There's now an official website for the N-Gage version of Asphalt 3: Street Rules, which includes themes, ringtones, wallpapers and a competition to win an N95 8GB. You can find the downloadable stuff by clicking on the "Downloads" link on the bottom right side of the screen.
Read on in the full article.
Not the most elaborate of websites, and not exactly a new game either, but maybe this is what happens when a title stays in the top 5 for half a year.
N-gage Burnout with graphics acceleration will catagorically ensure Asphalt 3 & its late website get shown the door. Good innings though Asphalt3!
NB- EA should maybe make the non-accelerated Burnout cell shaded or something otherwise it will look a bit naff compared against its slick, shiny, crisp big brother!
(Cue Tzer2 to argue pixellated, laggy, sheenless visuals are fine on a phone screen!)
Jallot, seriously, do you think most phone gamers care whether the graphics on their 2 inch screens are accelerated or not?
And do you think most phone users care whether their phone has graphics hardware or not?
This obsession with graphics reminds me of all the "analysts" who said the Wii/DS would fail against the PSP/PS3 purely because of tech spec comparisons. They just could not get into their heads that most people don't care about pixel counts etc.
All that most people want from a game is fun fun fun, which isn't something that acceleration adds to at all.
Naturally, but why won't you learn that given a choice between the same game with mediocre graphics, or the same game with flashy graphics, people aren't going to say, "ohhh the game with the crapper graphics please"! I want the accelerated phone.
That's all anybody is saying here. Yes phones aren't consoles and all the other stuff you keep talking about.. which is fine for the casual gamers.. But don't forget us- and there are a lot of us- the gamers who play N-Gage who have grown up in the PC and console environment, where the latest chipsets are important as they push boundaries. Having continually argued your contentment with mediocrity is actually quite insulting, and is a step in the wrong direction for those of us who would rather have the future in 2 months rather than 2 years.
What's going to happen in 2 years when Nokia's benchmark phone is running on a 2gig CPU with an 800mhz GPU and is running through a scart dongle straight to your TV.. Am I going to accept the N95 version as the best version of the game? Especially when the i-phone 4 is running games as detailed in scope and sexiness as anything the Ps3 can do right now? Right now COTD looks pretty good on my N95.. but my brain notices all the pixels (which an accelerator would smooth over) and I can't squint all the way through the game to feign photo-realism. My experience is therefore, unfortunately, lessened. Same with Star Wars. Sysem Rush is a great game.. but each triangle has one colour and no bump mapping. Add acceleration (like the 2005/6 demo and ba-da-bing- sexy). Playability is King, but shoot the legions of N-Gagers who want games to look good too hey.
Phones aren't consoles no.. But they, like anything else, need to be pushed to their limits to get the most out of them or they face getting left behind. And don't forget that the hardcore N-Gagers.. those gamers who counted down the minutes until it was released and used the hacked first-access code as they were so desperate to get the platform.. They want the most out of their hardware, they want the games detailed and fun, and- AND they want them to look as good as they possibly can be.
Before I get onto your points about consoles, can I just repeat that PEOPLE DON'T BUY PHONES FOR GAMING.
They buy phones for calls and texts, maybe e-mail and music too, but all the other features are totally secondary.
Buying a phone primarily for gaming would be like buying a television primarily for teletext, people just don't do it.
those gamers who counted down the minutes until it was released and used the hacked first-access code as they were so desperate to get the platform.
Nokia officially said that only about ten thousand people signed up for FA at launch, so the number of people who hacked it is probably in the low thousands at most.
Those figures are so tiny that they aren't really significant in deciding the future of the platform. The people that matter are the tens of millions who will buy phones with N-Gage embedded, and they're probably NOT going to care that much about the graphics of phone games.
Naturally, but why won't you learn that given a choice between the same game with mediocre graphics, or the same game with flashy graphics, people aren't going to say, "ohhh the game with the crapper graphics please"! I want the accelerated phone.
Phones aren't consoles no.. But they, like anything else, need to be pushed to their limits to get the most out of them or they face getting left behind.
Actually it's the gaming systems with cutting edge graphics that are the ones that usually get left behind. The systems which triumph in each generation usually have mediocre graphics.
Look at what people said about the PlayStation 3 before it launched, they said it would blow the competition away because it was so far advanced graphically, and in terms of storage space. The PS3 has true high definition graphics, Blu-Ray, Cell etc.
But what actually happened? Everyone bought the Wii instead, which isn't pushing graphical limits at all. It's not even HD, it uses standard definition, and has by far the worst graphics of this console generation. You can see jagged edges much more clearly on the Wii than on the PS3, yet it's the Wii that's wiping the floor with the PS3 in terms of actual sales.
It's not just the Wii either, the PS2 had worse graphics than the Gamecube or Xbox and yet it outsold both of them. Going further back the NES had worse graphics than the Master System yet it outsold it, and the Atari 2600 had the worst graphics of its generation yet it too outsold its rivals.
On the portable consoles, the Game Boy has always trailed waaaaaay behind its rivals in graphics, yet the GB has always outsold its rivals put together. The Nintendo DS has done exactly the same thing, it has much worse graphics than the PSP yet it still outsells the PSP many times over.
I know this is very difficult for hardcore gamers to accept, but the truth is that for most gamers graphics aren't that important, and they never have been. All that most gamers want is something that's cheap and has fun games, the graphics are just secondary.
Lol! Ur either remarkably naive & looking backwards.. Or Nokia have bought u some blinkers!!
We'll take our attractive graphics thanx my strange little compadpre!