Should Microsoft Make a Gameboy?

[Brad Isaac]

In a commentary over at Smartphone Thoughts, Infinite Ventures has posted a commentary Why Microsoft Shouldn't Make a Game Boy. I.V. makes some good points about why this would be a losing position for Microsoft. One being that most videogame companies make more money from the games than the hardware. Since MS already owns the hardware built into PPC and Smartphone, why build another just for gaming?
"What would happen if you produced a gaming phone which enjoyed the carrier phone subsidies and the gaming royalty model? You could create a really powerful gaming phone and sell it very cheaply, perhaps even give it away. It would be your phone and your gaming device (and your MP3 player for that matter!) The carriers would be happy to subsidize this new phone in return for your annual phone contract and a piece of the software sales. Microsoft would be happy to charge less to the manufacturers for the design and OS, because they would make money on every game sold. Developers would happily make games, because they could be looking at a 100 million unit market within three years. Don’t forget over 500 million new phones were sold last year worldwide. That’s a lot of phones!
The next reason why this is Microsoft’s best strategy is that at the heart of it, they are a software company. They make money by either selling software to consumers or licensing it to manufacturers. Microsoft doesn’t really want to be in the hardware business. It is expensive and competitive. Other companies do hardware much better than Microsoft, which is why Microsoft doesn’t build the Xbox in its own factories and doesn’t manufacture its own video chips. Microsoft tried licensing into the video game world with Sega. They licensed Windows CE to Sega for the Dreamcast console. The Dreamcast didn’t make it for a lot of reasons, but if it had sold well I’m not sure if Microsoft would be in the Xbox business today."
Any comments?

[Addic]

On the one hand I'd luv to see a PPC version of the Zodiac, although I'd hope it didn't look quite so tacky. A device that passes as a business machine (so I can play games at work ), but had been optimised for maximum gaming enjoyment e.g. ruggerised hardware buttons/d-pad (I keep breaking mine) and suped up graphics, with DirectX (PPC version of course) would be my dream.
But I guess if MS released a games machine then it would look like a games machine (no more fun at work, in meeting etc, yeah coz i woz really taking notes ;-p) and terrible battery life.
I also feel that the present games would have to be stepped up a notch for me to fork out the kinda prices that people pay for gameboy, N-gage games (is that still going or has it been discontinued?).
In essence I guess I'm kinda happy in a perturbingly weird way. As I luv playing games on my Ipaq 3970, but would love to share in some of the joys offered by the lastest technology, however not all devices make good games machines e.g. dare I say the E805 with it's laggy d-pad.
Although on another subject. Dan East from Pocket Wolf3D, Pocket Quake and Dexplor fame is in the process of releasing a PS controller adaptor for the PPC. Maybe this is the answer to my dreams ?
The link to the PS controller beta tester sign up forum is here PS controller at Pocket Matrix but sorry there are no pictures yet, Just a discussion going on.