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EA keen to put video-chat in mobile games

And voice chat, music playlists, location features...

EA keen to put video-chat in mobile games
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EA Mobile is champing at the bit to include a bunch of new technologies in its mobile games, according to Travis Boatman, vice president of EA Mobile Studios Worldwide.

On-stage at the BREW 2008 show today, he outlined some of the future tech that EA is dribbling over.

"Imagine being able to use your camera while playing the game and see your opponent," he said. "Or imagine being able to use voice or the speakerphone, so that you could be playing Tetris against someone and talking to them while playing the game."

Music is also on EA's wishlist of new mobile game features, with Boatman pointing out that many mobile users now have songs stored on their handset.

"Imagine being able to access all your music and play your own playlist while you're playing games," he said, before citing location-based features and internet connectivity as other areas for development.

On the latter: "There are so many bits of information out there. Communities where people talk about walkthroughs and FAQs, and people collecting around social networks like Facebook and MySpace. Being able to take these communities and leverage them into the mobile market is really compelling."

Video-chat-enabled connected Tetris that knows where you are and can hook into your Facebook profile, coming to a handset near you! At some point...

Boatman also talked about some of the features already in EA's games that he's particularly enthusiastic about, including the use of proper video cut-scenes in mobile games.

"Why do cut scenes? It's a lot more fun to watch a cut scene that explains what you're going to do in the next mission than it is to sit through and read a bunch of text," he said.

EA Mobile is also doing layered audio in its latest Madden mobile game in the US, allowing multiple sound effects to be played at once.

"You want to hear the crowd cheering in the bacground while the quarterback goes 'Hut Hut Hut'," he said. "Those types of experiences are enriched when you can hear all this at the same time."

Stuart Dredge
Stuart Dredge
Stuart is a freelance journalist and blogger who's been getting paid to write stuff since 1998. In that time, he's focused on topics ranging from Sega's Dreamcast console to robots. That's what you call versatility. (Or a short attention span.)