Proof you can't keep a hopping, adorable mass of singing blobs down, Sony have today announced that LocoRoco will be making the jump from Sony console to mobile phone. And not as an "interactive screensaver", either, but as a proper LocoRoco game. It'll be priced at ¥420 (USD$3.80), and goes on sale...oh, today!
SCEJ、EZweb「LocoRoco MOBILE」配信開始 PSP「LocoRoco」を携帯電話で可能な限り再現 [Game Watch]

It's official you can start downloading games to your iPhone starting in July with the launch of App Store.

The App Store will be part of the iPhone 2.0 firmware update that is free to iPhone users, but $10 for iTouch owners. That's right, Apple is charging for a firmware update.

Why should you care if you own an iPhone or iTouch? Spore, Trism, Galga, Pacman and maybe, just maybe Puzzle Quest. Also there are the games announced at the beginning of the conference.

Games can be downloaded by cell connection if they are less than 10 MB and via WiFi if greater than 10MB.

So far it looks like games will run for $10 a pop, though it will ultimately be up to the developers to set prices. Apple keeps 30 percent of the revenues. If the dev decides to give the game away there is no charge at all from Apple.

Stay tuned here for other gaming news coming out of WWDC today and if you're looking for a deeper, more in-depth look at the whole show make sure to catch Gizmodo's amazing live coverage of the conference.

Poor mobile games. Always the hope for the future! Always the laughing stock of the present. And fair enough, too. Cheaply made, rubbish to control, the vast majority of mobile games are a waste of everyone's time. Oh, unless you're Japanese, and pick up a Panasonic p906i. If you do, well, you'll be able to play Professor Layton. In widescreen, no less! And if you can't be arsed counting matchsticks, there's a nice-looking Gundam game on offer as well. Can have in West, please? Kind of bored of my 4th successive phone with a Worms clone.

Panasonic P906i [Product Page]

N-Gage Goes Live! Hello? Anyone?

Nokia's second attempt at N-Gage-ing mobile gamers has unofficially gone live, with the official N-Gage blog announcing that the revamped platform is now available for download. If you have a Nokia N81, N81 8GB, N82, N95 or N95 8GB, you can bask in the warmth of the new N-Gage, bringing a try-before-you-buy, Xbox Live-like experience to your phone. Offerings from Gameloft, EA and others are available now or coming soon, which don't look too terribly bad. Yeah! That was kind of a compliment. We won't even make a sidetalkin' dig!

Official N-Gage Site [via Gizmodo]

Second place mobile manufacturer Samsung has revealed a Second Life client for their phones that will allow the relatively small horde of visitors to the virtual world and their legion of alts access to the grid and related services wherever and whenever the whole thing hasn't crashed. This is a monumentally bad idea. As a Second Life resident for nearly a year now, I know people who only leave the world in order to buy groceries, and some of them already carry their laptops around when they do that, just in case they catch a stray wireless signal. We don't need to be able to connect to SL from anywhere. Sure, you'll be able to have quickie unicorn cybersex in the bathroom at work, but at what cost?

Samsung Unveils Mobile Application for Second Life [koreatimes via Gizmodo]

Analyst: iPhone Not A Viable Gaming Platform

Playing Super Monkey Ball and Spore on the iPhone sure sounds like a nifty diversion, but is a $400 mobile device really going to be a success as a gaming platform? Not if Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter's perspective on new ventures from Sega, EA and THQ is spot on. He tells Next-Gen "To the extent that hip, rich people are an interesting gaming audience, iPhone games will work" adding that the demographic will probably "only interested in the most rudimentary games, and that the market will be small."

Maybe he's right. I'm still in the honeymoon phase with my iPhone, but my hype level for using the accelerometer to game is on par with the prospect of further SIXAXIS gaming. That's hovering around zilch, currently.

Pachter: iPhone Gaming Not Commercially Sound [Next-Gen]

Metal Gear Solid Mobile On Verizon

Gameloft Has iPhone Fever, 15 Titles Sprinting For 2008 Release

Mobile gaming? Ha! Oh wait. Our Apple zealotry and iPhone idolatry has made many of us reconsider what gaming on our cellphones means, especially in light of the demos for Spore and Super Monkey Ball shown yesterday. Those are things we might actually want. That passion will probably be more tempered for things like Bubble Bash (aka Puzzle Bobble aka Bust-A-Move aka Snood aka whatever) and the fourteen other Gameloft titles announced to be in development. We'll be eyeballs deep in multicolored gems, jewels and blocks, if the "leading developer and publisher of games for mobile phones" has any say in it by year's end.

Yes, this does mean you'll most likely be playing some Paris Hilton-branded game with your accelerometer at some point. Feel better?

