The inclusion of an N-Gage hot title in the N93's ROM didn't escape Ewan's beady eye. In this editorial he argues that with the N70 and N93 each containing an N-Gage game, Nokia's next generation gaming platform is well and truly 'in beta'.
Read on in the full article.
I just don't buy this editorial at all, every signal Nokia has given out since the announcement of the next gen of gaming has said the platform would be on normal symbian phones, not on a gaming-oriented symbian phone. Even Gerard Wiener was saying that in official web-chats, that they would try and build up a userbase on the "normal" phones before considering whether to bring out another gaming-specific one.
I agree with the previous poster. The N-gage in terms of hardware is a dead issue. Nokia admitted to it being an abysmal failure. Why do you keep bringing up the dead? The "fan-boyism" of this site is sometimes mind boggling.
Yes I too am sceptical there'll be a gaming phone so soon. I think what we might have to wait for the true next generation stuff (i.e. not the recasted N-Gage stuff) before we get a real gaming phone and that could be 2 years away and even then I think it will be only semi gaming focused (maybe some extra buttons etc).
I think the first two commenters misinterpreted Ewan's meaning. I don't think he was expecting an N-Gage Mk 2 or anything like that. But in the same way that the N91 is branded a music phone, while being just as much a full 3rd edition smartphone, there might well be a game-focussed smartphone with a tweaked layout to facilitate games. And all the while, Nokia will slip more and more N-Gage stable games into regular handsets.
And, guys, please stop with these continual patronising accusations of this being a 'fan-boy' site. Ewan, Rafe and I are professional journalists. While we may have a bias towards Symbian, because we know it well and because we've used it for years, we do try and stay objective and where something stinks we'll say so.
You wouldn't believe how many products I have to abandon reviews for because they're complete rubbish and un-reviewable.... Sometimes I publish anyway if the author doesn't look like doing anything about it, but usually I give them a chance to rectify the problems and hopefully everybody benefits in the end.
I have 4 Symbian-powered handsets here at the moment. And two Windows Mobile powered ones. But the only time I criticise one OS over the other, or one device over another it's with good reason and good evidence.
Steve Litchfield
Steve's right (and I should have been clearer too) - read the editorial - it is not saying there'll be N-Gage 2 it is saying N-Gage platform is sort of creeping out into real phone.
What's significant is that Nokia's gaming efforts are still very much alive. While there isn't going to be a new N-Gage there are going to be phone that can run games branded as N-Gage. That it what Ewan is saying is previewed by the presence of System Rush on the N93. Incidentally Snakes 3D also looks like it will be on a number of S60 3rd Edition phones.
To clarify what I said earlier - I think the ability to play N-Gage games will be akin to the XpressShare, XpressPrint, XpressMusic brands. i.e. not every S60 phone will have it. It may require a certain button configuration or screen orientation (i.e. a hardware spec similar to the requirement for 3.5mm jack in XpressMuisc phones). There's a chance there be a gaming focused phone (like the N91 has a music focus), but I wouldn't hold by breath... 2007/2008 may see more of focus on gaming from Nokia so anything is possible.
Sometimes I get the impression that some people would like Nokia to behave in the following way: After the rather slow start of the N-Gage gaming platform, drop down and play dead. How dare Nokia analyzes the situation instead, goes back to the drawing board and then refines the strategy! That's not the way a "decent" company behaves!
I think Nokia realized something that those people did'nt, namely that an awful lot may be at stake. A few more years down the line for most people their phone might be their good-enough digital camera, their good-enough portable music player *and* their good-enough portable gaming system as well.
Who will care anymore about the "abysmal failure" of the very first N-Gage devices if Nokia can get it right in the second or the third attempt and establish the dominant platform for portable gaming?
