Nintendo executives acknowledged Sony's planned incursion onto Game Boy's turf but didn't seem too worried about it during the company's press conference. "We don't feel there's anything we need to be concerned about now," said Nintendo president Saturo Iwata, suggesting the PSP would be priced too high to duplicate the mass-market penetration of the Game Boy. Iwata also confessed to disappointment in lower-than-expected sales last year for Nintendo's GameCube console, but he said the company was hard at work on reversing the slide. Steps include boosting production of self-published games, enhancing relations with third-party developers and creating many more games that link the GameCube and the Game Boy Advance. That includes an upcoming Game Boy Advance version of the smash PC game "The Sims", which will allow players to swap characters between the handheld and GameCube versions of the game. George Harrison, a vice president at Nintendo of America, noted that much of the competition's success has been built on socially questionable games such as the street-crime romp "Grand Theft Auto 3". He promised Nintendo wouldn't go down that alley. "Mario will never start shooting hookers," he vowed. Nokia is also betting on the market for luxury handheld game players. The Finnish mobile phone giant revealed final details of its N-Gage combination game player/mobile phone/MP3 player, which will go on sale worldwide on 7 October, priced at $299. Among those highlighting the need for the N-Gage, which can wirelessly connect game players for multiplayer action, was game developer John Romero, co-creator of the influential shooter "Doom". He said N-Gage will let gamers have a PC-type experience wherever they are and will jumpstart the nascent market for games on wireless devices. "We really believe the future of gaming is mobile," said Romero, who helped create one of the initial releases for N-Gage. "Up until now, cell phones have just looked like cell phones, not really cool gaming devices."
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