Making FrienDS

I "enjoyed" the hospitality of First Great Western on two occasions over the weekend, and on both occasions noticed people on PSPs - something I'd never seen before on a train journey. I've also noticed a lot of people with DSs on the tube recently - most playing Brain Age judging by the way they're holding the consoles.

This is not just an attempt to show my interest in the most facile details of the world around me, but also to say that portable gaming appears to be taking off in a serious way in the UK. The question that follows for me is how long until a sense of communal portable gaming arises, if at all?

Both Nintendo and Sony have built wireless networking into their respecitve consoles as a basic feature and - given the charge which is usually levied on public wifi connections and the massive handicap of the DS's friend code system - the main applicability of this is in LAN gaming. Clearly the first step for this is gaming with friends, but the possiblity of pick-up games with strangers while on a train, or sitting in an airport is intriguing. However, at present it remains intriguing, without practical implementation, simply because the element of human interaction remains. This is not meant to sound stupid or facetious. The fact is, as a 28 year old man, walking up to someone and asking if they want to play video games is embarrassing. What is more a lengthy conversation is required to establish what games are shared and which can be networked wirelessly. This is all before the game gets going in situations where only a short playing window may be available.

The ideal solution would be some sort of system where people can choose to broacast a variant of Microsoft's gamer card to anyone within wireless range listing multiplayer games available and giving anyone interested the option of sending a message/invite to the broadcasting gamer.

Of course, the worry over grooming would intrude on any attempt to do this, as illogical as such a worry is in circumstances without voice chat or messaging facilities, but until something like this exists, the potential of next-gen portable gaming will never be fully realised.

Mind you, it looks like more fundamental challenges to wi-fi gaming may be on the horizon.