I know "Spectrobes" is not made for me, but during a demo yesterday morning in San Francisco, I marveled at how many Internet features Disney is packing into their kid-targeted "Pokemon"-style game.
There's more in "Spectrobes 2: Beyond The Portal" than most hardcore DS games!
Let me explain some of what Disney is pulling off here:
* The ability to port creatures from the previous "Spectrobes," even though the original game was not designed for it
* Support for their cross-game social networking service DGamer
* Launching a massive "Spectrobes" website that's updated by users uploading their individual data directly through the DS
* Individual player achievements (called emblems) and community achievements (i.e. be part of the first 10,000 players to upload data at the game's release)
* Global (and local) Wi-Fi battles
* An online marketplace for "Spectrobe" creatures, where players set the value
That's quite a lot of tech going into what most of us would call a kids game, no? I wonder if many will end up using it, but Disney seemed confident they would.