Nokia reveals more details about the N-Gage

so that would be virtually no new details and more interestingly no new images beyond the single (blatantly photo-shopped effort) from last year. Am I also alone in thinking that they are going to have some serious issues with getting operators to adopt a product for which the main distribution method is MMC cards - which will do zero for the all-important data revenus and ARPU........

[quote="Charlie Brown"]so that would be virtually no new details and more interestingly no new images beyond the single (blatantly photo-shopped effort) from last year. Am I also alone in thinking that they are going to have some serious issues with getting operators to adopt a product for which the main distribution method is MMC cards - which will do zero for the all-important data revenus and ARPU........[/quote]

When asked about how carriers will react to the MMC aspect of content distribution, panelists talked about carriers selling the cards in their retail shops, and also about how Nokia will be supporting carriers in running N-Gage services. So the big game assets could be distributed on the cards, but details or upgrades etc could be delivered over the network. This paints a more cooperative picture with the carriers... and apparently carrier lineup will be announced tonight.

and didnt the main event start 18:00 London time? ie 25 minutes ago. Maybe pictures come little later....those first comments are from the earlier press meeting today.

More details are now available on the Nokia website.

http://press.nokia.com/PR/200302/890630_5.html

But here's what it says

Nokia N-Gage (TM) mobile game deck - the revolutionary gaming experience
February 05, 2003

Major global games publishers excited to publish on wireless multiplayer platform

Nokia today showcased its new mobile games, the Nokia N-Gage (TM) game deck, at "Get Ready to N-Gage" events in London, UK and Sydney, Australia. The Nokia N-Gage game deck enables an enriched interactive gaming experience by introducing an innovative wireless multiplayer platform for both local and remote gaming. The Nokia N-Gage game deck allows users to play the latest high quality titles in a new way - multiplayer games connected locally via Bluetooth wireless technology or over-the-air games over mobile networks. Enabling new business models, the Nokia N-Gage is a unique platform that also provides opportunities for game developers and publishers, network operators and other service providers to generate new revenue streams and develop new games and service concepts.

"The Nokia N-Gage brings the start of a whole new gaming experience to the market, with an ergonomic design optimized for playing games. Nokia is working with world-renowned game publishers, including Activision, Eidos, Sega, Taito and THQ, and developers to provide an appealing and balanced catalogue of high quality games to the marketplace. Titles will include both the latest blockbuster games and a variety of titles across game genres," said Anssi Vanjoki, Executive Vice President, Nokia Mobile Phones. "The game experience can further be enhanced when network operators and service providers enter the value chain by providing game related mobile services such as downloadable game levels, additional features and game characters or even running online multiplayer games and communities. With these building blocks in place, the Nokia N-Gage platform will help to unleash the creative and innovative spirit of the games industry."

The high performance games for Nokia N-Gage game deck are sold separately on game cards (using the MultiMediaCard standard). Game card distribution enables a new kind of mobile gameplay experience with richer graphics, enhanced sound and more extensive game worlds in which to play. Nokia will also act as a game publisher to create branded N-Gage game titles and develop an evolving games portfolio.

Nokia N-Gage game deck devices and game titles will be available in major retail outlets, game-specific and video game retail outlets, as well as in regular mobile phone delivery channels in all major markets.

Nokia welcomes the games industry to publish and develop innovative new concepts for the Nokia N-Gage game deck. Game developers interested in learning more about the Nokia N-Gage game deck, including submitting information about applications for the Nokia N-Gage and other Nokia devices and platforms, can find more information at www.forum.nokia.com/games.

Besides gaming, the Nokia N-Gage mobile game deck also features a digital music player (MP3/AAC) and stereo FM radio, as well as a tri-band GSM 900/1800/1900 mobile phone. The Nokia N-Gage game deck is planned to be available in volumes across five continents in the 4th quarter 2003 well in time for the holiday shopping season.

