Nokia is one of the main sponsors of the GC Developers Conference 2007 in Leipzig, Germany, through their N-Gage gaming brand. Nokia's Diarmuid Feeny gave a keynote speech at the event, discussing the potential growth of mobile gaming which could be brought about by making mobile games higher quality, and by making it easier to buy the games in the first place. Also, Nokia appears to have come up with a new curvier logo for the N-Gage, according to the GCDC sponsors' page.
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Have to read the keynote.. but just wanted to remark that I liked the old logo much better... 😞
Heck, the new logo does make me a bit nostalgic for the old side talking version. I still have a ton of old ngage games, it would be cool if Nokia came up with a NGage V1 emulator ...
The reason which would compel users to NOT buy touchscreen phones is, finally, all set to arrive. Lets get back to the good old Joystick and a keypad. :icon14:
I personally prefer the new logo, but I do see why fans of the original N-gage would be annoyed by its casual-gamer style.
It might help if they used a different colour instead of that odd shade of blue, for example orange for the N and dark orange for the rest of the logo.
"Heck, the new logo does make me a bit nostalgic for the old side talking version. I still have a ton of old ngage games, it would be cool if Nokia came up with a NGage V1 emulator ..."
Technically you shouldn't need an emulator, N-gage is just an S60 1st Edition phone, and it should be easy peasy to port the old n-gage games onto the new S60 3rd Edition phones which will run the Next Gen platform. Frozen Bubble was ported from S60 1st Edition onto 3rd Edition by one person working in their spare time, it can't be that hard for professional teams to do the same with N-Gage games (and indeed one N-Gage game has already been ported: Snakes).
Unfortunately, life is rarely that simple and I suspect there are all kinds of legal problems which will restrict the appearance of old gen games on next gen, especially third party games. Hopefully the first party games will make it onto Next Gen, there's too much good stuff on there which deserves a wider audience.
The videos of the System Rush Evolution (not the N93 version) on the N-Gage Future Watch site look pretty nice. They seem like its meant to run non-3D accelarated phones as well.
"The videos of the System Rush Evolution (not the N93 version) on the N-Gage Future Watch site look pretty nice. They seem like its meant to run non-3D accelarated phones as well."
I think those are quite old videos, from E3 2006. It's amazing how many next gen videos can be traced back to that event:
http://www.n-gage.com/e3/
oh wow did not realise they were that old.. it is remarable how well Nokia has been able to (I assume the want to) keep all leaks of games under development under control.
"oh wow did not realise they were that old.. it is remarable how well Nokia has been able to (I assume the want to) keep all leaks of games under development under control."
They were pretty good in the days of the original N-Gage, games that had been in development for some time would appear completely out of nowhere. Pocket Kingdom (MMO exclusive to N-Gage by Sega, big big news) appeared without any rumours at all, it was amazing.
Of course it could be that there's nothing big on the way at all! 😉 But I hope there is...
I am pretty keen on having the option to install good games on my n93. And considering the n93 design, I would expect the n-gage games to be a good experience. Just wish that the games would be compatible across devices - in all aspects. To explain what I mean, I downloaded the game Global race originally meant for the e90. It works on my n93, but when I play it in landscape mode, the clusters on the screen (the rpm meter of the car, Track no. car position, etc.) blow up to block most of the screen and I cant see where I am steering the car. Probably since this was targetted at e90, the landscape design would have been made for the really wide screen of the e90. But it would be great if these games are fairly compatible with other devices they can be installed on too...
Krisse: They are not so good about keeping Pocket Kingdom 2 a secret! Didn't Pocket Gamer write an article about that a few weeks ago? It's going to be on N-Gage and PC too!
"They are not so good about keeping Pocket Kingdom 2 a secret! Didn't Pocket Gamer write an article about that a few weeks ago? It's going to be on N-Gage and PC too!"
I think you mean Project White Rock? PWR was officially revealed by Nokia themselves, but they actually just said its name and that it would be cross-platform, and we don't really know anything more.
PK2 would be great, but only if they sort out the control problems. The original PK had a horrible user interface.
"Probably since this was targetted at e90, the landscape design would have been made for the really wide screen of the e90. But it would be great if these games are fairly compatible with other devices they can be installed on too..."
That version of Global Race was only intended for E90, the only official download page for it is on the E90 support page.
The makers of the game say on their site that a proper version for all S60 3rd Editions is on the way, but there's no release date given.
What's left of the N-Gage platform is the biggest joke in the video game industry! By the time Nokia gets around to actually releasing S60 games Nintendo and Sony will have already announced their next generation handhelds.