One year since First Access...

Published by at

It's been a whole year since N-Gage's public beta test, aka First Access, which allowed people with N81s to try out the new platform for a few weeks. What's been improved since then? What has still got to be improved? See below for some ideas, but do add your own in the comments thread.

Some of the stuff that has now been fixed:

- More devices are compatible (current list is the Nokia 5320, 6210, N78, N79, N81, N81 8GB, N82, N85, N95, N95 8GB and N96)

- More games are available (currently 29)

- Multiplayer online gameplay is available (Pro Series Golf and Reset Generation are probably the best examples)

- The "screen dance" when loading games has disappeared

- Graphics have improved in some titles (Creatures Of The Deep has a higher resolution graphics engine)

- 10,000 points limit bug has been squashed, people can now earn more than that in NGP

Some of the stuff that still needs to be fixed:

- No horizontal mode

- Showroom becoming difficult to navigate as it isn't categorised

- More phones need to be added (for example the E71 and E51 have sold well and should be technically compatible with N-Gage)

- Games need to be added at a greater pace, current release rate is too slow (Nokia's own estimate for releases by the end of 2008 was 60, actual releases were 27)

- No support for graphics hardware yet, despite many compatible phones containing such hardware (N95, N95 8GB, N82)

- Phone bill payment still not available in many countries, and voucher retail still very limited

- Still no statement about N73/N93/N93i compatibility, which was promised at launch

- No casual first party games, Nokia themselves haven't released any card, puzzle or board game titles

- No non-competitive online features

- You can only check your NGP total for games in the My Profile section, but you have to load up a game just to get it to appear in the My Profile section, which is currently limited to the most recently-played 5 titles

But what do you think? Let us know in the comments thread below.