In another excellent article, AAS's krisse rounds up everything you ever wanted to know about Nokia's plans for the next generation of N-Gage. We've already had a taste of it on the N93's System Rush Evolution demo, but what else is on the way?
Read on in the full article.
First off, thanks for this well written and informative piece on the future of Nokia's next gen gaming. However, I'd like to rise a valid issue that I feel NEEDS mentioning in this article:
If the 3D chips are intended for use with the Next Gen platform, then we already know two of the phone models that will support the Next Gen: the Nokia N93 and the Nokia N95.
There's lots of talk about N93 and N95 being the (known) Nokia Next Gen gaming phones with the 3D-chip. Evidently they've already pre-installed and published the "System Rush Evolution" demo on the N93. Many of us have seen the real time rendered clips of "One"; show-cased on the N93 and bragged about by Nokia (and rightly so).
But fact is that the demo of SRE is playable on the N93 for one reason only; they've chosen to only release a small part of the "racing"-mode of the game that only needs single joypad inputs at a time to function. The screenshots clearly show there is shooting involved in the game. But because of a silly bug on the "Nokia flagship" N93, pressing the joypad while "shooting" with another button on the keypad is not possible. Nokia calls this "no multi button support" and to date no one seems to be able to answer if this will or can be fixable on the N93.
Reality is, none of the more action oriented games like "Skyforce" or console emulators are even playable on the N93 due to this bug. Not even the simultaneous button press shortcuts in the web browser Opera or resolution mode changes in ScummVM (to mention a couple) work due to this. I'm sad to say that this renders it pretty much useless for most gaming, except maybe "Tetris" (if you can live with not turning and moving your block at the same time).
Now, do you still consider the N93 a device supporting "Next Gen" gaming, or even just gaming for that matter? I know it was advertised as such by showing off SRE and other demos and talking about its 3D capabilities. I don't blame anyone for believing it, because I believed it myself. However, I think Nokia need to be confronted with this and give its customers some kind of statement on if this ever will be fixed on the N93. Until then I have no other option than to call it false advertising and continue to feel pissed off each time I read an article where "N93" and "Next Gen" are mentioned together.
AAS-mods, what is your opinion on this? Could you interview someone @ Nokia about this?
GoodCop,
About the N93, I didn't say it WOULD be part of the Next Gen, I said it MIGHT be, because it has a Next Gen demo and a 3D chip. That's just speculation, it's not known fact. I can try to make this more clear in the article if you like.
Also, I don't think Nokia actually mentioned gaming or 3D in any of its N93 advertising. The N93's official website and tech specs don't mention the 3D chip for example, and they also don't mention games at all:
http://www.nokia.com/nseries/index.html?loc=inside,main_n93
It's only really been the unofficial tech sites like AAS that talked about that side of things. Don't think that unofficial speculation is definitely going to come true, unofficial sites can just guess at stuff that hasn't been announced yet. Sometimes they're right, sometimes they're wrong, and until something's officially announced it can always be changed at the last minute.
As for the no-multiple-keypresses bug, the N93 (along with all new Nseries and Eseries devices) has support for the user updating its firmware through the internet, over the air or through their PC. I assume the problems you mention are in the firmware rather than the hardware, so Nokia could issue a new version of the firmware.
The new version could be downloaded when the user first uses their Next Gen account, in a similar way to the PlayStation Portable whose games update the firmware automatically. Don't forget, there's still three to nine months before the Next Gen actually launches, which is plenty of time to come up with a fix.
But as I said in the article, the actual models which will support Next Gen haven't been announced yet. We can't be sure of anything until Nokia makes an official statement about it.
The N93 might support it, it might not. We just don't know yet.
Jules,
Rafe already interviewed someone from Nokia about this topic, but the interview hasn't been posted yet. Most of the Next Gen details that AAS asked Nokia about are still under wraps or else undecided, so we still have to wait for an official statement from Nokia on which models will support the Next Gen.
GoodCop, I've rephrased the sentence you were worried about so it's clearer what I mean: "If the 3D chips are intended for use with the Next Gen platform, then we can make an intelligent guess about two of the phone models that might support the Next Gen: the Nokia N93 and the Nokia N95."
I originally thought the "if" was enough to show I wasn't certain.
When asked about this Nokia essentially said that weren't going to comment (yet) on specific existing devices that would support next gen gaming. I'll try and get the interview written up asap.
Thank you very much and also thanks for the great article. Lots of good info, an interesting look into the future!
(btw you still need to fill in the links in the Habbo Island-bit. And feel free to delete this post)
Thanks for spotting that jules, we do check the articles but stuff like that sometimes slips through.
Krisse, thank you for your swift replies and for your interesting article.
