Read-only archive of the All About Symbian forum (2001–2013) · About this archive
All About Symbian Forum Archive

N-Gage 'Platform' To Expand Over Nokia's Smartphone Range

17 replies · 19,336 views · Started 18 May 2005

Ewan 18 May 2005, 00:28

Just in from E3 is Nokia's N-gage announcemnt. It's not the next N-Gage phone, but a change of direction for the the N-Gage. Essentially N-Gage will become a "feature" of a number of Nokia Smartphones. More Smartphones supporting the "Mobile Gaming Solution" will be available before the middle of 2006. We'll have more thoughts and reactions on this later. For now, here's the Press Release.

NOKIA PRESS RELEASE May 18, 2005
Nokia expands N-Gage quality gaming across smartphone portfolio
Making it easy to enjoy rich 3D and connected gaming with Nokia smartphones

Los Angeles, CA - Nokia today unveiled its plans for its evolution of connected mobile gaming, which will make it easy to search for, purchase and play high-quality mobile games using a range of Nokia smartphones. The aim of this next generation of mobile gaming is to expand the N-Gage platform's rich connected multiplayer experience across a wide range of Nokia's multimedia devices.

Based on the impressive processing power available in today's smartphones, Nokia's next generation mobile gaming solution includes enhanced 3D game graphics capability and offers user-friendly search, purchase and installation of high-quality rich games as well as connected gaming with instant access to a global mobile gaming community. Best of all, the solution works with a number of different Nokia smartphones, thus giving consumers the freedom to choose a multimedia device that best suits their individual needs.

"Over the past two years, we've seen the mobile gaming market grow by leaps and bounds both in terms of market interest and customer expectations," said Gerard Wiener, Director and General Manager, Games, Nokia. "With the N-Gage platform, we've been able to deliver a superior gaming experience to mobile gamers, but only on a small range of devices. Now we want to expand rich, connected mobile gaming across the Nokia smartphone range. In 2005, we expect to sell 25 million smartphones and we see the global smartphone market exceeding 250 million devices in 2008. We can continue with our N-Gage offering while helping to drive the adoption of mobile connected gaming at a broader level."

The first Nokia smartphones to support the new Nokia mobile gaming solution are expected to be in the market during the first half of 2006. Additional information on the title launch portfolio is expected to be available in September 2005. The goal is to have a broad spectrum of games to suit all tastes - from casual 'quick fix' gaming to more in-depth multi-user games.

Currently, consumers are often faced with a less than optimal mobile gaming experience, due in part to a lack of consistency. It can be hard to find and install games, game play is frequently disappointing and, therefore, consumer expectations are often not met. Through the expansion of its mobile gaming program, Nokia is providing a complete end-to-end solution, making it easy to find and purchase fully certified games that are built for a broad portfolio of smartphones and deliver on the promise of next generation, 3D connected mobile games.

"Due in part to the advent of the smartphone and the rapid development of other enabling technologies, the industry is now at a turning point where mobile game quality will increase exponentially, providing incredible experiences for consumers and tremendous opportunities for operators, publishers and developers," continues Wiener. "The N-Gage has led this movement to rich mobile games and the next logical step is for us to provide a simple solution based on the N-Gage experience that will deliver a rich, consistent, mobile games offering to millions of smartphones."

"The mobile gaming experience is becoming deeper, more immersive and more exciting. For us, this means that gamers can enjoy their favorite franchise and engage in its community at any time," said John Batter, VP and General Manager of EA Mobile. "Nokia can help us by making great devices that can unlock the potential of a great game."

When consumers buy a Nokia smartphone that supports the new Nokia mobile gaming solution, they gain access to their favorite games through their smartphone or their personal computer. Games have been certified to provide a consistent experience, ensuring a quality rich entertainment experience that consumers can count upon. Consumers can manage their mobile game collection via their PC, with an individual locker of purchased games to make it easy and reliable to track purchases or reinstall deleted games.

