There's not long to go until it's officially November 2007, the month when the Next Gen N-Gage platform is due to go live. We still haven't heard exactly when this will happen, but some rumours are pointing to a launch this Friday. One thing we can confirm is that starting tomorrow AAN will be ramping up the number of new articles, so you might want to subscribe to the AAN RSS news feed to make sure you never miss a thing.
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OK, it's now November - and I'm waiting! Does anyone know if there is going to be a proper media launch because so far outside of specialist websites I've seen very little about the new N-Gage? I hope there is going to be some kind of publicity because I'd hate to live through another N-Gage disaster...
Cheers,
Neil
The next gen N-Gage is totally different to the original N-Gage. It's being marketed in a totally, utterly different way.
The original N-Gage tried to use the console model where there was a definite launch date when people could rush into the shops and buy the device. This meant it required a lot of publicity.
Next Gen N-Gage has no particular device, it's a platform for phones which have ALREADY sold tens of millions, with more models due to be added all the time. People are buying the devices anyway as phones, so there's no need to have the same kind of hyped-up launch that consoles get.
In the future, if you buy an N-Gage compatible phone, there will be an icon on the desktop that says "games" which leads to the N-Gage service. People don't have to be convinced to buy N-Gage specifically, because they're buying Nokia phones anyway, even without the games.
PC hardware doesn't get hyped gaming launches because people buy PCs anyway whether they have games or not. Next Gen N-Gage is following this PC gaming model, where the games are sold as extras rather than being central to the purpose of the device.
Hi Krisse,
I take your point but wouldn't be sensible for Nokia to advertise this new feature to phone buyers? After all, there are hundreds of phone manufacturers all selling similar products and N-Gage is something genuinely different. It could be the unique selling point for these phones.
In my case I was perfectly happy with my 6680 but I switched to an N73 because I want to use N-Gage - surely there are other people who would do the same if only they knew that N-Gage existed.
A little bit of publicity couldn't hurt, could it?
Neil
"I take your point but wouldn't be sensible for Nokia to advertise this new feature to phone buyers? After all, there are hundreds of phone manufacturers all selling similar products and N-Gage is something genuinely different. It could be the unique selling point for these phones."
Well, it presumably will be advertised in the actual phones' list of features, along with the music store, maps etc etc. And the fact that each game has a free demo downloadable straight onto the phone is a kind of direct advertising, it lets the user try the platform out for free simply by clicking on the "games" icon.
I think the main lesson they took from the low sales of the original N-Gage is that not many people actually want a phone specifically for gaming, even if they do enjoy having games as a feature.
"A little bit of publicity couldn't hurt, could it?"
Yeah, that's true. The current radio silence doesn't seem to do anyone any favours. It would be nice if they could at least give us some dates for when these games will become available.
We haven't heard anything about launch dates from Nokia, and we have tried asking many times. They haven't even let us have any review copies of the games yet, even though we know they're ready.