Palm Hints High-End Games May Be in the Palm Pre's Future

During a webinar today, Palm implied that future versions of the webOS will enable developers to create high-end games.

Gaming has emerged as a weak spot for the webOS and the first device to run it, the Palm Pre. This platform is heavily focused on the Web, and third-party applications created for it are written in HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. This is going to limit the types of games that can be created, as developers need more powerful tools to create high-performance games.

During the Q&A portion of a webinar held today for journalists, Palm acknowledged this again, saying that games for the Pre will initially be relatively simple, web-centric ones, such as Sudoku.

But Matt Crowley, Product Line Manager at Palm, said something that could raise hopes that this situation will change in the future. When talking on this subject, he specifically said that webOS 1.0 will not support 3G games. This suggests -- but comes nowhere close to a promise -- that later versions of this operating system will allow developers to create high-end games.

An Overview of the Palm Pre
As mentioned earlier, the Palm Pre will be the first device to use Palm's just-announced webOS. This will be a multi-tasking operating system able to wirelessly synchronize a wide variety of data with online services like Google and Facebook.

The Pre itself will feature a sliding keyboard as well as a multi-touch-capable 3.1-inch display. This device will also be equipped with 8 GB of on-board storage, Wi-Fi b/g, Bluetooth 2.1, and a 3.0 megapixel camera with LED flash. 

As mentioned earlier, in the U.S. it will be available from the U.S. carrier Sprint, who will add its mobile broadband service EV-DO Rev. A. The GSM version for Europe and Latin America will have the 3G standard HSDPA. Palm has promised to release this device in the first half of this year, but has declined to be any more specific.

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• Palm Pre and webOS Preview