Features:
- Large color screen with backlight, 176x208 pixels with up to 4096 colours
- Series 60 platform and Symbian Operating System (OS)
- Bluetooth wireless technology for gaming
- An eight-way directional controller "Rocker" for game play
- Multimedia messaging (MMS)
- Triple band GSM (900/1800/1900), GPRS mobile phone
- Digital Music player (AAC/MP3) & Stereo FM radio
- Nokia Audio Manager PC SW for managing own music files
- Comprehensive range of applications; e-mail and personal information management
- XHTML browsing
- Java (TM)application support
- Connectivity:
calendar synchronization with PC, USB for music file and application download

Usage times:
- Games up to 3 - 6 h (depending on game type)
- Talk up to 2 - 4 h
- Standby up to 150- 200 h
- Music up to 8 h
- Radio up to 20 h

Size:

- Volume 139cc
- Dimensions (L x W x D) 133,7 x 69,7 x 20,2 mm
- Weight 137g



About N-Gage:
Please visit www.n-gage.com for the Nokia N-Gage game deck logo, photos and on-demand event webcast

Note the site www.n-gage.com did not seem to be working at the time of posting. So no new pictures yet.

They have also got several announcement from games developers.

Check the links on the Nokia press release page

Activision set to develop titles for Nokia N-Gage(TM)mobile game deck
Nokia and Eidos Interactive collaborate to create the next dimension in mobile gaming
Nokia and T-Mobile Announce Partnership On Mobile Services For N-Gage

THQ Wireless launches games on new Nokia N-Gage mobile game deck

5th February 2003: THQ Wireless, a subsidiary of leading videogame publisher THQ � Inc. (NASDAQ THQI), today announced that it work with Nokia to provide games for the new N-Gage(TM) mobile game deck. Under the terms of the agreement, three of THQ Wireless' leading games titles - MotoGP(TM), MLBPA Players Choice Baseball (working title) and Red Faction� will be available when the N-Gage starts shipping.

The games, which will be available on memory cards, include such additional features as near distance multiplayer gaming over Bluetooth as well as downloadable and uploadable mobile elements.

Titles to include classics such as "Space Invaders" and "Puzzle Bobbles"

Taito Corporation announced today that it will provide fascinating rich game content for the Nokia N-Gage(TM) mobile game deck. Taking advantage of the exceptional features of the N-Gage, the first Taito titles will include Puzzle Bobble VS, a fighting action multiplayer puzzle game, and Taito Memories, the four most popular Taito game titles in one package.

"Taito feels absolutely confident that the Nokia N-Gage will lead the mobile terminal market with the creation of a new game platform," said Yasuo Nishigaki, President, Taito Corporation. "In the future, Taito will certainly put more efforts and resources to cooperate with Nokia to promote the N-Gage and we will expand our mobile game content offering."

wow, cant wait for the Sega games and screenshots. 😊

www.n-gage.com is now up and running and a nice looking site it is too.

Some of the games listed.

Tomb Raider
Sega Rally
Sonic

The thing is will these games run on other series 60 devices?

I think it actualy looks nice, but i don't want it. I'm going for the 3650.

I never seen Symbian look so sexy.....

I'm looking at the specs, the power, the style..... And I glance at my 7650, then my 9210, then my Series5mx and then my Series5 and a tear comes to my eye as I think "you've come a long way".

Where Commodore went wrong with the Amiga is that they had a great machine which they didn't develop, but here we see Nokia pushing the boat out to ever greater depths.

I just hope Nokia will be able to afford the loss this device will have to make during initial take-up in order to get the numbers out there......

Now come on you other licencees! The P800 rocks! Let's have more! More! More!

My (minor) concerns are:
Only 4Mb internal storage and only one card slot?
How much execution memory is there?

A big plus is the J2ME. It'll be even more suited for the more powerful Java games and so the operators will like that.

[quote="TANKERx"]IMy (minor) concerns are:
Only 4Mb internal storage and only one card slot?
How much execution memory is there?[/quote]
But it comes with a 64MB mmc card. Hopefully they can still keep the price down.

This device looks great, OK so it is Symbian and I'm biased but seriously this good... I know a device like this is all about the games, but they seemed to have got some serious stuff signed up already.

I'm doing what everyone else is probably, reading through the stuff and going .. wow!

N.B. Rest assured that AAS will cover this baby (its Symbian after all).

