Virtual pet craze moves to mobile

Not content with friends and work colleagues interrupting you with calls and texts? Or maybe you work alone and have no friends? In either case, what you need is a virtual pet to look after, and what better place to find one than on your mobile.

Bandi, the company responsible for Tamagotchi, has created My Little Dogs for Living Mobile who launched 3D and 2D versions of the game today. Both feature the same game play: a requirement to play with, pet, and clean up after your virtual dog who will reward you by looking pleased and doing virtual tricks. The 3D version is for higher-end handsets which can support the increased level of cuteness only possible in three dimensions.

It's easy to mock such pointless silliness, but Nintendogs has sold over 2.5m copies in Europe, so there is money in creating responsibility-driven cuteness, and in many ways looking after a virtual dog has got to be better than slaying hordes of laser-toting aliens.

And unlike a real dog, you can always delete it when you're bored, assuming you can face its eyes looking up at you while you're doing so. ®