Ever since Greg Kasavin's posting about how he'd love for Apple to get into the games business I keep irrationally going to the Apple website desperately hoping to find an iPod game system for sale. Of course there never is one there, only regular iPods and overpriced PCs (there're no games to play, why would I pay for the X800 video card in a machine that can't do much more than surf the web? Yeah yeah, flame on).

The idea that's gotten stuck in my craw is of a handheld game system with no cartridge port, only a Wi-Fi connection, a USB port, and 1GB of internal flash memory (at least). I don't want it to be a PSP though, I want it to be a GBA. If it's a GBA the games will be small enough to download from the internet off of an iTunes like site for games. They'll also be easy enough to develop that there'll be a lot of them for sale, and for cheap.

I want the system to be open for everyone to develop for, like the PC is. While anyone can find the information to program for the GBA online, the only way to get the dev kit and debugger is to pay Nintendo $7000. That's not too steep of a fee for a company (under 2 months salary for an average GBA programmer), but for most individuals and small garage dev teams it's cost prohibitive. Why be greedy, you're going to be making money off of the games these people will make?

Nintendo wouldn't make a game system like this of course. They came up with the way of doing things that's working so well (for Sony) now. Hence, I keep irrationally visiting the Apple website.