3D gaming will take off

In 2006, phones proved they were up to the task of running 3D games. This will continue in 2008, as more people upgrade their phones to find that they've actually got a pretty powerful games machine in their pocket, even if they didn't explicitly ask for it.

Besides Nokia's next-gen N-Gage, there's been a lot of talk within the mobile games industry about 'native' gaming ?games which use the raw power of your mobile's innards rather than running on top of the Java platform. If you've got a Symbian or Windows Mobile handset, for example, there'll be more and better games coming out in glorious 3D for it.

However, we'd offer a warning. 3D mobile games will only be as good as their control systems. We'd like to see handset manufacturers paying more attention to including features that improve gaming ?better joysticks for example, or button layouts that support landscape gaming (holding your phone sideways). Sony Ericsson has been good at this in the past, but we hope its rivals do likewise. And in the meantime, mobile developers should continue to refine their control systems to ensure that mobile 3D can still mean one-thumb gaming.