Nokia today announced a brand new first party franchise, Creebies, which is due out at the beginning of 2008. Going by the press release, it sounds like a cross between Fluff Friends (of Facebook), Tamagotchi and Nintendogs. These would all be absolutely great to see on a mobile phone, as there would be a constant temptation to check on your creature is doing, or to allow creatures to interact between compatible phones.
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Another 'Pet' game! The platform should be named N-Pet, not N-Gage.
Well, yeah, I guess in a way there's three of them now! 😊
I'd say this is significantly different to the others though, it's an exclusive 1st party title written specially for the N-Gage platform, and both the creatures and environments sound like they're very different to any existing game. There seems to be a lot of room for customisation, and more options for bluetooth and online interaction.
The Dogz game, despite its old heritage, does look like a Nintendogs clone, whereas Creebies looks much more like something original.
The problem with it is, at the end of the day, it is a 'Pet' game. And the gamers to whom this targets, will probably won't be bothered about exclusivity or breeding by bluetooth multiplayer. Dogz or Sims 2 Pets will be a better title for them, as they probably have heard of Dogz, and almost surely of Sims. Yeah, if it's a good title, it will have its followers, but I feel, Nokia should have been involved in other genres, which have not yet been conceived in the current gen N-Gage, like, a decent RPG, or a decent action game. To many similar games mean, no one will succeed enough.
the gamers to whom this targets, will probably won't be bothered about exclusivity
You're right, and I wasn't suggesting anyone would go "oooh, exclusive, must have that!".
What I meant was, if you look at the N-Gage games from last generation, the first party exclusive games designed specially for N-Gage tended to be much higher quality and much more playable than third party ports from other systems.
Nokia's own games tend to be much better than third party N-Gage games. There are exceptions, but in general the first party games got better reviews than the third party games, and the first party games used the N-Gage's features more too.
Dogz or Sims 2 Pets will be a better title for them, as they probably have heard of Dogz, and almost surely of Sims. Yeah, if it's a good title
I honestly don't think these games overlap as much you're making out.
Saying that Creebies must be similar to Dogz because they're both pet simulators is like saying Mario Kart and Project Gotham must be similar because they both involve racing.
The artwork and the description of how Creebies will work sound like the game will be very weird and way out, whereas Sims 2 and Dogz are basically just standard dog simulators.
The thing Creebies reminds me of the most is the Fluff Friends service on Facebook, where people can buy a pet, raise it, customise its surroundings and send them to play with other pets. Fluff Friends also has a rather weird bent, with very strange pets allowed such as lumps of tofu.
Nokia should have been involved in other genres, which have not yet been conceived in the current gen N-Gage, like, a decent RPG, or a decent action game
I would also like to see an RPG, but there's already an action game called Brothers In Arms:
http://www.allaboutngage.com/games/item/Brothers_In_Arms.php
Yes, that's one game, but there's only 17 games at launch anyway, which are spread over pretty much all other genres. I suspect what they'll do is use this launch to gauge which genres do well and concentrate on those.
Yeah, I agree that first party titles are really good and certainly better than the 3rd party ones (in fact, all the games in my wishlist are first party titles). It will be good if they do something new with this one, but you got my point wrong. The target customers are a big issue, and probably, they are going to be more interested in what they know about. That's why, the gaming companies get film licenses and blah blah. The thing is, the 3rd party publishers want the 'target' to know about them, that's why they have chosen popular names. Players of Mario Cart and Project Gotham Racing DO know the difference between them, but those who play only Dogz or Brain Challenge, may not know the difference between Creebies and Dogz. Hope you got my point.
And regarding Brothers in Arms, it is again a lame port of the DS game. The graphics is not MUCH better than the Symbian version. The number of missions is okay, but a multiplayer deathmatch was necessary. The replayability of the game is going to be questioned, I bet.
Well, let me put my opinion this way: as far as I can tell, I think Creebies has much more to offer casual gamers than Dogz, so I'm glad Creebies is on the platform. I could be totally wrong, haven't tried either game, but that's how it looks at the moment.
These games will all be free to try, and extremely cheap to buy, so name recognition might not be as important as it would be on consoles (New N-Gage games are 6-10 euros, console games are 30-60 euros).
It will also be very tempting to try a game if you can buy it at any time of the day or night with the press of a button, especially as people tend to keep their phones with them all the time.
But no one really knows what will happen until the platform launches, so this is all just guesswork. It should be interesting to see where N-Gage is in a year's time, we should know by then which kinds of games are selling well.
And regarding Brothers in Arms, it is again a lame port of the DS game. The graphics is not MUCH better than the Symbian version. The number of missions is okay, but a multiplayer deathmatch was necessary. The replayability of the game is going to be questioned, I bet.
I agree that if someone wants the very highest quality graphics and gameplay they should get a console game. BUT... you can't really compare N-Gage games to anyhing on consoles because the price difference per game is so enormously huge.
If someone pays 6-10 euros for a game, they're not going to expect more than Java quality.
As far as I can tell from what I've seen so far, the new N-Gage games are generally much better than Java quality, so they're probably about as good as they can be at this price level.
Having said that, there's absolutely nothing technically to stop Nokia releasing some more expensive, higher budget games in the future. They did high budget games on the original N-Gage, Pathway To Glory had probably the highest budget of any phone game ever. If a lot of hardcore gamers start using the new service, maybe Nokia will do something like that (or perhaps divide an expensive game into episodes, or whatever).
Agree with your optimistic remarks. 😊