In a special feature, All About N-Gage presents a ten minute video of N-Gage games running through TV Out, and an editorial on what TV Out means for the future of N-Gage. Could it become much more than just a mobile gaming platform?
Read on in the full article.
Interesting article, the tv-out certainly has alot more potential than the average user will probably discover, like you mentioned, not only as a portable basic home computer with a bluetooth keyboard, but as a portable games console also(perfect for holidays).
The soon to be released zeemote could be a key factor here, not only for combating the problem of the rather short tv out cable(of course you could extend it) but also allowing two players to play together on the big screen(with games that support two players on one handheld).
I don't get to go on holiday with the mates anymore(married life hey😉) but I can imagine if these options were available to me a few years ago the N93 complete with tv out cable and a couple of zeemotes would have been right up there with the andrews antacid as holiday essentials😎
The Zeemote is indeed very interesting, but it apparently has an analogue control and no other buttons so it wouldn't necessarily be compatible with existing phone games. Game developers would have to write specially for the Zeemote, which is unlikely to happen beyond a handful of titles.
The kind of controller I'd want to see would be much simpler, basically just the controls from a phone but in a wireless unit and laid out for gaming, as seen in the mockup in the article. The beauty of doing it that way is that it would work with all existing phone games and many phones without any extra drivers or software. You might even be able to use it to control your computer, as it would technically be using the Bluetooth keyboard standard.
when i tried TV-out cable few month's back i tried it on a older tv i had in my kitchen and the picture was awful ,it had replica shadows around the figures in fifa.
but few week's after i tried using it again on my main tv in lounge and the result's from the picture was amazing ,so i'd like to add having a modern tv screen makes all the difference if you want good picture
just thought i'd add that if people are wondering why they ain't got as good picture as you lol
when i tried TV-out cable few month's back i tried it on a older tv i had in my kitchen and the picture was awful ,it had replica shadows around the figures in fifa.
I got TV Out to work fine on a very old TV when I first tried it, so maybe it varies from model to model. Ironically enough the old TV was made by Nokia, in the days before they made phones.
One thing that may be confusing is the television's aspect ratio, if it's set to widescreen it will stretch the N-Gage picture, so make sure it's set to 4:3.
Incidentally, if anyone's wondering how to plug into a TV without composite inputs, you can buy a very cheap (few euros/pounds/dollars) adaptor from ebay which converts composite into SCART:
Also, there's a "Flicker Filter" on the TV Out settings which you might want to try if you're experiencing problems on particular television models:
You can find a complete guide to setting up TV Out in this article on All About Symbian:
theres been a update on ngage blog all annonymous votes are going to be revoved from feedback forum thread counts . nice work tetlee you got the campaign going and it's turned into something positive
yea i messed with them setting it made it worse on the TV i 1st used,
like you said earlier it probably differs from model to model and age probably was'nt really the reason for the bad picture
Similar to above, plugging my N95 in to my 24" high-res monitor results in an awful picture with a lot of shadowing (possibly bad analogue circuitry in the monitor?), but it looks pretty good on my TV.
I notice that when I display pictures on the monitor with the gallery application, it seems to show higher resolution than on the phone screen (640x480, perhaps?), as well as not showing the user interface buttons. That's a nice feature! It appeared that games using the 3D accelerator also seemed to be scaled up to 640x480, but I might be imagining that (and I can't find the cable to test it, now 😞 ).
I notice that when I display pictures on the monitor with the gallery application, it seems to show higher resolution than on the phone screen (640x480, perhaps?),
Yes, the TV Out function does go up to very high resolutions when displaying video or photos, way beyond its own native resolution. I think that's part of the reason Nokia promotes TV Out so heavily as a photo and video album function.
I don't think the 3D chip SRE demo is scaled up, though its graphics are such high quality it's hard to tell. I certainly couldn't see any pixels when playing it on a TV, so maybe it is?
It would be nice if games (and other apps) could output at a higher resolution as standard, though the System Rush Evolution full game showed even QVGA can look pretty good.
Tzer2 wrote:The Zeemote is indeed very interesting, but it apparently has an analogue control and no other buttons so it wouldn't necessarily be compatible with existing phone games.
Au contraire my good fellow😊
http://wireless.ign.com/articles/851/851484p1.html
The Zeemote features, in addition to an analog thumbstick, three buttons. A and B are right over the northern edge of the housing while C is a triggers of sorts you rest your middle finger on.
A better look: 
The Zeemote features, in addition to an analog thumbstick, three buttons. A and B are right over the northern edge of the housing while C is a triggers of sorts you rest your middle finger on.
Hmm... if they can be redefined to represent existing phone buttons then maybe you could use existing games with them.
