My son and I have been playing this for years, and I'm sure we're not the only ones. When we're on a long car trip we'll take turns drawing pictures using Pictochat on the DS, then the other person has to guess what it is.
I'm not sure how much a developer can add to the basic mechanic that already comes with the DS for free, but Sega is certainly trying. The screens and fact sheet they provided with the announcement don't really give me a sense of what you'll be getting when you buy the game that you don't already get with the built-in app.
Reading between the lines I suspect you won't be getting WiFi play which is a down right tragedy. It's the one thing that prevents Pictochat from being truly useful. Yes I know, it's great at big press conferences and events, but I still miss the ability to shoot crudely drawn pictures of penises out into cyberspace.
SEGA ANNOUNCES PICTOIMAGE FOR NINTENDO DS
Get ready to push your freehand drawing skills to the limit in a variety of challenging, drawing-based multiplayer games
SAN FRANCISCO & LONDON (May 22, 2008) – SEGA® of America, Inc. and SEGA® Europe Ltd. today announced that PictoImage™, a fun and challenging party game that will sharpen wit and drawing skills is coming to Nintendo DS™. PictoImage is a pick-up-and-play puzzle game scheduled for release in August 2008.
PictoImage enables up to eight players to take turns drawing the image of a word generated from a large database while competitors race against the clock to guess the word first. Featuring eight multi-player game modes, players can compete against each other in a variety of party games including Picture Pass, a mode where a subject will be passed from player to player in an image and the last player has guess the subject based on all the drawings. In multiplayer mode players can also create a personal library of words to use when they square off against other players.
PictoImage will also include a single-player and two-player mode where players must guess an image from a library of 300 drawings created by people of all ages. The tutorial mode teaches players how to draw a variety of different images from four main categories (Animals, Objects, Food, and Other).