For developers, this means less effort spent creating dozens of versions of the same game. We will provide a robust development environment with the first set of tools expected to be available in Q4 2005 and a range of APIs native to the smartphone.

In addition, all mobile games available through this next generation Nokia solution will have advanced connectivity features, making connected mobile gaming easy over mobile networks via the N-Gage Arena, Nokia's global mobile gaming community.

For operators, this solution provides the opportunity to expand their current mobile gaming offering. Nokia is able to offer operators with a modular turnkey solution, including scalable investment options and community management that will assist in driving subscriber revenues.

No name user 18 May 2005, 01:39

English isn't my first language and I had some problems understanding this press release. I understand the idea of making N-gage gaming available to other Nokia smartphones, which I think is a very good idea, since most people don't want to have a "pure" gamephone, but a phone that looks more normal and that can play games like N-gage games. I am not one of them, I really like my N-gage QD.

BUT they state the following in the press release:
"Based on the impressive processing power available in today's smartphones, Nokia's next generation mobile gaming solution includes enhanced 3D game graphics capability and offers user-friendly search, purchase and installation of high-quality rich games as well as connected gaming with instant access to a global mobile gaming community."

They state the next generation mobile gaming solution... is that the next generation of N-gage or just "normal" N-gage games to other Nokia smartphones? I mean, everybody knows that most N-gage games are playable on other Symbian phones today already.

In my opinion the games on N-gage are ok in general, and very good for a mobile phone, but the technology used is already a few years old and I hope that they release a next generation N-gage platform, dated 2005! I really hope that we will see a new "N-gage 2", a pure game phone this or next year, because there are people who also wish to have pure game phone, as there are people who want a more normal smartphone. Your thoughts? I hope to see more news from Nokia in the next few days at E3. /Mika

Carto11 18 May 2005, 02:37

Sorry, everybody. Time to except it, this mean that N-Gage is dead.

krisse 18 May 2005, 06:24

Ewan, it's not just putting N-gage games on smartphones, it's putting NEXT GEN games on smartphones. The graphics demo video is clearly way beyond current N-gage, and the N-gage 2 is effectively going to be an armada of different Nokia next gen smartphones, beginning in 2006.

Carto11 wrote:Sorry, everybody. Time to except it, this mean that N-Gage is dead.

Umm... they're going to have next gen N-gage games on huge numbers of smartphones, and they've just said they're supporting the current gen N-gage until the end of 2006. How is that dead?

It's also time for you to accept you need to learn how to spell.

traktori 18 May 2005, 07:10

No name user wrote:...

In my opinion the games on N-gage are ok in general, and very good for a mobile phone, but the technology used is already a few years old and I hope that they release a next generation N-gage platform, dated 2005! I really hope that we will see a new "N-gage 2", a pure game phone this or next year, because there are people who also wish to have pure game phone, as there are people who want a more normal smartphone. Your thoughts? I hope to see more news from Nokia in the next few days at E3. /Mika


I believe as there are coming "a armada" of next gen gaming capable phones that at least one of them is "N-Gage 2" also. That means that those willing to buy just a gaming console can buy one and others wanting a combinated device can have that as well.

Algernon 18 May 2005, 08:03

The true product is the N-Gage arena, brand and the player-developer ecosystem anyway. The handsets are changing all the time.

krisse 18 May 2005, 08:12

No name user wrote:In my opinion the games on N-gage are ok in general, and very good for a mobile phone, but the technology used is already a few years old and I hope that they release a next generation N-gage platform

This has already happened. The new wave of N-gage compatible smartphones will be next generation too, they're effectively the N-Gage 2. As well as running N-gage games they'll also have a whole new range of Next Gen games, which will be announced in September.

Here's a graphics demo, the graphics are pretty similar to PlayStation Portable:

Next Generation graphics demo video

Algernon wrote:And the images of the new devices look nice too. (yes, they are there somewhere)

I don't think the images released are the actual next gen devices. I think they just used existing smartphones in photos to get across the concept of playing N-gage games on "normal" smartphones.

