Portable gaming, now with more cellphone contracts!

So Sony is allegedly readying a PSPGo with a cellphone bolted on, courtesy Sony Ericsson. Gaming is changed forever! The 3DS is doomed!

I kid, I kid. I think. More seriously, word is Nintendo and Nokia had a similar arrangement back in the day that never materialized, for reasons unknown (the device even went through the R&D process!). This isn’t exactly new territory, in other words.

Still, it led me to ponder how portable gaming would look if the major players (Nintendo and Sony) suddenly started selling cellphone contracts alongside their portables. Sony, obviously, is seriously considering it, perhaps as some kind of new tactic to crack Nintendo’s multi-decade dominance over the portable space. If there’s one thing customer surveys and consumer trends show, it’s that gamers want more 2-year contract lock-in with their portable gaming experiences. Good luck.

As we already know, Nintendo, with the 3DS, is going to go with an always on wifi platform where 3D portables will talk to one another like chatty best friends, should they sense their own kind nearby. No subscription plans there—but what if there were?

What if we lived in a world where two-year cellphone contracts were the norm for portable gaming? How would you feel? What benefits would there be, in your opinion, with this arrangement? The iPhone and Android devices have a ton of games, true, but they still remain Leatherman devices incapable of making a serious play at Nintendo’s piece of the portable pie. At least, that’s how I see it. Weigh in, won’t you?