BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion (RIM) is in Barcelona this week for the 2011 Mobile World Congress (MWC) show, and the company is working hard to hype its upcoming BlackBerry PlayBook tablet PC, the first version of which is expected sometime next month.
In addition to announcing two new, 4G versions of the BlackBerry PlayBook at MWC 2011, one HSPDA+ and another LTE tablet—but you already knew those were coming, right?–RIM released a demonstration video for one of the games that will ship along with the PlayBook when it goes to market: Need for Speed Underground.
For those unfamiliar with the Need for Speed franchise, it’s a sports-car racing game in which you drive ridiculously expensive vehicles around hairpin turns and other obstacles at breakneck speeds. Good times.
Need for Speed on the PlayBook is notable because it shows us, and BlackBerry developers, just what the tablet is capable of, from a gaming-perspective, thanks to its support for full OpenGL 2.0 graphics and the device’s accelerometer and other sensors, among other things. The game was also reportedly built entirely using RIM’s native BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK.
Overall, the graphics look sharp, the game play smooth. The future of gaming on the BlackBerry PlayBook seems promising, especially when you consider Need for Speed is only one of the first PlayBook games; developers are sure to come up with some even cooler and more advanced games after spending more time with the available development tools.
Thanks to CrackBerry.com, we also got a quick look at Tetris for the PlayBook, which is also expected to ship along with RIM’s first tablet PC. Tetris is a basic puzzle game, and there’s not much to say about it on the PlayBook at this point except that the game looks as smooth as ever.
It’s unclear at this point which additional games will ship with the BlackBerry PlayBook, but RIM showed some version of the popular Quake game on demo units of the PlayBook in the past, include the PlayBook in the RIM video above. RIM’s games Brick Breaker and Word Mole are also likely to find their ways to the PlayBook.
AS
via Inside BlackBerry, CrackBerry.com
Al Sacco covers Mobile and Wireless for CIO.com. Follow Al on Twitter @ASacco. Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter @CIOonline. Email Al at ASacco@CIO.com.
Next read this
Author: asacco, Managing Editor
Al Sacco was a journalist, blogger and editor who covers the fast-paced mobile beat for CIO.com and IDG Enterprise, with a focus on wearable tech, smartphones and tablet PCs. Al managed CIO.com writers and contributors, covered news, and shared insightful expert analysis of key industry happenings. He also wrote a wide variety of tutorials and how-tos to help readers get the most out of their gadgets, and regularly offered up recommendations on software for a number of mobile platforms. Al resides in Boston and is a passionate reader, traveler, beer lover, film buff and Red Sox fan.