If you'd shown me a mobile phone ten, fifteen years ago that could play Virtua Fighter 2, you'd find yourself drenched in my brain matter. Today? Not so impressed by a phone's ability to render 3D games. Still, Virtua Fighter Mobile for FOMA 950i phones is impressive, if seemingly misplaced as a game playable with a phone keypad. In the Spring, Sega plans to bring the VF2 port to Japanese cell phone users for a nominal monthly 315 yen fee (about $3 American). Game Watch has a ton of pics of the thing if you find it impressive.

Virtua Fighter Mobile [Game Watch]

Japanese Cell Phone Gaming Gets Sufficiently Sexy

Poker has never really been our game. It's good for a laugh, but I'm not the gambling type. However, a Japanese cell phone game in which one finds themselves in sexy strip poker situations with anime girls of various professions? Where do I put the 315 yen, exactly? The Gameloft published title, which Ashcraft says is loosely translated as Sexed Up Big Sister Flip Over—though he may be screwing with me—follows the simple formula of taking busty women and presenting them in various states of undress.

You'll play multiple card games against a nurse, secretary, actress, racing queen, police woman and volleyball player, all of the sexy variety, then watch with delight as they are beholden to their disrobing bets, exposing their fine washables. It's a fun sexy time. Technology is really wonderful isn't it? We've come so far.

Sexed Up Big Sister Flip Over [Famitsu]

POSDATA and sister company POSBRO announced at CES today that their portable online gaming device for cell phones, the G100, will be coming to America. US consumers can find the WiMAX device on sale late 2008 - early 2009, but the G100 and the WiMAX gaming network will be available and online in Korea early this year. No word yet on what the games will be, but the companies promise a "variety of online game titles... to meet customer's tastes". And why, exactly, do these companies think it will be wildly popular in the US?

The effect of portable online gaming device will be inspiring in US where video game through TV and online game on PC are quite popular among young people. In the near future, they will be playing high quality online games through G100 via mobile WIMAX network.

Hit the jump for the press release.

iPhone's Impact on Mobile Gaming? "Negative"

...it's a replacement for someone who had a Razr before. They still want their content but there's no distribution platform in place so there's a negative impact on the industry... These devices are capable and powerful. They'll be great in the long term but it will take some time as people adapt to devices.

Peripheral company Zeetoo is coming up with a Nunchuk-like device for cell phones. The Zeemote, that's really what it's called, no lie, will connect to select cell phones using Bluetooth. The controller has an analog stick and buttons in a Nunchuk-shaped device. The company says they also have a motion-sensing version of the controller in the works and another prototype that will have a tracker ball.

Personally, I don't think it's the lack of controls that is keeping mobile gaming from realize the potential that mobile game developers are always harping endlessly about. I think the real problem is the lack of a single operating system, something that, dare I say it, the N-Gage platform might actually help fix.

Mobiles Get Nunchuk Controller [CVG]

Guitar Hero Rocks III Out On Verizon Wireless

Sexy Undead Nurse Shooting Finally Comes To Mobile Phones

Konami of Japan has released Silent Hill: The Escape for mobile phones today on FOMA 904i and 905i hand sets, making fantasies of shooting faceless hordes of sexy nurse zombies with your phone a reality. Silent Hill: The Escape uses the phone's built-in camera to monitor a user's movements allowing for aiming and reloading of your character's gun. The game also supports 3D sound and vibration to emulate the series' radio static feature that lets a player know how close enemies are and from where they are approaching.

Given that the Silent Hill spin-off, which seems to share more with Silent Hill: The Arcade than anything else in the series, doesn't attempt to use a cell phone keypad for control gives it a much lower chance of sucking. Say, 98%. Not bad for a cell phone game!

Silent Hill: The Escape [Game Watch]

Hudson: Happy Holidays, You're Fired

Sources close to Hudson Entertainment have contacted Next-Gen and Kotaku today, writing that the company "just laid off half its company staff." According to both sources, it's Hudson's mobile division that saw the most bloodletting, a division that has "just been having a lot of trouble getting their games onto big carriers like Verizon and Cingular."

Reports from a "former disgruntled Hudson employee" indicate that the lay offs were a surprise to those who lost their jobs and that two weeks of severance were given to those now unemployed. Best of luck to those now on the hunt for new employment.

Source: Hudson Lays Off Half of US Staff [Next-Gen]

With a new Ghostbusters game in the works, plus hints of an EA-published G.I. Joe game based on the upcoming movie and a cruel tease of a new Knight Rider title by guest editor Ian Bogost, it would seem we're on the verge of exhausting our 80s heroes. Enter Magnum P.I., the mustachioed, Ferrari 308 GTS-driving private dick who solved Hawaiian crimes amid the company of pretty ladies. He's taking his U.S. Navy SEAL training and detective skills to mobile phones, unfortunately, courtesy of Ojom GmbH.

The game promises lady-wowing and crime-fighting, but reads more like a platformer that sees Thomas Magnum hopping about like a madman in search of coins and life-giving team rings. Looks good enough—for a casual title—but only serves to make my hunger for someone to snap up the rights to Automan and Manimal. I'll daydream-design it while I read the press release.