Motorola Phones to Include Sega Games

You're not alone. It turns out a surprisingly large number of people like to play those throwaway games programmed into many popular brand cell phones. The games available — like Nokia's Snake and Ericsson's forthcoming phone version of Tetris — are single-player time-passers without much graphical sophistication. But from small seeds grow mighty oaks. Yesterday some pros arrived on the scene, with an announcement from Sega that it will use Sun's Java to help Motorola work better video games into cell phones and other devices, such as pagers and PDAs. As if talking on the phone weren't distraction enough.

Most of the games planned for release this year are still single-player, but Sega officials have hinted that multi-player gaming — where cell phone users can challenge PC gamers and other cell phone players wirelessly over the Internet — may not be far off. The announcement comes on the heels of a similar deal announced last Friday between Nokia and Eidos, the English game company responsible for Lara Croft and the forthcoming Daikatana. MORE>>