Above:
Microsoft Office for Gameboy Advance, retailing at $199 for
the Personal Edition, or $799 for the Office Edition.
Microsoft announced
it will release a version of Office for Gameboy Advance in the coming
months, marking the first truly significant software developer to
back Nintendo's next-generation hand held gaming device for business
applications.
Analysts had
warned that without a version of Office, or a similar productivity
suite, Nintendo would face problems getting businesses to switch
to their new handheld productivity device.
"This is
a very significant announcement for Nintendo," analyst Chris
LeTocq said. "Frankly, this is the endorsement they needed
to get the Gameboy Advance out of the playgrounds and into the office."
Jenny Decklin,
group product manager of Microsoft's GBA business unit, explained
the change in the company's position with regard to Office for Gameboy
Advance.
Above:
The first look at Office GBA in action.
Decklin said
that when Microsoft revealed Office for Gameboy Advance in July,
"a lot of people in the industry were saying, 'What the hell
is going on here? How is this going to work? How do you even type
on a Gameboy Advance?' There was a lot of uncertainty." She
added, "Actually, it's a little embarrassing how the whole
thing started. Someone up in marketing mentioned it in an email
to Bill as a joke, he thought it was serious, called a conference
later that day and somehow we ended up running with it. I don't
even know if we contacted Nintendo about it. Crazy. Ever since the
court's injunction we haven't had a fucking clue what's going on.
I don't even know what department I'm working for anymore. Who are
you?"
But much has
changed since that hectic summer. "The difference between then
and now is that Nintendo is further along" with Gameboy Advance,
Decklin said. "If you take a train analog, we didn't know where
we were headed. We do now, and Microsoft's on the train, whether
we meant it or not. We've poured too much money into this thing
now to back out."
Still, Microsoft's
commitment to delivering Office for Gameboy Advance is a huge win
for Nintendo, particularly because application software developers
have not flocked to the new console as aggressively as the company
had hoped.
Above:
The office of the future. Say goodbye to your PC, keyboard and
mouse!
"We really
didn't see the flourish of business applications for Gameboy Advance
like we were expecting," Nintendo's Graham Cartman announced,
"the dream was to have every desk in every office dominated
by a sole Gameboy Advance, with cartridges for every business application
you could imagine. It was going to be great." Cartman then
stared into the horizon for several seconds, before adding "Good
times… good times."
Decklin defended
Microsoft's decision not to release Office for Gameboy Advance until
later in the year.
"Office
is a very large set of applications," she said. "There
are 25 million lines of code. It's not as easy as saying, 'Hey,
we're going to port it over to GBA.' It takes time. We have a lot
of technical issues, such as how the hell users are going to type,
and how are we going to display text on a 160x160 resolution screen?"
Decklin estimated the entire suite of applications would span 10
cartridges. "We can't very well have people editing a spreadsheet
to have a dialog box appear saying 'Insert cartridge 3' now, can
we?"
She also emphasized
the importance of the project for Microsoft.
"We're
moving on to Gameboy Advance. Jesus people, we released Mac OS X
Office - why wouldn't we release this?"
Decklin said
Microsoft plans to release Outlook for Gameboy Advance much later
in the summer. The delay is believed to be due to the fact that
Gameboy Advance is not networkable.
She concluded,
"Do you know any companies looking for a product manager?"
Facts cannot prevail against faith, or adamant folly.