I agree with Ewan. The latest phones are already capable of playing some impressive games. I would be surprised if Nokia did not bring out a games orientated device even if under the hood its nothing nore than a N series phone.
like an n70 with remapped controls & remapped screen?or the ability to change the screen/controls when playing games?kinda how smart movie works with its landscape orientation but when exiting it it becomes a normal regular sized phone
and like steve said stop criticising this site for being a "fan boy" site. the site is called all about symbian so the general incline is to be about symbian.its int eh god damn title for god sakes.if you dont like it dont come here.if the site was named all about smart phones then i could understand but it isnt.steve & the gang give a good representation of windows mobile(or whatever its called) vs symbian. in steves reviews he puts them head to head & normally overall symbian wins but there are places where wm trumps symbian.symbian is a lot older(i think) so it has had more time to mature therefore overall it is going to be slightly better
Being a developer, just a small comment:
if S60v3 breaks binary compatibility with previous versions, it is not so hard to make some games which run on the whole pre v3 range, from the 7650 to the N70. So if N Gage games were coded properly, no or minimal rework would be required... Which is a very good thing... Why on earth did they decide to break binary compatibility ?
ive always thorught. if you use the sdk for both (pre v3 & past v3) then you should be able to say copy & paste the code, well msot of the code with small changes since only the decomplier has changed.but would only work on apps that didnt need to be symbian signed.
i think they did that to try & move the range on & so that it was harder for malware to attack & spread itself.
Surely the future of mobile gaming (if it has one) will lie in the hands of Sony-Erricsson? Sony have a huge hit product with the Sony PSP and while it is unlikely that they would share any really valuable information or secrts so to speak with Erriccson in order ti incorporate a really powerful gaming system into a phone and damge their own market, surely ir is possible that they would put some of this gaming technology into producing a phone capable of playing high quality games while not investing so much as to ruin a market for the PSP??? Or possibly even a smaller PSP, with touch screen rather than extra buttons and the capability of voice calls, texting, emails etc.... all the rest of the 'essentials'?
misterblister wrote:Or possibly even a smaller PSP, with touch screen rather than extra buttons and the capability of voice calls, texting, emails etc.... all the rest of the 'essentials'?
Do you think that Sony really wants to sell you a PSP? Hell, no. They loose money when they do so! For almost all current gaming devices the "bill of materials", the pure total cost of all hardware components, is already higher than the retail sale price of the machines. Losses of 100$ per device (at least in the early months of the product life cycle) are common. See e.g. the following articles:
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=nifea&&sid=a05dggw2V4PI
http://nintendoinsider.com/site/EEEZuAypVuTuOJPzyb.php
What Sony really wants is selling you games, and lots of them, either directly or through software houses where they profit from every copy sold through licensing deals. Don't think in terms of game devices - those get less and less important - but think in terms of "platforms" on the one hand and "brands" on the other hand.
So, if a future Sony Ericsson P995 (with Sony Ericsson as a strong brand) is compatible with the PSP gaming platform i.e. runs PSP games, Sony won't care that you do not buy a classic standalone PSP and will happily sell you one PSP game after the other for your phone, with a handsome profit for each one.
The same is true for Nokia, although to a lesser extent, because I think they make a profit from the sale of a phone, and not a loss. But it might well be that the sale of one or two N-Gage games for your phone would nearly double the total profit that they make from it.
rbrunner you are true that when a console satrts selling they suually make a loss but as the price of technology drops the start making profits. the ps2 wouldve been making a loss when it first satrted selling but now its probs making a 50% profit. thats how they make up the deficit as it were. true thye make money thouigh licensing but not as mcuh as thruohg selling a console a few months after its been released
Sony would love it if everyone bought a psp, a phone a mp3 walkman, a laptop, a PDA etc..... but that just wont work when other companies have a product with all of the capabilities available with these products in one device. One device will never (in my opinion anyway) be superior to all of these devices alone but we always look at something smaller and shinier its just human nature. A phone wont have a 20gb hard drive for music, the digital camera will always have better quality photos and a camcorder take better quality videos, a laptop will be better for emails and internet access than a phone, even if the phone has wi-fi. Its like the sofa-bed - its not as comfy to sit on as a normal sofa and it is not as nice to sleep on as a bed.... So what i was saying was that if evry major phone company was not only incorporating gaming but making gaming THE major feature then Sony would have the advantage, having already got the best most high tech mobiloe gaming device on the market.