Are there any screenshots and movies about the games? Those screens seems like they are mockups. Or am I seeing things? 😮

[quote="Anonymous"]Are there any screenshots and movies about the games? Those screens seems like they are mockups. Or am I seeing things? 😮[/quote]

Almost certainly mockups. That said the games probably will look that good. The processor looks like its going to be doubled from the 7650 to 205mhz or something like that..

[quote="Rafe"]The processor looks like its going to be doubled from the 7650 to 205mhz or something like that..[/quote]really? Do you have some info about it or is it just a hunch? 😊

Processor speed hunch is on the battery life - assuming that the clocked down Strong Arm processor isn the 7650 (100mhz ish) is let loose to run at 206mhz, the battery figures look about right.

well, forum.nokia.com has N-Gage specs and they state it as a 104Mhz ARM.

Aw crap, only 104? Battery must be shocking then! I lokoed for full specs, must have missed them. URL?

[quote="Ewan-FreEPOC"]Aw crap, only 104? Battery must be shocking then! I lokoed for full specs, must have missed them. URL?[/quote]forum.nokia.com/games

and click N-Gage Specs

i suppose this phone must be a feature-packed phone! though the design doesnt appear that much good to me. but then, im very eager to take a hold on this one! I wonder when are they going to launch this one in the market.

hmm, if you look at it, it's pretty much 3650 with nice keypad for games..

Doesn't the 7650 run a 50mHz CPU? So doubling that would be about 100 or so. The 3650 has one more feature, the camera. The N-gage is a stripped down 3650 with a game-centered keypad. Nothing more. It shouldbe priced lower than the 3650, even with the 64MB card since MMC cards have been phased out already.

BTW, the N-gage is much larger than the 7650, and slightly wider than the 3650.

Regarding battery life... to use more power efficient chips would raise the cost of the 7650/3650 and N-gage... thus defeating the purpose of them being mass-market phones now wouldn't it? Besides, Nokia isn't against people buying spare batteries and chargers 😉

[quote="amor7"]i suppose this phone must be a feature-packed phone! though the design doesnt appear that much good to me. but then, im very eager to take a hold on this one! I wonder when are they going to launch this one in the market.[/quote]

Course it's feature packed - it's a Series 60 minus the camera but with the additon of an FM Radio. As to launch date, the N-Gage Nokia site has Quarter 4 2003 listed.

As to the design, it's obviously more GBA / Game Gear / Neo Geo Pocket than phone. I like it. Abnd of course it's designed for wireless games, not as an audio phone - that's just a handy by product!

It's features are outstanding and it looks well sexy, however, The Register is rather unimpressed. I'm only hoping that Nokia will be listening to such criticisms as these and make some last minute changes;

[quote="The Register"]
For a start, the number of buttons on the front of the unit is ludicrous, and it's extremely easy to brush the wrong button while playing a game and find that you've inadvertently managed to quit out or bring up a pause menu; but despite the millions of fascia buttons, Nokia hasn't seen fit to include any shoulder buttons. Doh!
[/quote]

[quote="The Register"]
but worse again than this is the fact that the act of slipping in a new game involves removing the back of the unit, taking out the battery and sliding the game home into a SIM card style slot. This, needless to say, is a stunningly bad piece of design and the need to juggle about five separate bits of kit in order to play a new game isn't going to win the unit any fans.
[/quote]

I think what a lot of people are forgetting that the N-Gage is a phone as well a mobile gaming console. Its got a very defiite appeal in this category for young mobile gamers. There are certainly some questionable desing decisionss, but feature wise this is very very good.

The one thing I've seen the device coming for a lot of flack for in the screen size. Yeah I think that may be an issue here, but on the other hand I'm not sure it will be that serious.

Cost is definetely an issue, but thinking out loud.. assuming there isn't a subsidy games for the device are going to be cheaper (plus point). Moreoever you wont just be buying a game machine your buying a phone and a small PDA (I mean Series 60 comes with serious stuff too you know!). By the time you consider that a cost of �300 is not out of this world. And you can bet that like the 7650 phone subsidies in the UK at least will bring the cost down to �100 or less (e.g. you can get the 7650 now for nothing with the right contract). I reckon networks might be rather keen to sell this phone, not only does it do all the normal phone stuff it also has an interesting revenue stream from multi-player gaming over gRPS / GSM etc.