If you can't redefine them though... then it's not such a good situation. 😊
i really like the idea of zeemote but for some games it would'nt be good b/c of amount of buttons needed for games like BIA ,FiFa and POOl but i do see the potential it as and i wish nokia would make their own controller for n-gage
it's good to have some1 to talk too this week as been real quiet on all fronts maybe you should get a chatroom on here so we can more in depth conversation's
it's good to have some1 to talk too this week as been real quiet on all fronts maybe you should get a chatroom on here so we can more in depth conversation's
Have you tried the chatroom on the N-Gage Arena site? There are some quite nice people over there, it should get a bit busier in the evenings.
I think AAS/AAN avoids chatrooms as they're a bit of a nightmare to supervise, and who knows what's going on if no one supervises.
A nice read 😊 I wrote on another forum a while ago about how much I enjoyed TV-out and hope that Nokia some day release an official N-Gage bluetooth controller. Don't want something like the Zeemote, though, as it looks uncomfortable to me. At least uncomfortable for longer gaming sessions. But rather something like the Super Nintendo controller, or the Playstation controller perhaps.
It would be great to have a portable gaming machine like that can be a stationary console if one so pleases. Could be great while in hotel rooms, visiting parents or just at home by the couch.
for me theres two issues with n-gage
1) quality/type of games (innovate don't imitate - resetG is an improvement hopefully)
2) the handsets - they just arn't designed with gaming in mind - even the n81 is only a nod in the direction of being a decent gaming handset.
i posted this back in may
ignore the design - it was done in 5 mins - but conceptually it needs to be something
that can support innovative games - touch/accelerometer based AND traditional
dual analog pad/button games too.
the handsets - they just arn't designed with gaming in mind
macwhu, you're missing the point of N-Gage.
The new N-Gage platform is NOT meant to be a console, it's meant to be a gaming platform for ordinary mobile phones.
The reason Nokia is taking is approach is pretty clear:
number of mobile phones sold every year = over 1000 million (and 400 million of those are Nokias)
number of consoles sold ever year = about 50 million
If N-Gage is used by just 5% of phone owners, that will be the same as all consoles put together.
Dedicated gaming devices just aren't very popular when you look at their total sales. Most gaming seems to happen on non-gaming devices like phones and PCs.
To put it another way, a best-selling console might sell 100 million over a 5 year period. That's how many phones Nokia sells every three months.
Tzer2 wrote:To put it another way, a best-selling console might sell 100 million over a 5 year period. That's how many phones Nokia sells every three months.
but how many of those are top end n-gage compatable handsets 1 percent?
but how many of those are top end n-gage compatable handsets 1 percent?
At the moment there are about 60 million S60 Nokia phones sold a year, which is already more than any console. They're not all N-Gage-compatible now but they should be by 2009.
However, the idea is that eventually N-Gage will be on a large proportion of Nokia phones, maybe all of them one day. The price of S60 phones has tumbled over the last few years, they're getting cheaper very quickly, so they could take up a greater and greater proportion of sales.
The latest N-Gage-compatible device is the 5320, which is launching for 200 euros. That's about one third the price that the N95 launched for.
also percentage of users that try n-gage once and ever touch again 80-90%
Tzer2 wrote:
The latest N-Gage-compatible device is the 5320, which is launching for 200 euros. That's about one third the price that the N95 launched for.
the trouble is the games are dire - and not designed with mobile gaming in mind.
they are trying to be full console games - FAIL
and then the games are impossible to control on the handsets so again FAIL
end of n-gage.
also percentage of users that try n-gage once and ever touch again 80-90%
If 10% to 20% of Nokia owners use N-Gage, that means 40 to 80 million people joining N-Gage every year, which is the same as all game consoles put together.
If 1000 million people buy phones then you don't need most people to buy the games, a small percentage is good enough.
the trouble is the games are dire - and not designed with mobile gaming in mind.
they are trying to be full console games - FAIL
Creatures Of The Deep is one of the best mobile games ever made and it was designed by a mobile-only developers. Have you tried it?
Mile High Pinball is another excellent game built entirely around mobile phones, the gameplay requires a tall narrow screen which only phones would have.
But it's a bit harsh to judge a platform by the games it has in the first few months. The launch games are bad on every platform ever made.
Can you name any exceptional launch games from the PS2 for example? Or the Nintendo DS? Or the Wii? There might be one or two titles, but most launch games are lazy ports from other systems.
and then the games are impossible to control on the handsets so again FAIL
Have you actually played N-Gage games? Most of them can be controlled entirely from the d-pad, so they're perfectly playable on practically any handset.
Tzer2 wrote:Can you name any exceptional launch games from the PS2 for example? Or the Nintendo DS?
PS2: ssx, tekken tag, ridge racer V, timesplitters.
