WiFi Hotspots Gaming Battle Intensifies

The city of Philadelphia in the US has recently announced some plans to implement WiFi access throughout the municipality.

This would prove fortuitous indeed for Pocket PC gamers in the vicinity.

Quality wireless multiplayer enabled PDA games, however, prove to be elusive save for real-time strategy releases like Warfare Incorporated that allow for it.

Such an initiative will quickly overcome relative WiFi indifference by Pocket PC game developers.

A wireless internet provision scale the likes of this has yet to be seen, ranging of some 135 square miles.

This will be put firmly in reach of the lower economic tiers at the low price of $10 US ($11.77 CDN at the time of this news release).

Google suddenly silenced other party bids with an offer to provide the WiFi hotspot internet service gratis albeit with commercials.

Of course, this raised the appropriate hue and cry by some myopic Congress representatives as described in the WiFi Cities Spark Hotspot Debate BBC news article.

This is on the heels of a joint McDonald's and Nintendo venture also recently announced.

This purported to offer wireless access to Nintendo DS handheld gaming console owners in the popular fast food franchises.

If you're really going to consume 24.9 grams of fat in one Big Mac sitting, you may as well burn calories with some furious Mario Kart DS and Tony Hawk's American SK8Land, the initial offerings to the Nintendo DS crowd.

I'm still waiting for more public offerings besides Starbucks and select Second Cup WiFi access for my iPAQ once I head further away from the downtown Toronto core.

Such an offering would be a socio-economic blessing to any city, making WiFi more attainable for lower social tiers.

Pending bills in Congress, we may see this come to pass. Once it does, the Palm and Pocket PC gaming market will follow.

This latest Nintendo DS initiative may be a tough act to follow for the PDA gamer crowd.

Windows Mobile 2003 served up wireless improvements to the Pocket PC operating system, but Microsoft still hasn't managed to make WiFi as simple as a McDeal.

DS owners will basically select Nintendo WiFi Connection Mode after launching the game, and they're off to the races.

Regardless of my relative disadvantage, I look forward to this if it means seeing more quality WiFi-enabled games available for my PDA.

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