local gamedev news

RP game developer eyes DS, PSP platforms

By Joey Alarilla
INQ7.net

AFTER gaining recognition in the Palm and PocketPC market, a Filipino game development firm now has plans of creating titles for the latest handheld gaming devices, including the Nintendo DS and the Sony PlayStation Portable.
"We will still have to explore the software development kit for the DS and PSP, but we are working with a US company right now to port several high-profile PC titles to these platforms," Erick Garayblas, lead developer and game designer of Philippine-based eSoft Interactive, told INQ7.net.

Garayblas is the co-founder of eSoft Interactive with his fiancée Aiza Tancinco, who handles company operations. While they have been creating games for handhelds for the past four years, it was only in 2004 that they decided to formally incorporate eSoft Interactive.

Garayblas however said that he could not talk about the specific games they will be porting.

"I’m afraid I can’t give the titles of the games because we have a non-disclosure agreement with our partner and it’s still too early to say," he explained.

The company’s plans to create games for the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP are however just part of eSoft Interactive’s expansion in 2005. Garayblas and Tancinco are currently the company’s only full-time employees, but they’re assisted by several contractual and part-time programmers and artists.

"We plan to make them full-time [employees] this year… Our foremost goal for this year is to establish the company -- we’re moving offices right now and hiring more people. We have quite a few projects lined up for this year and we intend to pursue them as scheduled. We are also working on several local distribution partnership deals and probably release some of our games on CDs," Garayblas said.

The company has already won acclaim abroad for its handheld games. For one, their game Traffic Jam was a finalist in the puzzle category of the 2004 Pocket PC Awards (pocketpcawards.com) organized by Pocket PC Magazine and Microsoft. In that same year, their game Word Challenge, which bundles four word puzzle games, was a finalist in the packs category, while Tower Mogul also made it to the finals for simulation.

"We’ve also been on the top 10 games on Handango, and received an Editor’s Choice award from Pocketgear.com," Garayblas said.

Asked why the company decided to focus on handheld games, Garayblas cited development time and budget considerations.

"PC games are a lot harder and longer to develop if you really want to compete with the world’s best, compared to developing PDA games. PDA games are also getting popular nowadays because of the convergence of the ‘traditional’ PDA and the cell phone. More and more people are getting attracted to PDAs (Pocket PC and Palm devices) because not only are they used for organizing stuff, but you can also use them as a cell phone, camera, storage device, MP3 player, portable video player, gaming device, and lots more," he explained.