DS: mario, wario ware - weaker - but backwards compatible with GBA
so it was an upgrade route.
Tzer2 wrote:
Have you actually played N-Gage games? Most of them can be controlled entirely from the d-pad, so they're perfectly playable on practically any handset.
yes fifa 08 and that asphalt game
both terrible.
the n-gage platform is quite buggy
i can log in to the website
but always rejects my username on the handset.
the free fifa refused to install.
etc etc.
also i see the 120,000 free copy's of FIFA 08 are still available
thats three months after the launch and they can't GIVE the games away.
its quite techy and requires a degree of dedication just to get the full n-gage app
onto your phone.
casual gamers are just going to buy games from their operator portals instead.
yes fifa 08 and that asphalt game
both terrible.
You didn't even try the demos of the other games? They're all free you know.
Try the games actually written for N-Gage like COTD, MHP, System Rush Evolution, Pro Series Golf. They are excellent, and if you don't like any of those games then you don't like phone gaming at all.
You shouldn't go round saying a platform is going to fail when you haven't even tried its good games. I could talk about the Wii being rubbish if I just played Excite Truck and Brunswick Pro Bowling.
macwhu wrote:PS2: ssx, tekken tag, ridge racer V, timesplitters.
DS: mario, wario ware - weaker - but backwards compatible with GBA
so it was an upgrade route.
Those games weren't the best on PS2, and the same is true of those DS games too. Every platform takes at least a year for its best games to appear.
On compatibility, the N-Gage phones are also compatible with S60 and Java games, and through emulators they can also run many older gaming systems (including the GBA).
the n-gage platform is quite buggy
i can log in to the website
but always rejects my username on the handset.
the free fifa refused to install.
Those are bugs, they're not design flaws in the platform. Lots of platforms have bugs when they first launch, remember those early 360s that destroyed DVDs?
If you want to see a platform at its best, use it a year after the launch, as that's when the best games start arriving and the main bugs have been dealt with.
its quite techy and requires a degree of dedication just to get the full n-gage app
onto your phone.
The "install the app yourself" thing was just for the launch period, they've started embedding it into phones so N-Gage is there on the phone when you buy it:
http://blog.n-gage.com/archive/goodthings/
It takes three months for an app to be embedded into firmware though, so they had to offer it as a separate download when it launched.
casual gamers are just going to buy games from their operator portals instead.
N-Gage will BE the operator portal on many networks:
http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/7591_Telenor_goes_Ovi.php
That film is painfully slow (to download and progress the narrative) and as for the choice of music....
Unregistered wrote:That film is painfully slow (to download and progress the narrative)
If the Ovi site is being slow for you, try YouTube version, see if that's any faster:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=j3EyhaLK0V4
On the narrative issue... you want narrative on a gameplay video? 😉
Seriously though, the video is intended to show that this works, and show how it works, which I think it does. AFAIK no one else has done this kind of video for N-Gage yet.
and as for the choice of music....
As you can see at the end of the video the music is copyright-free, to avoid any legal problems about using it on a commercial site. I quite like it though... 😊
We can't just slap our favourite tracks on these videos, have to be careful to keep things legal.
ok i just check out CotD via the web site - oh dear.
and i loved sega bass fishing - but wheres the underwater view?
i downloaded pro golf demo
and its nice enough - a bit like an amiga golf game from 7 or 8 years ago
but perfectly playable and fun
until....
Application closed:
MAIN
KERN-EXEC 3
😞
ill keep trying it out - as believe it or not - i would love to have n-gage rocking my phone.
macwhu wrote:ok i just check out CotD via the web site - oh dear.
and i loved sega bass fishing - but wheres the underwater view?
"via the website"? Did you just look at the screenshots? Do download the demo on your phone, the screenshots really don't do it justice.
This isn't a replacement for Sega Bass Fishing, it's just a 10 euro phone game after all, but as a phone game it's really excellent with a huge range of things to see and do. It's like a cross between a fishing sim, an RPG and Pokemon, with some arcade mini-games built in too that let you earn extra XP.
If COTD isn't your cup of tea try System Rush Evolution, and personally I'm a big fan of Mile High Pinball though some people find it too hard.
Application closed:MAIN
KERN-EXEC 3😞
Yeah, a lot of people get bugs like that, and even ignoring the bugs the app does need updating as there are many things which need changing:
http://www.allaboutngage.com/features/item/Looking_forward_to_an_updated_N-Gage_application.php
Hopefully there will be a new version of the N-Gage app soon, and for a larger number of handsets.
Incidentally I do totally agree that installing the app yourself is too complicated, they have to embed or N-Gage will die, but apparently they are definitely doing the embedding. I did an editorial about this a while ago:
http://www.allaboutngage.com/features/item/When_will_N-Gage_really_launch.php