Nokia Conversations, an official Nokia blog, has a post, with good news on the N-Gage Game transfer issue that AAN highlighted earlier this week. It says that 'a fix is in in the works' and initially this will be facilitated through Nokia Care, but there is also 'a long-term fix in the works'. It's excellent to see Nokia to respond in a positive and timely manner. We'll bring you more information in due course.
Read on in the full article.
....job's a good'n.....kudos to AA(S/N) !!
Bravo! Your article made the difference.
Radu
The power of the internet!
What a great and unexpectedly quick turnout on this issue, I guess if websites like allaboutsymbian.com cause enough ruckus on the matter then something gets done 😊
When the fix is implemented (hopefully not requiring a log-in everytime you want to play) I will have no reservations about buying an N95 8GB should the oppurtunity arise. (I currently have an N81 8GB)
....job's a good'n.....kudos to AA(S/N) !!
I think I speak for the whole team in saying we're very VERY proud of this story, both the article itself and the impact it's had. Making the BBC News isn't something that happens all the time, and to get a result at the end of it is amazing.
However, we have to give credit to the N-Gage Arena Forum members who first suggested contacting customer service to do transfers, which led to Nokia telling us it wasn't possible, which led to the article itself, which led to hundreds of sites picking up this issue, which led to Nokia changing their minds and allowing transfers. It was a group thing from start to finish, no one person or site could have done this on its own.
We have to especially credit all the sites who linked to us and credited us, and helped spread this news across the world in a matter of hours. We lost track of how many there were after the BBC picked up on it!
Wow, that's a fast and customer oriented reaction, Nokia.
Microsoft took it over 2 years (and it is still work-in-progress) to come to the same idea for XBox-Live arccade games. (Some people had problems with a switch to the later Elite models; they could only play the games when they are online).
Well done, it was a great article, I don't know if the war is won yet, but it seems the first battle goes to AAN.
Mind you I hope Nokia don't bear grudges and still send you phones etc to review
Im thinking that Nokia was tied by third parties, and that the following media storm convinced said parties that their way was not the right way.
I could be wrong of course, but I cannot see why nokia themselves would take that stance given that you can transfer the music, and maps licences.
But either way, good show.
Well done, it was a great article, I don't know if the war is won yet, but it seems the first battle goes to AAN.
Mind you I hope Nokia don't bear grudges and still send you phones etc to review
Well, they've never denied us phones because of bad reviews in the past, they're actually very mature in their website/blogger relations.
But just to make clear, we were not being anti-N-Gage with this story, we wanted to save N-Gage from making a big mistake (and hopefully we've succeeded!). Like I said in the other thread, it was us showing a bit of "tough love" towards Nokia.
This was exactly the right time for Nokia to make this decision, while N-Gage still only has a few tens of thousands of users. If they can get the transfer system running by the end of the summer, it will be just in time for the first N-Gage-embedded phones to start appearing.
Being embedded in phones is when the N-Gage platform really launches, because people won't have to manually install anything in order to get started with N-Gage. Nokia is likely to sell millions of N-Gage-embedded phones this year alone, and that's when things will get interesting.
Congratts to all at AAN, great article(without which the media storm would likely never have happened) and just goes to show the power the internet can have.
Couldn't log in to AAN yesterday to comment as I forgot my password, I did take the link and add my comment on the official NGage forum though.
Great news to see such a quick response, ends up reflecting quite well on Nokia IMO as at least it shows they're listening(unlike some other big companies that prefer to cover their ears, I'm looking at you Nintendo).
Right then, back to patiently waiting for my N93 to be gifted with NGage, assuming that will happen some time this year🙄
so for now we can contact support to get the licence changed to our new IMEI ?
so for now we can contact support to get the licence changed to our new IMEI ?
Not quite yet, we don't know when the transfers will start, but you can bet we'll be publicising it, not least because we have our own games still untransferred!
When the transfers do start, it will be through customer support, and I'm guessing their "long term solution" is some kind of transfer software for the phone and/or a PC.
As I said, let's give them the benefit of doubt. "have been working" also clearly implies that its not that they have not thought about it - in fact, I am pretty sure they have indeed been working on it for a while. Obviously, the AANG article forced to come out with a statement and hopefully will speed up the solutions. 😊
viipottaja wrote:As I said, let's give them the benefit of doubt. "have been working" also clearly implies that its not that they have not thought about it - in fact, I am pretty sure they have indeed been working on it for a while. Obviously, the AANG article forced to come out with a statement and hopefully will speed up the solutions. 😊
Yes, personally, I'm inclined to agree (a long term solution being worked on for some time), but perhaps they should have said so when asked.
In any case I think it says a lot (about smartness / good intentions of N-Gage) that they listened to / noticed the attention around this issue and responded quickly and positively.
I agree. I think it is excellent that they SEEM to have adopted a more "let's listen and adapt" approach to N-Gage more than arguably any other line of their business. Very smart and goes well with the "ethos" of the whole gaming community (well, I have no insight to the gaming community to be honest.. just guessing it must be important to create that interactive feeling between gamers and Nokia 😃).
As I said, let's give them the benefit of doubt. "have been working" also clearly implies that its not that they have not thought about it - in fact, I am pretty sure they have indeed been working on it for a while. Obviously, the AANG article forced to come out with a statement and hopefully will speed up the solutions. 😊
Well there are two parts to Nokia: the engineers and the managers. The engineers make things possible, but the managers decide if something should actually happen.
