Where the heck are all the phones?
Until the Go Play event on the 29th of August, Nokia had completely avoided ever actually saying exactly which phones would be compatible with the Next Gen N-Gage platform.
At the event, here's what they announced: the Nokia N73, N81, N81 8GB, N93, N93i, N95, N95 8GB.
Seven phones in all:
But here's the odd thing, there seems to be no technical reason for these seven to have been chosen while other compatible phones with similar specifications have been left out. The N73 is the oldest phone on the list, and has the weakest hardware. There are quite a few phones released after the N73 which (from a technical point of view) could also run Next Gen N-Gage games, yet are not officially compatible.
In fact there are nineteen Nokia phones which use the same Symbian S60 3rd Edition software platform, with the same screen resolution, and with the same or better hardware than the N73.
Why the heck is Nokia allowing only seven of the nineteen below to work with the games?
Excuses, excuses
So, why are so many owners of technically compatible phones being shut out of Next Gen N-Gage?
Well, for the Eseries devices, perhaps Nokia is worried that making them compatible with a gaming service could damage the Eseries brand's business-oriented image, although Nokia's quite happy to sell these models to ordinary people (and it seems a lot of ordinary people are happy to buy them). That would rule out the E50, E61, E61i, and E65, but that still leaves fifteen phones:
Then, perhaps someone at Nokia thought that for the sake of reliability they ought to thoroughly test the platform only on the most popular existing models. That would rule out the N77 and N92 which have only had a limited release due to the slower-than-expected roll-out of DVB-H mobile television services (these two models have DVB-H compatible television receivers). This leaves us with thirteen phones:
So what's the excuse for six of these phones not being able to use Next Gen N-Gage? They have the hardware, they run the same S60 platform, they're intended for consumers, and they've been released properly, what's the problem?
The most baffling phone to leave out is the 6120 Classic which has become a surprise hit for Nokia. All About N-Gage's sister site All About Symbian has consistently had huge numbers of visitors to its 6120 Classic review months after its publication, and even the preview unboxing article drew an incredible amount of attention. It's had excellent reviews, it's launched for a very low price, there's a lot of public interest, and it seems very possible that the 6120 Classic could become the best-selling smartphone in the world.
If it's destined to sell millions or even tens of millions, why is the 6120 Classic being excluded from Next Gen N-Gage?
Is this about internal politics?
One reason for its exclusion might be that the 6120 Classic isn't an Nseries phone, and neither are most of the other phones being excluded. Nseries is a Nokia "sub-brand" given to their more expensive smartphone models, but it is not technically separate from their normal numbered smartphones such as the 6120 or 6110. They all run Symbian S60 3rd Edition, and from a computing point of view a numbered Nokia smartphone is no different to an Nseries Nokia smartphone. In fact they even have similar hardware, with the cheap-as-chips 6120 Classic using a processor that's as fast as the much more expensive N95, and far faster than the ageing N73.
But... Nseries are made by Nokia's Multimedia division, who also developed the Next Gen N-Gage platform. The numbered Nokia smartphones are made by Nokia's Mobile Phones division, who have nothing to do with N-Gage. Is it possible that Nokia Multimedia doesn't want Nokia Mobile Phones to benefit from the Next Gen N-Gage platform? Or is Nokia Mobile Phones being snobbish about N-Gage because it's made by a "rival" division?
If internal company politics is behind the compatibility list, the irony is that all of these divisions are due to merge very shortly, as Nokia is putting all of its manufacturing into one Devices unit, with software development (such as the N-Gage platform) getting its own separate Services unit.
How different will the list look in a year's time?
To be fair to Nokia, they've never said that this list of seven compatible phones was the end of the story. In fact they've always said that the number of compatible phones will expand over time, that this list is just the beginning.
However, it's unclear whether they mean that the list will only expand as new S60 3rd Edition models are launched, or whether they intend to add more existing phone models to the compatibility list.
If they don't eventually add every possible phone though, it would be an odd business strategy to throw away potential customers for no real reason. Why not make every Nokia smartphone with suitable hardware compatible with the platform? What would be the downside of increasing the Next Gen N-Gage's userbase to its technical maximum?
How could it possibly harm Nokia or Next Gen N-Gage to make all technically compatible phones officially compatible?
"They restrict features to sell the more expensive models, don't they?"
The biggest mistake that Nokia's marketing department could make with N-Gage is if they think restricting availability of the Next Gen N-Gage platform is going to help them. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the games market.
It's logical if a manufacturer wants to restrict certain features to certain models to make them sell better, that's how a lot of manufacturing works. This makes sense if we're talking about features like cameras or GPS receivers or video editing software.
However, a gaming platform feature is totally different. For a gaming platform to succeed, it needs one thing above all else, which is as large a userbase as possible, as quickly as possible. The bigger a platform's userbase, the more games it gets, the more people want to get access to that platform, which makes the userbase even bigger. It's imperative to make a platform grow as fast as possible so that this virtuous circle can be brought to life.
If Nokia deliberately restricts the Next Gen N-Gage feature to a few select phones, it will actually diminish the value of the Next Gen N-Gage feature itself. Exclusivity is exactly the wrong approach when building a games platform, it's exactly the opposite of what should be done.
A still from Nokia's Next Gen N-Gage video at the Go Play event