EA, Fathammer, Bandai Announce BREW Support

Speaking at the BREW 2005 conference in San Diego this week, a number of notable publishers and developers have come out in support of Qualcomm's BREW mobile development environment, including Electronic Arts, Fathammer and Bandai America. BREW (Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless) is an application development platform created by Qualcomm for CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) based mobile phones, its main advantage being that developers can easily port their applications between all the Qualcomm ASICs. Software for BREW enabled handsets can be developed in C or C++ using the freely downloadable BREW SDK. Since BREW’s introduction in 2001 it is estimated that more than 340 million BREW applications have been downloaded worldwide, a significant percentage of which are mobile games. With this in mind, representatives from Electronic Arts have announced that the giant publisher will now also become a publisher of games developed for BREW. EA’s initial line-up of games will include Madden NFL 2006, The Sims 2 Mobile, Need for Speed: Underground 2, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2006, FIFA Football 2006 and mobile only products Poppit!, Turbo 21 and Tri Peaks Solitaire from Pogo.com. Finnish publisher and developer Fathammer, meanwhile, has also announced its support of BREW, with plans to launch sixteen 3D titles, beginning this autumn. Titles will include Stuntcar Extreme, puzzle game Super Drop Mania, shoot ‘em-up Anglefish and Hockey Rage 2005. All of Fathammer’s games are developed using X-Forge, the company’s own multiplatform 3D game engine and development system. Finally, Bandai America has announced plans for a mobile phone version of its popular Tamagotchi virtual pet – also using Qualcomm's BREW solution. Scheduled for release this summer the mobile version will include new features such as Tama Vivid, which allows for full color images of your pet, as well as two new mini-games, a journal mode and a “facts” feature to offer insight into your pet’s personality.