Over on All About N-Gage, we've just published a special in-depth article looking at the pros and cons of touchscreen phone gaming, and we ponder whether Nokia should start making touch-based N-Gage games. Is touchscreen gaming the mainstream future or just a niche market? And does it matter either way?
Read on in the full article.
I didn't mention this in the article, but touchscreen gaming has actually been around a long, long time. The DS was nowhere near the first in this field.
The rather obscure Game.com portable console from 1999 was the first dedicated gaming device to include touchscreen games, and they were available on early PDAs even earlier than that.
It seems that the DS was the first to get the software and hardware mix right though, and make the public fully aware of how well touchscreens could cope with games.
2 things :-
1.) You forgot Android as the other big touch platform it would compete with. Android will sell more units than iPhone, is definitely at least as capable in the graphics and gaming dept. and will definitely have touch, and probably multitouch
2.) Nokia (or rather S60) needs multitouch. Even if it means being sneaky and working around Apple patents, Nokia needs multitouch. Even if it means only rolling it out in some places where Apple patents don't reach, Nokia need multitouch. Even it means breaking Apple patents head on and getting sued for it, Nokia need multitouch. Heck Windows 7 has demoed multitouch, Android will likely have it, Windows Mobile will attempt some bastarised version of it, and there is LOADS of prior art against Apple's patent. How can Nokia NOT have multitouch?
Why the F is multitouch so important? Actually: no its not. One can easily handle zooming in and out through other means. In fact, multitouch no more intuitive than any other way of zooming in and out (pretty much the only good use I've seen for multitouch so far). So to follow your style, unregistered: Nokia does NOT need multitouch. Nokia does NOT need multitouch. Nokia does NOT need multitouch. Nokia does NOT need multitouch. Nokia does NOT need multitouch. Nokia does NOT need multitouch. Nokia does NOT need multitouch.
On topic: there is no reason why Nokia would not include touch based games in the N-Gage platform when S60 touch becomes available.
You forgot Android as the other big touch platform it would compete with.
I'm not going to mention stuff that hasn't even been launched yet, that's just taking hype too far. There's this assumption it must be a success because it's Google which I'm not going to play along with.
It might be a huge hit, but no one actually has any idea at all how it will do. Similar platforms in the past have gone nowhere.
there is no reason why Nokia would not include touch based games in the N-Gage platform when S60 touch becomes available.
Yes there are reasons.
If you actually read the article I give five reasons why Nokia might not do touch games (and also five reasons why they might do touch games).
Why the F is multitouch so important? Actually: no its not.
Of course it's not, at least for gaming (which is what this article is about). The DS has managed to create the most successful touchbased gaming platform ever with a totally conventional stylus-driven touchscreen.
Interestingly, the DS hardware is woefully out of date, and was out of date when it launched too, yet it's still selling extremely well. The low spec allowed the DS to be sold for a low price right from the beginning, which put it within reach of a mass market straight away, unlike the PSP which was very expensive and sold much less in terms of hardware and software.
The one feature the mass market appreciates above all else isn't hardware or software but price. If a gadget does something genuinely useful and costs half the price of its rivals, it stands a very good chance of outselling them, even if it's technically inferior.
This has always been the case with portable gaming, Nintendo's handhelds have always been a generation behind their rivals but they've always ended up outselling them. Even on phones, it's Java that's done best because it's available on the cheapest handsets.
The one thing the iPhone isn't is cheap. Even this supposed "$199" model isn't $199, that's just the first payment of your long term contract. Add it all up and it goes into four figures, beyond the reach of the vast majority of people on the planet. A java phone on the other hand is well within the reach of most people on the planet, and S60 is heading that way fast with $199 phones that do actually cost a total of $199 without any other payments.
With respect to the comments on the API that allows cross-platform development, surely one of the main issues will be that a fair number of the games on the DS use 3D, and I'm pretty certain that 99% of games on any Sony gaming phone will also be 3D.
Down-converting most textures to lower resolutions isn usually cheap and not too much of a problem, but remodelling lower-poly versions can be far more time consuming and expensive.
I'm disappointed to see that so few (none?) of the upcoming Nokia phones have 3D acceleration which would explain the apparent lack of acceleration in most of the N-Gage games (does any released game except System Rush and possibly FIFA use it? At least it looks like System Rush does, I could be wrong as it might be fast simply due to lack of texturing). Asphalt 3 would probably have been far smoother on accelerated phones if it used the accelerator but it probably isn't financially viable to aim for a minimal segment of the upcoming market.
Argh, I think you're greatly underestimating the graphical power of the new N-Gage platform. 3D chips aren't all-important, software rendering can be just as good as hardware rendering if the device's main processor is fast enough.
NONE of the current N-Gage games use 3D chips. The only reason some N-Gage 3D games look much better than others is that the better-looking ones are better programmed, with better rendering engines.
It's also unwise to judge any gaming platform based on its first few games, because developers take time to get used to it. You have to wait at least a year or more to see any system at its best, and that has always been the case since the very first gaming platforms of the 1970s and 1980s.
and I'm pretty certain that 99% of games on any Sony gaming phone will also be 3D. Down-converting most textures to lower resolutions isn usually cheap and not too much of a problem, but remodelling lower-poly versions can be far more time consuming and expensive.
You're assuming the Sony Ericsson phone would definitely use 3D chips, but that's not necessarily the case. If they do an N-Gage-style platform across a range of models then they might avoid chips so that they can spread the platform as widely as possible and reach as wide a userbase as possible.
Sony already have the PSP, they don't need to make another dedicated gaming device. The point of a phone gaming platform is to reach a wider audience than consoles can, and a 3D chip would restrict how many phone models could work with the platform.
On the other hand, maybe 3D chips will become commonplace in phones, but that would probably happen simultaneously in both Sony Ericsson and Nokia phones, so it wouldn't be an issue when it comes to porting games.
Down-converting most textures to lower resolutions isn usually cheap and not too much of a problem, but remodelling lower-poly versions can be far more time consuming and expensive.
You definitely don't need 3D chips to do DS-quality 3D graphics.
The new N-Gage platform doesn't currently use 3D accelerator chips, but the phones on the new platform have 300mhz - 350mhz processors while the DS has just 70mhz. (I think modern N-Gage phones also have a lot more RAM than the DS?)
N-Gage phones' much greater raw computing power means they can render good quality 3D through software alone, which might not match the PSP but it certainly matches the DS and even goes a bit beyond it.
System Rush Evolution looks so good because its developers Ideaworks3D have an extremely good graphics engine and they've used it very effectively. They've always been the best developer on N-Gage, even on the original gen they made it perform miracles. It should be very interesting to see how Ideaworks3D handle the upcoming Metal Gear Solid game which they're porting to N-Gage, as that could be quite a graphically-intense title.
Having said all this, Nokia has stated they will use the 3D chip in the future, but apparently they're waiting for it to become more widespread. At the moment only the N95, N82, N93 and E90 have a 3D chip, and the E90 isn't even part of the N-Gage platform.
i realy like the idea of touchscreen gaming on N-gage.
But buttons somwhere on phone is a must for me. Slide out Buttons ,Flip buttons i dont know how they could impliment a button option in a phone device with limited space but i'm sure Nokia could do it.
i dont know how they could impliment a button option in a phone device with limited space but i'm sure Nokia could do it.
It would actually be fairly easy I think, you could do it with a slider mechanism so the keypad is out of the way when you're using the touchscreen but slides out when you need it.
I'm sure some manufacturer somewhere has already done a phone like this, and Nokia's done something similar with their N810 internet tablet which has a slider QWERTY keyboard.