The Kindle is finally being taken a little more seriously as a games platform with Electronic Arts releasing a version of Scrabble for the eReader on Friday.
To date, there had been few diversions from the act of reading on the Kindle and its capabilities as a games platform, with its grayscale screen and lack of touch control, seemed limited.
Browsing through the Kindle store’s game offerings, there are crosswords, Sudoku and Solitaire from small publishers and a couple of free word games developed by Amazon itself.
But Scrabble for Kindle from EA Mobile costs $5 and represents the first attempt by a major video game publisher to tap the Kindle’s growing audience.
The game has three difficulty levels and three modes – solo, versus computer and “Pass N’ Play” for playing with friends. However, it does not take advantage of its connectivity to enable wireless multi-player gaming.
Statistics can be tracked from game to game and play can be paused and resumed.
The launch is part of EA’s strategy to extend the Scrabble franchise, in partnership with its owner Hasbro. It is on the iPhone and iPod touch, but has yet to arrive on Android devices.
It may be that the Kindle is restricted to digitised parlour games like this, featuring cards, words and numbers. But with colour and touch-control likely to feature in future versions, gaming on the Kindle could extend beyond this rudimentary casual category.
