netbook and a cell phone, when I can get a smartphone for about the same price and have the features of both...and with the speed smartphones are advanceing, in a few more years the netbooks will only have thier physical size as an advantage.

Really? You don't see a difference between your smartphone and a netbook? You don't see a difference between a 10" screen and a 2" screen? You don't see a difference between a real keyboard and fumbling around thumbing your messages into a phone? Seriously?

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Original post by Cambios Quote: Original post by MSW I just can't see carrying around a netbook and a cell phone, when I can get a smartphone for about the same price and have the features of both...and with the speed smartphones are advanceing, in a few more years the netbooks will only have thier physical size as an advantage. Really? You don't see a difference between your smartphone and a netbook? You don't see a difference between a 10" screen and a 2" screen? You don't see a difference between a real keyboard and fumbling around thumbing your messages into a phone? Seriously?

Read closer.

I said I can't see carrying around a netbook and a cell phone.

If the netbook can do something like Skype, then cool I don't need the cell phone. However we don't have some city wide free wi-fi axcess here, and prolly wont for years to come. Which means I'll still need that cell phone.

And sense I would be carrying around two devices, I'd much rather just have to lug one around instead. So I'll opt for the smartphone, it still has wi-fi, plus all the features of a cell phone and costs about the same as a netbook.

Of course the netbook is larger and more powerfull. But given the speed smartphones are advanceing, netbooks will mostly have thier size as an advantage.

Now if they make a netbook with smartphone features (G3, GPS, bluetooth, camera, etc) I may opt for that instead. But sense they haven't, smartphones currently fill my needs quite nicely. Mine has a full QWERTY keypad, and I had no trouble thumbing this reply in, it ain't perfect, but it works for me.

I own a Dell Inspiron Mini 9 net book and also a Smart Phone (Treo). I will (not all the time) cary both. There are some things the Net book is better fort and there are some things the Treo is better for, plus the Treo can act as a 3G modem for the Dell (if I need that functionality while out).

As I role Play (pen and paper), The main use for my Dell is as a tool for aiding Role Playing (notes, character sheets, DM screen, reference, maps, etc).

As for gaming on the computer, I tend to use the Dell for casual type games (Stars! and the like) or for low resource games like Secret Maryo Chronicles (http://www.secretmaryo.org/) a Open Source Mario Brothers clone (and others).

So Net Books, I think, do have a market for gaming. It won't be the latest and most flashy games, but there is definitely a market for them, especially games that are quick to play and involve only a few players (if more than 1). They will be games that are more in depth than what will typically be available on Smart Phones and the like.

What I am envisioning is like a lunch time group that might meet for lunch and a game.

I think that MUDs, because they usually take a while to play might not be all that popular on a Net Book (as if you are going to spend that much time playing, then you are more likely to sit down at a desktop - or equivalent).

You will be looking at games that take around 10 to 15 minutes a session to play.

So in summery:
- The complexity will be higher than Smart phones so the games available will be more complex and involved than these.

- The time involved in the game sessions will be around 10 to 15 minutes which makes them easy to play s pick up games

- They will be light weight games that don't involve 100% attention at all times

This means that the market for Net Book games will be game that are more complex than what can be done on Smart phones, but less complex than what can be done on desktops. They will have to be a middle ground.

I dunno, netbooks are growing but they are just a couple year old PC's they outpower my old P3 that I now use as a server. Yes you could make games specially for netbooks but It would be very hard to pull it off sucessfully and make it big.

People already can run a handful of games on netbooks that are fine, Doom3 (With some tweaks), WarCraft3 (Alot of people are playing this on them), Starcraft 2, Original Counter Strike, Maple Story, Half Life 1, and many more.

Netbook games can make money, but really, i wouldent get too excited. People can just go to a game story buy any old game with lower specs and most likely it will run fine on the netbook.

Just to give you some perspective, I've been busy for months porting stuff to the next generation netbooks. Here's what's in the pipe for the second generation netbook.

(1) 1 GHz CPUs are normal.

(2) 3D acceleration is normal -- OpenGL ES 2.0 is supported everywhere.

(3) Powerful DSPs and built-in hardware codecs are usually available (H.264 video, MP3 audio, etc).

(4) 3G wireless is the norm. Skype also works.

(5) Screens still have small vertical resultion. A awful lot of stuff doesn't play nicely with a vertical resultion of 516 pixels. Software that has unreasonable hardcoded minimums will get left behind.

(6) A lot of manufacturers are focussing on the ARM processor because of cost and improved battery life. Microsoft Windows does not yet run on ARM (bet your rent that it will). The software is almost exclusively Linux-based (eg. Android, Ubuntu, Red Flag).

(7) Target pricepoints will be even lower than they are currently.