Well, yes, that is the great "convergence" controversy. There are people who say "single, dedicated devices will always be better and continue to sell well", and there are people who say "the phone will slowly delegate more and more devices to niche-status", and both groups have good arguments.
I find both viewpoints very interesting, and I can hardly wait to see how the whole thing will play out. As for my personal opinion, you probably already guessed where I stand: I believe in 5 to 10 years the phone will pretty much bury everything else.
Why? The magic word for me is good enough. The phone does not have to be better than an iPod (and probably won't be, agreed), it only has to be a good-enough music playing device. Likewise for gaming. And the phone has one distinctive advantage that no other device can claim: When people leave home they will never leave their phone behind, come what may. Only a small group of hardcore gamers or music lovers can truthfully say the same about their dedicated devices.
agree with you totally rbrunner.just Hope that convergence doesn't kill off the mp3 player market like it did the digi cam market.i actually want an extra devices since im serious about my music.
misterblister that was what i was trying to get at aswel. Sony would love for us all to buy these devices of them but because other companies have converged them they(sony) have had to converge to at a compromise.
sony make digi cams(rather expensive ones aswel) so they dont want to stop selling/making them but have to since no1 is buying as there bulti into our smartphones forcing sony to do the same.as more and more convergence goes on these big companies with their fingers in everything will lose money since they will have to converge selling us only 1 device instead of 2
i agree with steff2632 in hoping that the phone doesnt kill the mp3 market. i got a Sony walkman (20gb) at christmas and love it. Its looks nice and has great sound quality and is smaller than my N6680. I listen to music every morning and afternoon on the train and im streaming radio on my pc most nites if im working or just browsing tinternet. Sometimes i dont bring it with me if... and put an album or tw on my fone but i wouldnt make it a permanent replacement. That leads to a question - probably best suited to another forum/thread but do Sony (erricson) not have another advantage in their atrac format for music - its copyright so no other company can use it meaning there phones can have twice as much music (even more than if u use oggplay). I rip music to my pc using the atrac software and if i wnt to put it on my phone i find i have to convert it to aac/mp3/wma.... bit of a pain in the ass really is ther an app that supports this format?! I just looked again at the N93 and the way it opens for viewing loooks very like the ds... apart from the touchscreen... but both can support wi-fi, tv. Altho an N-ds as steff2632 suggested earlier would probably require nintendo to produce more 'adult' games. If no i wudnt buy a phone bundled with nintendogs but Grand Theft Auto or Fifa would be more appealing...
BitRabbit wrote:Being a developer, just a small comment:if S60v3 breaks binary compatibility with previous versions, it is not so hard to make some games which run on the whole pre v3 range, from the 7650 to the N70. So if N Gage games were coded properly, no or minimal rework would be required... Which is a very good thing... Why on earth did they decide to break binary compatibility ?
misterblister atrac really is amazing a full 4mb of mp3 compressed into kbs i was so shocked. shame that no other devices can use it though sure as hell would kick acc & mp3 out the water. but the main reason i want a separate mp3 player is cus of space no smartphone has a 20gb (i know tht sounds dumb for a smart phone, but if its su8pposed to be a music devices & compete with ipods & stuff i think it should have that kind of space). i like to have all my music with me since theres songs on my pc which i have forget about,but if they were all on my mp3 player i could just put it on random & listen. i regret getting rid of my sony hd-5😞
ATRAC3 is no more efficient than OggPlay or WMA at similar bit rates, and possibly worse.
Ogg/WMA at 64kbps is approximately 'CD quality' for Pop music. Or make them 128kbps if you're a classic music fan 8-) [cf double those rates for traditional MP3]
Steve Litchfield
Will someone try to improve battery performance with all this convergence?..
steve you are quite right just never comapred them.
deniz the battry life i thinkhas been improved with the n93 & up (n72, n71) these all ahbe a new battery.
the battery life on my n70 sucks big time have to recharge everyday