Hmmm!

well, IGN seems to like it:

The best news is that Nokia seems to have nailed the controls and interface in general. Unlike most third parties, they actually did a solid job with the D-pad. Granted, I only got to play with it for a few minutes, but the pad felt fast, responsive, and very natural. Nokia announced that there were two "action" buttons, but in fact many of the other number keys function as game controls. I played a bit of the company's (first party) snowboarding game and most of the numbers performed specific air tricks. Having the spread of number keys under your thumb actually makes control very fast.

and so do gamers.com

And the games themselves? We'll save most of the details for a bigger, more comprehensive write-up tomorrow, but needless to say, they look good. Most of the demos we saw were less than a month old, but already display impressive 3D capabilities. Tomb Raider looked impressive and is shaping up to be virtually a direct port of the original PSone version, while another Eidos PSone port of a much lesser-known game, the 2D-platformer-in-a-3D-world Pandemonium, looked the pick of the bunch with a smooth framerate, neat special effects and quite decent texturing. The rest of the games include Sonic N (announced via a Yuji Naka stream from Tokyo), Super Monkey Ball (yes, in 3D), MotoGP (playable for up to 4 people via Bluetooth), Puyo Puyo, Puzzle Bobble, Taito Memories (four classic Taito games, of which only Super Space Invaders was revealed), Virtua Tennis (sprite-based and only on video) and Snowboarding (from Nokia). Other planned titles not seen at the event, but mentioned in press releases, are Sega Rally, Red Faction and MLBPA Player's Choice Baseball. Nokia promises more titles will be unveiled in the summer.

I would trust them more that theregister. 😃

If you have to remove the battery to change the MMC then I think this will be a big problem. It means you will have to do a reboot to change the card. OK this might sound reasonable ie run your game from a fresh start but I tend to keep my data on my MMC contacts, mail etc. This means they wont be availible if I'm playing a game which could be a bugger if someone rings you up half was through a game and the data you need is not availible e.g. "Sorry I'll ring you back after I've rebooted my phone". This could be solved by having 2 MMC slots but I don't think the specs suggest that. Prehaps the design will change before the release model.

Does anyone know it the games will run on ther Series 60 devices? I would seem a bit daft if they did not as they would be reducing their potential software market enourmously. Of course if they do run on any series 60 devices their is no reason why other manufacturers can't produce their own game deck designs in which case their could be a device for everyones taste.

I'm also not sure what they mean about price as the telephone provider tend to subsidise the hardware costs so Nokia should not have to.

Just my 2p's worth.

Personally, I think the most interesting thing about the N-Gage is that it will be (afaik) the only open console for which games can be freely developed by anyone. I'd expect there to be a huge number of independently-developed games released for the platform.

Also, just imagine the potential for massively multiplayer games over GPRS. Network operators should be keen to subsidise the N-Gage when they realise the vast amount of additional data traffic that will be generated by this sort of product.

One thing for sure I would consider one of these over the ugly 3650!

[quote="Mental Blank"]Personally, I think the most interesting thing about the N-Gage is that it will be (afaik) the only open console for which games can be freely developed by anyone. I'd expect there to be a huge number of independently-developed games released for the platform.
[/quote]

Very good point, it might bring back the 80's early 90's game development (backyard coders) which is where most the good stuff came from for the Amiga (for those of you old enough to know what one of those are 😃 ).

[quote="Mental Blank"]Personally, I think the most interesting thing about the N-Gage is that it will be (afaik) the only open console for which games can be freely developed by anyone. I'd expect there to be a huge number of independently-developed games released for the platform.
[/quote]

Indeed, something like Resistance on the 7650 is tailor made for the N-Gage, and should work with no changes when the platform comes out.

And lets not forget something like Vexed from myself - of which there is already an early alpha test bed running on the 7650... 😊

[quote="Ewan-FreEPOC"]
And lets not forget something like Vexed from myself - of which there is already an early alpha test bed running on the 7650... 😊[/quote]

Ooooh you Series 60 OPL tease 😉