Ewan's afraid that press slamming of the original N-Gage may find echoes in its coverage of Nokia's next-generation gaming platform and any new gaming-specific hardware. He urges Nokia to roll the platform and hardware out quickly, widely and confidently.
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I don't know if they have to make a song and dance about it really, S60 phones are selling like hotcakes anyway so all they really need to do is add the game purchasing software to them and advertise whatever icon the software uses heavily. "Click here for games" or whatever.
I also don't think they should roll it out quickly, because they need to have a good lineup of games right at the beginning, which was one of the key mistakes with the N-Gage. It took a year for the first batch of really good N-Gage games to appear, but by then a lot of people had lost interest and dismissed it as a ports-only system.
The time is wrong to launch a gaming-specific device, the market is sewn up by the DS for gameplay and the PSP for graphics, and in any case Nokia will have a tough time getting third party support until they have a large userbase. The easiest way for them to get this userbase is NOT to make game-specific phones, but just carry on making "normal" S60 models which also include the gaming platform's software. These sell tens of millions every year, and after the first 12 months they should have a larger userbase than any other handheld. Within the first 24 months they'll probably have a larger userbase than all handhelds put together.
I do think they should drop the "N-Gage" name though, it's a great system with great games but it has a terrible reputation which will do the next gen platform more harm than good. There's no shame in dropping a system name, after all Nintendo didn't carry on making NESes or Famicoms and Sega didn't carry on making Mega Drives. By far the strongest brand to promote this with is Nokia itself, and perhaps the service should be called something straightforward like "Nokia Games" or (if the service is restricted to Nseries handsets) "Nseries Games".
I agree with krisse. The industry may have been bruised abit, but it really shouldnt hurt the rollout of new games or a new infrastructure...afterall they arent the only company with bad press (read Microsoft v EU).
What they should do is get their fingers out, and provide for the line of very powerful smartphones they already have and let the consumers know about it via some intigrated distribution meathods. Create a software that comes with PC Suite which includes a direct visual interface that shows a list of game titles availabe for download, for a fee of course. Just something easy to access for the average N70 owner.
The N-Gage name may be a butt of jokes in the industry but i really doubt that average joe knows that, though i do agree that the N-Gage name showul be revamped, renamed preferabely.
No too speedy rollouts, but prompt ones with interesting titles that work well on the phones.
All is not lost.
Nokia does intend to sell games via a program in the phone of course, they gave details of the service at E3 in May, and you can see a video demonstrating the concept here:
http://pandora.luxus.fi/e3blog/e3_06/video/32f752c4bd6043ef977db2ff0b482527.swf.aspx
I undestand your commentaries, and agree with the gerenal idea. I have both N-Gages, and are wonderfull devices. Stable, resistant and, for a Game, PIM, Phone, GPS Navigator, mp3, and other things, cheap, very, very cheap! Nokia, is in the mobile device business, like MS in PC business, a giant enterprise with dominance power. And, also because that, a lot of press, if can talk bad of them, they do it. N-Gage, original one, with side talking, and inside MMC cards, just gave the perfect subject to talk about... bad! Now, to ways are possible, make a N-Gage brand name for games, the button, like krisse said, or do a new device, with horizontal orientation, without the idiot mistakes donne the first time! Lets wait and see!
Does anyone of you know if there already are playable game / technology demos of these next generation games? I know Nokia N93 is supposed to be the first device to support these next generation games, so I'd like to try something.
One game comes with N93, but itsn't that special yet. I checked N-Gage Gamestore in Nokia Software Market ( http://www.softwaremarket.nokia.com/?n-g_main.html ), but it still only offers games for N-Gage QD and Original.
Tero
Edited: typos
No, as far as I know, none of the games are available. Calling SRE one of the new games is a bit of a push. Its a limited demo really (albeit graphically quite impressive) when compared to the original system rush.
Actually we probably wont see these being demoed (i.e. new games) until NMC.
The failure of the N-Gage was solely the fault of Nokia, not the press. The chief problems with using S60 phones as gaming devices are the keypad layout and portrait screen orientation. Standard S60 phones have no clear advantages for gaming usages over phones from other manufacturers.