More Details on Sony PDA

Sony's announcement Thursday of a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) to be introduced by the end of this year turned more than a few heads, mainly because it is to use PlayStation memory cards as its format du jour. But don't begin celebrating just yet, this isn't a portable PlayStation. Instead, its main target is Nintendo's extremely popular Pocket Monsters series and Bandai's Tamagotchi line.

The main purpose of it seems obvious - to catch some of the fire that Nintendo is grabbing with its 64GB Pak (which lets the player use data from the Game Boy to play at home).

The scenario is that developers could make a fighting game (or RPG, or any character-based game) where the player could train his fighter using both the PlayStation at home and the PDA when he's out and about. Gamers could then plug it back into the PlayStation and duke it out with a friend's fighter in color on the big screen.

Through the unit's infrared communication capability, players can exchange data with friends quickly and easily.

Sounds like a good idea, only Sony has not made a worthy successor to the Game Boy. Instead, it has settled upon making this PDA little more than a Tamagotchi that happens to be able to exchange data with the PlayStation.

One interesting aspect of the machine is that software for it comes on a PlayStation disc. You then "download" it to the memory card for use with the PDA. An interesting idea, definitely.

Here are the current specs for the device:

CPU: ARM7T (32-bit RISC processor)

Memory: SRAM - 2KB

Flash RAM - 128KB (using the PlayStation memory card)

Graphics: 32x32 dot, monochrome LCD screen

Sound: 4-bit PCM

Switch: 5 input buttons1 reset button

Other: Infrared communication: done by direction, aiming the unit at another unit LED Power displayBuilt-in CalendarID NumberBattery backup (for the calendar)

To put things in perspective, the Game Boy is 160x144 dots. It's kind of obvious that this portable game machine probably won't be much of a game machine. Instead, this is targeting a much more inexpensive market, probably setting down somewhere in the US$20-40 range, based on the kind of hardware this thing has.