The Potential of N-Gage: We've hardly scratched the surface so far
When is a launch not a launch?
In theory the N-Gage platform had its official launch earlier this month, when the full non-beta version of the N-Gage application was made available to download for the N81, N82 and N95. These phones have sold tens of millions, so the userbase for N-Gage games should already greatly exceed that of the first gen N-Gage.
However, it's not quite that simple. Because N-Gage isn't built into any phones yet, because you have to manually install it yourself, the actual number of people who might potentially use the N-Gage service is very much smaller than it should be.
Until the N-Gage app is part of the standard firmware on N-Gage-compatible phones, the following kinds of people may own compatible phones but still not use the N-Gage service:
- People who've never heard of N-Gage
- People who have heard of N-Gage but think it's still a dedicated gaming phone
- People who don't realise N-Gage is now available for their phone
- People who would like N-Gage on their phone but don't know how to manually install S60 applications
- People who aren't really interested in gaming and/or N-Gage enough to install the app, but who might be tempted to try if the demos and games were just a click away
Making the N-Gage app a built-in part of all N-Gage compatible phones would turn all of the above into potential N-Gage users.
It works, but how many will bother installing N-Gage themselves?
Getting into the habit
Nokia's made some very big moves over the past year, they've spent literally billions on developing online services including mapping (Nokia Maps), music (Nokia Music Store), file sharing (Twango and MOSH) and of course gaming (N-Gage), all under the umbrella name Ovi. The idea of this is probably to give Nokia a profitable path into the future when mobile phones are unprofitably cheap devices that everyone owns but no one really cares about, like cookers or television sets.
If Nokia wants people to use their services they have to make it as easy as possible to try the services. N-Gage at the moment is far too difficult to get at.
Imagine if N-Gage was on the menu of every Nokia smartphone straight out of the box. That would be about 50 or 60 million phones each year, each with the N-Gage icon on their main menu. Anyone who had even the faintest interest in trying video gaming would be able to get a free demo or buy a full game with just a few clicks, wherever they were. At the end of the second year there might be over 100 million devices with the N-Gage icon on their main menu. Obviously not everyone will want to use a gaming service, but no gaming platform has ever made it so easy to try or buy games.
Aha, that's more like it! Just a few clicks and you're gaming. No app installation needed.
Expanding gaming not just demographically but geographically
When Nintendo's DS and Wii consoles managed to achieve unprecedented sales success with non-traditional demographics (older gamers, female gamers, non-gamers etc), it was hailed as a revolution, and in a way it was. However, the vast majority of people on this planet still don't play video games, and the real challenge in expanding gaming is perhaps more geographic than demographic.
Arguably the most significant recent development regarding N-Gage was the announcement of the Nokia 5320 XpressMusic phone which will include N-Gage compatibility. It's the cheapest Nokia smartphone so far, with a launch price of just 220 euros plus taxes, which is about half the price of the recently-released N81 yet with similar technical specifications. Clearly the price of N-Gage-compatible phones is falling sharply, and one could imagine that in 2009 we will see N-Gage phones launching for significantly less than 200 euros. On top of that, smartphones are becoming harder and harder to distinguish from normal "dumb" phones as their interfaces and abilities are becoming so similar.
If smartphone prices keep dropping and smartphone technology becomes ever closer to normal phone technology, it could be that within five years all of Nokia's phones will be smartphones, which means all of them could be N-Gage compatible. If Nokia's sales continue at the levels they've been in the past few years, that would mean 300 to 400 million N-Gage-compatible phones every year (which is about ten times more than all games consoles put together). Most interestingly, the majority of these sales would be in countries where traditional gaming platforms like consoles and PCs have never sold well. Phone gaming could be the first taste of video gaming for many people, so they will approach it without any preconceived notions about what a game should be like.
And that's just Nokia. If N-Gage is even mildly successful you can bet that other phone makers will either join in or start a rival service, particularly Sony Ericsson who have access to the PlayStation brand. If all phone makers introduced a gaming platform on all their models, there would be over one billion gaming-service-compatible phones sold every year, dwarfing all other gaming platforms put together including the PC.
It's notoriously difficult to predict the future of technology, and even harder to predict the future of particular brands or companies. We've all seen the "curse of Blade Runner", where most of the real life corporations featured in the 1982 film disappeared soon afterwards (Pan Am, Atari, Bell Telephone). However, if N-Gage doesn't manage to turn gaming into a truly global pursuit, something like it probably will. The mobile phone has entered everyone's lives in a way that no other gadget has ever managed, it's not just a rich world plaything but an essential tool in even the poorest countries. Computing and the internet will become truly global thanks to the mobile phone, and this writer thinks the the same thing will happen with gaming.
And this doesn't just have to be restricted to portable gaming either, TV Out is starting to appear on more and more smartphones including some cheaper models, which blurs the line between portable and home gaming.
The first System Rush Evolution demo running on a Nokia N95