On closer inspection, the object could turn out to be the Zeemote JS1, a Bluetooth joypad device designed for mobile games, and recently announced by Californian start-up Zeemote.

The light and comfortable pad measures 95mm x 35mm x 20mm and houses a small anologue stick, along with four buttons.

The aim is simple —  Zeemote hopes that it’s an easy-to-use gadget and will bring genuine mass appeal to the perennially under-achieving mobile games industry.

Positive signs

The early signs are quietly positive. Several developers have signed up to support the device, including Sega and Eidos, which means versions of Sonic the Hedgehog and Tomb Raider Anniversary will be playable via JS1 - not a bad opening gambit.

A few other dedicated Zeemote titles have been revealed, including a puzzler named Fireworks, which allows you to synch two Zeemotes to one phone for two-player gaming.

And this means you would better good friends with your opponents as you are going to be getting very close to them indeed, as you huddle around your mobile’s tiny screen. Zeemote hopes to get the device into the shops in May, at first, as part of a bundle deal with phone handsets.

The company hasn’t officially announced a partner yet, but it is the sort of thing that might interest the youth-orientated thinkers at Nokia and Sony Ericsson.

I’m excited because there are loads of mobile games I don’t bother to play due to compatibility issues between my handset’s keys and my huge fat fingers.

It’s rare in the games industry for a third-party peripheral manufacturer to come up with a product that really captures the imagination.

Needs support

However, Zeemote will need a great deal of support from the industry  and it will need to convince phone owners that they absolutely must have one more gadget in their pocket or handbag. While the former is happening - symbolised by a nomination for the innovation award at Mobile World Congress - the latter is a trickier prospect. But it’s not impossible.

Gaming meet

Zeemote CEO Beth Marcus, a veteran technological pioneer whose previous company Exos sold its groundbreaking force-feedback technology to Microsoft in the 1990s, is hosting a panel session at next week’s Game Developers Conference entitled Disruptive Forces in Gaming. It will look into unheralded and unexpected technologies or ideas that came out of nowhere to shift the gaming roadmap. She’s clearly hoping to add one more to the list.

The Guardian