Bluetooth And Its Impact On Mobile Gaming

In the early days of the mobile gaming industry, one of the marketing phrases that made the rounds was the promise of the ability to pit human intelligence versus artificial intelligence.

Of course as impressive as that may have sounded then–and still now as a matter of fact–this claim was little more than hype. The gaming experience provided by these early mobile gaming devices left no doubt in the player’s minds that they were still dealing with a fairly rudimentary technology that had little–if any–resemblance to “intelligence”, artificial or otherwise. Clearly, the next logical step was a means for players to interact and play games with other real, live human players.
To be sure, there were certain technologies that theoretically allowed players to play against other people in real time, but the technological compatibilities between the mobile devices of different manufacturers made this very difficult to utilize.
With the arrival of bluetooth however, it seemed that real-time, multiplayer gaming experiences have finally become a reality. The COO of Mauj Telecom, Arun Gupta, has expressed optimism about the future of blutooth, saying that games such as these represent the next wave in mobile gaming. Mauj Telecom is a wireless mobile content provider that recently launched a well-received range of multiplayer bluetooth mobile games that allow gamers to play against and alongside each other in real-time.
One of the main advantages of bluetooth technology is that users do not even have to do anything in order to establish connections between different bluetooth devices. All that is needed is for both devices to come within range of one another, and both can then interact and communicate with each other automatically.
While earlier versions of multiplayer online games allowed users to play against each other, they could not do so in real-time simply because it took a considerable amount of time for the devices to respond to each other. Furthermore, these older devices used either the Internet or the GPRS or General Packet Radio Service to connect to each other, which offered slow connection rates of only 10 to 60 Kbps at most. Users also had to pay for the use of the Internet.
While these slower speeds were adequate for games that did not require quick response times–such as chess for example–they simply did not do for games where immediate response to an opponent’s partner’s actions were necessary.
Bluetooth on the other hand, provides connection speeds of 100 Mbps, allowing a whole new level of interactivity in mobile gaming. This superior speed–which is 1000 times that of Internet connections–results in virtually zero latency or delay, which simply means that any actions of the other players are displayed on screen instantly. Other benefits of bluetooth include superior audio-visual quality, and the elimination of connection charges on the part of the user. All that is needed is for users to keep at a distance of 15 to 20 meters of the other players.
With bluetooth technology becoming more and more commonplace, the future of exciting and truly interactive mobile gaming releases seems assured.