I agree the engineers probably did already have some kind of transfer system under development, because Nokia implied they would allow transfers last year at the Go Play event, and some of Nokia's promotional N-Gage videos in 2006 also implied they had a transfer system. We mentioned in the article that we had been previously been given the impression that transfers were possible. The N-Gage Arena mods have also long hinted a transfer solution is on the way (and we mentioned this in the article too).
Before publication, we contacted Nokia about our article to verify the facts, and expected them to say "look we're working on a transfer solution" or something like that, so we could add that to the article, but all they told us and other sites was that games were permanently locked to one phone, and that this was an important way of fighting piracy. We didn't get any kind of hint that there was any transfer solution on the way. That's why the article was so critical.
What may have happened at Nokia today is that the managers have decided to implement whatever transfer solution the engineers were already working on. Which is great, because it's the right decision by Nokia.
N-Gage should be back on track now, and I feel a lot happier about buying more games. 😊
Before you wrote the article, did you talk to the engineer or the managers or both?
I guess the engineer (at least they should be) are working on whatever the managers tell them to work on. 😊
Anyway, the bottom line is that there is significant more hope that this will be address. (I am getting my N82 today.. can't wait to try out the N-Gage platform.. )
Congrats to Nokia and AAN/AAS, I wish they'd drop the weasel words though: "We apologise for the confusion"
There's no confusion, they were wrong, and now they're working to fix it. Why not just admit it and get on with it?
Obfuscating the issue just makes Nokia look like Gordon Brown, and we all know how popular he is...
Before you wrote the article, did you talk to the engineer or the managers or both?
The engineers don't generally handle PR, that's more the job of management. It's the management that decides what the company actually does, so that was the more important part to speak to anyway on this issue.
We already knew DRM could allow content transfers technically, because it's possible with music from Nokia, and it's possible with S60 games from independent publishers. It was just a question of whether Nokia was going to allow game transfers, and apparently they now are. 😊
Why not just admit it and get on with it?
I know what you mean, but they're companies, they all talk like this. 🙄
They can phrase it any way they want though as long as they let us transfer our games to our new phones, that's the important part. 😊
The above link is a survey result showing Nokia as the most loved brand in Britain. Good news, amazing then that NGage was found to be the most hated technology brand. How about that.
Go on, censor it again boys. Doesn't change a thing.
The above link is a survey result showing Nokia as the most loved brand in Britain. Good news, amazing then that NGage was found to be the most hated technology brand. How about that.Go on, censor it again boys. Doesn't change a thing.
Erm, we didn't censor it the first time! It's still there in the other thread if you want to wade through 60 comments to find it... 😊
I actually commented that N-Gage was indeed a bad choice as a name for the new platform, they should have called it Nokia Games or something like that.
However, Nokia have chosen to stick with N-Gage so we'll just have to live with it. It's not like the name is that important in this situation, people are buying Nokia phones, not N-Gage phones. The N-Gage brand is just a little orange icon that appears on the desktop.
Hey, just think if one of these websites would take two seconds to ask Nokia to fix the call log bug on the Nokia N95.
I think the speed and nature of this reaction from Nokia (i.e. a good fix) shows conclusively that they are definitely not "the Microsoft of the mobile world" as some have levelled at them in the past. Unlike Microsoft, Nokia listen, react sensibly and fast, and care. Aside from the quality of the software this is another reason why Microsoft will never make an impact on the mobile world.
ajck wrote:I think the speed and nature of this reaction from Nokia (i.e. a good fix) shows conclusively that they are definitely not "the Microsoft of the mobile world" as some have levelled at them in the past. Unlike Microsoft, Nokia listen, react sensibly and fast, and care. Aside from the quality of the software this is another reason why Microsoft will never make an impact on the mobile world.
Well there are three very very important differences between Nokia and Microsoft:
-Nokia has 40% share of the phone market, MS has 90% of the OS market. Although Nokia's share is very large compared to others, Nokia don't have a majority of the market, i.e. most people use non-Nokia phones.
-Nokia phones' most commonly-used features are interoperable with their rivals products. You can use your SIM card in any GSM or 3G phone, either Nokia or non-Nokia. Java software works in Nokia and non-Nokia phones, as long as they're Java compatible, and there's a similar situation for Flash Lite and S60 software (though of course Nokia dominates the S60 market).
-Nokia's market share does actually go down as well as up. At one point a couple of years ago they were down to 30%, and some analysts predicted they could fall behind Motorola. That kind of thing scares companies into improving their products.
These facts together mean Nokia has to actually earn market share instead of being served it on a plate. It keeps them on their toes. Microsoft on the other hand is virtually guaranteed a majority of the OS market, so there isn't anywhere near as much pressure for them to perform.
It's interesting to note that the areas where Microsoft does actually respond quickly to consumer pressure are things like the Xbox, where MS doesn't have a high market share and is forced to compete. Just after the original Xbox was launched many people said it was too expensive, so MS dropped the price. When people who paid launch prices complained about the price drop, MS sent them some free games equivalent to the price drop. That was MS at their best, because it was MS in a situation where they weren't guaranteed any market share.
It's competition that makes companies listen to their customers, because customers who can vote with their wallets are very powerful.