Algernon 18 May 2005, 08:22

krisse wrote:
I don't think the images released are the actual next gen devices. I think they just used existing smartphones in photos to get across the concept of playing N-gage games on "normal" smartphones.

Yes, the phones were existing smartphone, N91, 6630 and 6680.
But the concept gaming smartphone was nice.

J2theIZZO 18 May 2005, 08:23

:thumpdown

I think it's brave of Nokia to take this on, i'm still not convinced it will pay dividends for them, but time will tell.

If there was a "yawn" smiley, i'd use it
:dontknow:

No user name 18 May 2005, 09:50

Ok, thank you all for your explanations. Stating that N-gage is dead is the worst statement this E3...

I consider this move to be a very good and strategic move. Finally Nokia views the mobile phone game industry as they view the mobile phone industry, ie. you don't just have 1 (or at the moment 2) different handhelds available, but an array of different phones to choose from. This is how Nokia has 33% of the world market share on mobile phones, most people find a Nokia phone that suits them, normally there are several phones with almost the same functionality available, but the come in different packages.

Also, I am very glad to hear that it is a new generation of N-gage gaming. I believe we will see at least one "pure" N-gage phone in the near future, but it would be unwise to show it hear, since Nokia wants to emphasize the new concept of using the new N-gage platform on several phones.

I am very happy with the announcement, even though it means that I have to wait a year until I will change my N-gage QD... 😊

/Mika

zainman 18 May 2005, 10:02

i'm glad i never bought an ngage and my next phone will also support pure gaming, if the ngage or new smartphones are 3G as well which they will most probably be, it will also be easier to play games over the air and the ngage arena type softaware would be a huge success!

user namr 18 May 2005, 15:08

krisse wrote:This has already happened. The new wave of N-gage compatible smartphones will be next generation too, they're effectively the N-Gage 2. As well as running N-gage games they'll also have a whole new range of Next Gen games, which will be announced in September.

I don't think the images released are the actual next gen devices. I think they just used existing smartphones in photos to get across the concept of playing N-gage games on "normal" smartphones.

thats misleading, the future of the n-gage arena is on most new nokia smartphones, and they will not be called the n-gage2. read through what you are saying then release that all nokia is going to be doing now is producing higher quality cell phone games and they are not going to be calling them n-gage. no one takes regular cell phone games that seriously so the fact that they can be psp quality is null because unless they are expecting a huge turnaround in the mobile market place, it's not going to make a dent or change the handheld gaming world at all. the guy who said the n-gage is dead, is right.

nokia could have kept the niche they were building with the n-gage and made it a winner. but they decided that it's not worth it to stay focused on what gamers want and are tring to appease the masses. it's might make them a few extra bucks from the casual cell phone user, but it's not going to earn them any respect in the gaming world.

Algernon 18 May 2005, 16:05

Well, thats your opinion.
I'm starting saving for a N-gage compatible S60 imaging phone...

If you read the press release carefully, they do not call these smartphones N-gage's. Instead, they are careful to promise "N-gage quality gaming" on smartphones. (Which was just what Series 60 phone owners have been waiting for)

Now, why would they stop making mobile phones with gaming form factor?
And if they make mobile phones with game form factor, what are they going to call them?
Non-N-Gage-mobile-gaming-devices by Nokia ???
They could stop making phones altogether, if they do that...
:tongue:

konttori 20 May 2005, 12:52

Basically, when you think about it, S60 symbian games have had all along the possibility to be just as good as ngage games. But due to the inefficient distribution channels (while handango is pretty good, it's still not on par with the new nokia solution) the symbian games haven't been as popular as java games.

The great thing about this all seems to be that downloading content will be so much easier in the future. Nokia will be handling the distribution of the 'ngage' games, but hopefully they will also start to offer other games as well through the same channels. This might lead to a very nice distribution channel for smaller indie developers (ok, well maybe the ngage developers arent' that big either, but they are getting bigger all the time).

Any thoughts?

disco 15 Nov 2005, 07:52

Nokia is expanding N-Gage to N-Series, and not other phones like 6630 or 6680.