AAS and AAN's Ewan Spence has been talking to some of Nokia's most important N-Gage folk recently, and over on our sister site All About N-Gage you can read his interview with Simon Etchells, the Head of Platform Marketing. Amongst other things we learn that Eseries devices will definitely not be part of the platform, for "architectural reasons".
Read on in the full article.
Err, with all due respect, the article was supposed to be an interview.. and there are like two-three quotes only.. So it is completely unclear what is Ewans own thinking and what is based on what the interviewee said.. Having said that, a great article! 😊
I think it is ridiculous that a phone such as the E90 which has almost identical specs as the N95 will be excluded from the platform. It is not like they would lose sales by allowing E Series devices to use Ngage. People who want the E series usually want it as a business/ productivity device first and then would enjoy playing games on the side. Plus, wouldn't the games be great on the large internal display 😊
It would be great if someone who actually knows about these things (e.g. Steve perhaps?), what the "architecture" things that "prevent" Nokia from putting N-Gage on E-Series could be? I am not saying its not true, just curious to know what it means.
Wonder also if some games might become available as "S60 Version" at some point, independently of the N-Gage platform?
I think it is ridiculous that a phone such as the E90 which has almost identical specs as the N95 will be excluded from the platform. It is not like they would lose sales by allowing E Series devices to use Ngage. People who want the E series usually want it as a business/ productivity device first and then would enjoy playing games on the side. Plus, wouldn't the games be great on the large internal display 😊
Even if they don't 'officially' allow Ngage platform games to run on an E Series device, wouldn't the games still be compatible with s60v3 in general? Don't we all know that the old Ngage games worked on virtually every s60v1 and s60v2 device ever made?
Its a bad step to not allow the owners of E series phones to 'officially' play Ngage NextGen games. this would only encourage piracy in my view.
"Err, with all due respect, the article was supposed to be an interview.. and there are like two-three quotes only.. So it is completely unclear what is Ewans own thinking and what is based on what the interviewee said.. Having said that, a great article! 😊"
It depends how you do it. Many interviewers use no quotations at all, they just write a summary of what the person told them.
"Even if they don't 'officially' allow Ngage platform games to run on an E Series device, wouldn't the games still be compatible with s60v3 in general? Don't we all know that the old Ngage games worked on virtually every s60v1 and s60v2 device ever made?"
If you pirate them, but pirates don't count because they're not supporting the platform in any way. They might as well not exist as far as userbase is concerned.
Also, the games are supposed to emphasise the online element, with an online community as well as multiplayer games. This is a bit easier to lock down than standalone offline games.
"I think it is ridiculous that a phone such as the E90 which has almost identical specs as the N95 will be excluded from the platform. It is not like they would lose sales by allowing E Series devices to use Ngage."
I totally agree. It just seems bizarre to include a 3D graphics chip on the E90, and a specially written exclusive free 3D game that shows off the 3D chip, and then decide to exclude the E90 from a gaming platform.
He said there were "architectural reasons", but I can't think what they could be. It's the same software platform, S60 3rd, so how can there be incompatibility?
Krisse, I know, the problem with this particular article though is that its not clear when he is summarizing and when he writing his own thoughts. Anyway, not a biggie.
Given that mobile phones probably the most complex pieces of consumer electronics in the world, it is IMO at least conceivable that there could be some "architectural" reasons for not having N-Gage run on E Series.. would be interesting if someone in AAS could try to get to the bottom of that. I recall Tommi Vilkamo once explaining something about why the 3D Bar Code reader needed to be tested thoroughly and _separetely_ on each N-Series device. So perhaps there is much more to it than one thinks?
"Given that mobile phones probably the most complex pieces of consumer electronics in the world, it is IMO at least conceivable that there could be some "architectural" reasons for not having N-Gage run on E Series.."
I know what you mean, but I just don't buy it. There's too much evidence against it.
Smartphones are complex, but they're all the same software platform on similar computing hardware, so if they're working correctly they should be able to run the same software. For example the Eseries game Global Race ran fine on the N95 and N93, even though it was only developed for E90. And the fact that such a complex graphics-intensive title did run fine on Nseries and Eseries proves that there's no reason for Nokia-published games to exclude Eseries.
If there were really architectural problems, we should be seeing 3rd party software developers creating special versions for Eseries phones, but they don't, they just create one S60 3rd Edition version.
Windows PCs are even more complex, but Windows software runs fine on all PCs as long as it's they're the same Windows version with similar hardware specifications.
"would be interesting if someone in AAS could try to get to the bottom of that."
I suspect it's just Nokia trying to make a marketing decision look like a technical decision, in which case they'll never admit this to us.
It's like Sony recently bringing rumble to PS3 controllers because "they had overcome the technical difficulties". In truth, it was purely because Sony had settled a lawsuit with the makers of the rumble technology they wanted to use.
"I recall Tommi Vilkamo once explaining something about why the 3D Bar Code reader needed to be tested thoroughly and _separetely_ on each N-Series device. So perhaps there is much more to it than one thinks?"
The bar code reader was a program that depended on a phone's camera hardware, which is not defined by S60 standards. Different S60 phones often have completely different camera hardware, which would explain why each device had to be tested separately.
'I suspect it's just Nokia trying to make a marketing decision look like a technical decision, in which case they'll never admit this to us.'
Yes, I think that's right, in which case it's very annoying and makes me lose some faith in Nokia. If there are architectural reasons they should come out and tell us what they are. If not, please don't treat us like numbskulls by giving us 'corporate-speak' reasons which amount to untruths.