Believe me, my displayed frustration is not really targeted towards your article or the phrasing used, but rather the ambiguous stance Nokia has taken towards its customers regarding the N93. Although I realize that the N93 isn't directly marketed as a gaming machine on their site, it's very easy for anyone who takes part of media coverage, Nokia shows, the bundled 3D-game or even the hardware specs to be led to believe that this phone has gaming as one of its features. If this is not Nokia's intention, they should be rather direct and clear with this in their marketing and PR in order not to mislead customers.
After all, they label these phones as "multimedia computers". As a long time smarphone enthusiast and a smalltime Java developer, that's what I'd chose to call these devices and expect from them, as well. In my world that incorporates gaming interaction, at least at the same level as my old Nokia 6600 or most other cheap phones out there. If I bought the fastest PC on the shelf with the latest 3D hardware, I'd be pretty baffled if the keyboard kept me from using it to its potential, if you know what I mean.
There's no question about it that this is an extremly capable and powerful device, and your "intelligent guess" that this is a Next Gaming phone is of course right on, even if (like you express) it's still a guess until Nokia says it's not. My hope lies with Nokia and their firmware fixes, but my concern is also with Nokia and that they yet haven't said a word about if they intend to fix this button bug or not. I'm not sure if they even will acknowledge it as a bug.
A straight word on this from them is not too much to expect at this point, I think. For the owners of N93 it's a problem already today, not only when the first Next Gen games hit the market.
But, again, great article and great work all round from you all at AAS!
To Rafe: I'm looking forward to read your interview! (And especially the "no comment" parts... 😊 )
I can't say it any better then goodcop just did..
And I just hope Nokia fixes this problem. Would be a real shame if One could be rendered, but not played =/
GoodCop,
I do appreciate your anger that there's such a basic flaw in the N93 firmware/hardware. Even if we totally ignore the Next Gen games there's still the problem of you not being able to properly use S60 3rd Edition games on the N93, which is most definitely advertised as a S60 3rd Edition device.
If you can't run S60 3rd Edition games on the N93, that fact alone is reason to complain, S60 3rd Edition devices should be able to run S60 3rd Edition games. I think if you take action soon enough after buying your N93, many countries' consumer laws will allow you to demand that they either fix the bug, give you an alternative phone or give you a refund.
If enough people start returning their N93s, Nokia would hopefully get the hint and try to fix the bug (assuming it's just a firmware glitch).
"it's very easy for anyone who takes part of media coverage, Nokia shows, the bundled 3D-game or even the hardware specs to be led to believe that this phone has gaming as one of its features."
Unofficial parts of the media like us might say all kinds of other things that turn out to be untrue, but I wouldn't blame the manufacturers for that. A lot of the unofficial media (but not AAS!) do "reviews" of devices which are actually just prototypes, and assume that unconfirmed features are confirmed features, purely because they want to be first with the story rather than tell the total truth. The unofficial media is there to tell you what might happen, rather than what will definitely happen. You should find it interesting, but don't ever trust any single source 100%.
If you want to buy something, you'll get the most accurate picture of its features not from the previews or the prototypes, but from the final official tech specs and official advertising that takes place just before the device is released.
I don't see anything in the official hardware specs that mentions gaming as one of the N93's features. The official specs and press releases don't even mention the 3D chip anywhere. (It's possible that Nokia installed the chip in the N93 purely to make the process of recording video much smoother (that's an alternative use of 3D chips apparently), that's why I've been a bit reluctant to say that the 3D chips will 100% definitely be used in the Next Gen.)
I also don't remember any official Nokia statement or show where they actually said the N93 had gaming as a feature. The bundled game does imply that, but the advertising and the official site don't even mention the bundled game. All of the official advertising I've seen for the N93 talks about it as a camcorder with a phone built into it, and I think the vast majority of people who buy it will have those kinds of expectations from it.
Nokia did use a prototype N93 to run a gaming demo at E3, but that was about six months before the N93 was released, and even at E3 they never actually said the N93 would be part of the Next Gen (they still haven't). At a previous E3 in 2005, they had all kinds of other phones such as the 3230, 6630 and N70 running games, but none of those will be in the Next Gen as they run S60 2nd Edition.
It's worth remembering that many game demos at E3 and similar shows are often run on prototype hardware which isn't intended to be the final platform. For example most of the Nintendo Wii games demonstrated at E3 were running on modified GameCubes, but I don't think anyone at the show expected the consumer-model GameCube to be able to run Wii games.
It's also worth remembering that a lot can change between a prototype and a final release, you should never think that a prototype's features will make it to the production version. For example the 5500 prototype was previewed on AAS and contained 64 mb of internal memory and an office file viewer, but the final production model that appeared six months later had only 10mb of internal memory and no office viewer.