Clues to Microsoft's intentions with Windows Mobile

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Source star-techcentral.com

The game’s afoot, in your hand

BETTER games on your handheld or smartphone – that’s what Microsoft is claiming to bring to users of the Windows Mobile operating system that powers these devices.  

This push to get more graphically-rich games for Windows Mobile on both smartphones and Pocket PCs is a twofold assault – Microsoft itself is going to release as many as 13 new game titles within the year, and will build support for a mobile version of DirectX, called Direct 3D Mobile (D3DM), into its next operating system.  

According to Mark Spain, director of Microsoft’s mobile devices division, the company’s first initiative is to produce a variety of games specifically for handhelds, of which 13 will be released before the end of the year.  

Among the titles being released for Microsoft Smartphone and Pocket PC platforms are handheld versions of Microsoft’s Midtown Madness, RallySport and Age of ... titles which are already popular titles on the PC and Xbox platforms.  

The port to Pocket PC of Age of Empires has already been released.  

The next important step towards better gaming on handheld devices is in D3DM, an implementation of Microsoft’s own Direct X, but customised for the Windows Mobile platform.  

Like DirectX, D3DM will be a set of APIs (application program interfaces) that enables programmers to write a program that accesses the hardware features of a computer without knowing exactly what hardware will be installed on the machine where the program will eventually be run.  

This is achieved by creating an intermediate layer that translates generic hardware commands into specific commands for particular pieces of hardware.  

In particular, D3DM (and DirectX) lets multimedia applications take advantage of hardware acceleration features supported by graphics accelerators.  

The inclusion of D3DM into the next Windows Mobile operating system could not be more timely, as more and more companies like Intel (with its recently-announced Marathon chip), nVidia and ATi are starting to build powerful graphics processors for handhelds.  

Without D3DM, game developers would have to add special code their games to take full advantage of particular graphics processors on the Pocket PC.  

While Pocket PC and PalmOS devices have long had graphically-rich and complex games that run natively on their respective platforms, the mobile phone market has been largely dominated by Java (specifically, its handheld variant, J2ME) games.  

In a related development, Spain also confirmed that both the division that used to produce the Windows CE kernel and the division that produces Windows Mobile for Pocket PC has now been integrated into a single division called the Mobile and Embedded Devices division.  

Originally, one division produced the actual Windows CE kernel, and after it was completed, it would be passed on to the Pocket PC division to customise for the Pocket PC, often causing an unnecessary delay between the introduction of the latest kernel to its actual appearance in next generation handhelds. – TAN KIT HOONG

It should be remembered that the Windows Mobile Operating System includes Pocket PCs as well as Smartphones.