With no more solid plans announced for a future gaming console, by any of the "big three", we might as well turn our eyes over to smaller manufacturers of gaming platforms and try to guess what they have in store for our insatiable playfulness. One name that surely comes to mind when thinking about handheld gaming is Nokia, with their N-Gage platform. But what about Dell, could they also be thinking about tapping this increasingly popular market? Well, they might be. They just might...

A couple of stories posted yesterday on Pocket Gamer and Engadget are speculating that both companies are indeed planning new gaming devices. For Nokia, that could either mean some sort of N-Gage 2; or, according to Pocket Gamer, more of a multimedia device than a dedicated gaming platform ("an iTunes / Xbox Live-style software solution and development framework targeting Nokia's smartphones", as they put it).

Whatever it is, Nokia will reportedly announce it at this year's GDC (Games Developer Conference), which will be taking place during March 5-7, in San Francisco. Speaking to the Mobile Entertainment magazine, Nokia's head of games Jaakko Kaidesoja said a GDC unveiling of their new device was highly likely, however "there are no plans for new a N-Gage device at the moment", he added. Pretty confusing if you ask me.

As for Dell, Engadget only has a very vague hint at an upcoming gaming device, based on a comment made by Dell's worldwide head of gaming, Abizar Vahkaria, in the PC Plus magazine:

The worldwide head of gaming for Dell, Abizar Vahkaria, was recently asked by UK publication PC Plus whether Dell was planning to release some sort of gaming-oriented handheld, to which Vahkaria replied: "You know, that's definitely one that's on the radar screen, but we have no plans to talk about anything today."

That's all right Abizar, we can wait until tomorrow. Or... whenever.

(N.B. Archive text, links removed)