May
27
N-Gage A Glimpse of the Future of Gaming?
Stumble it!Or too little, too late?
The ‘N-Gage’ name may be familiar to you, as it was used for a couple of early S60 gaming-focused smartphones by Nokia. The units themselves sold disappointingly, despite innovative hardware (the original N-Gage had sux luxuries as FM radio, stereo sound and stereo line recording, ahead of its time). Part of the reason was the odd form factor, with a landscape device but small portrait screen, plus oddities like having to remove the battery and reboot to change games (on the original; the follow-up N-Gage QD fixed this). But the main problem was that people did not seem to want phones that looked like game consoles — it seemed they would rather buy phones and games consoles separately. Witness the success of Nokia’s S60 smartphones generally and that of Nintendo’s Gameboy and DS ranges.
Fast forward to 2007 and, after years of rumours, Nokia officialyy relaunches N-Gage as a next generation, always connected games platform that will run on most of its newer smartphones. Thus, rather than having to rely on people wanting to buy specific N-Gage hardware, the many tens of millions of Nseries users out there can simply download the N-Gage client over the air and start stocking up on exciting multiplayer games. No distribution costs and a massive installed base of compatible hardware. That’s the vision, anyway.
N-Gage First Access
In practice, delays in producing games of high enough quality and in getting the online multi-payer aspects of N-Gage working have resulted in it getting off to a slow start. As we write, the N-Gag client has only just moved from its intial release in Nokia N81 form, with Nokia effectively using owners of this newer smartphone as beta testers for the concept, to a full live service available for the other Nseries handsets.
N-Gae Client
At the end of the day, N-Gage is all about the games. But, like Xbox LIVE in the living room, they are wrapped and integrated into an online social network that should, in time, add a lot of value, providing friends to play with, and against whom you can compare high scores directly.
The N-Gage client provides a tabbed interface. ‘Home’ is the busiest tab and presents a graphical shorcut to your last played game in case you want to resume it, a points and reputation tracker (as earned through games and as rated by others), a shortcut pane for seeing which of your friends are online and to then play with them, plus an advert for a game you have not bought and a summary of new N-Gage messages from others.
‘My Games’ lists all games you have either bought or for which you have downloaded trial versions, in neat graphical form. “My Profile’ summarises your status and shows your points history against each of you N-Gage friends. “My Friends” lists each of these, along with thumbail photos and their attributes. Finally, “Showroom” lists all available games.
The Future
We have waited this long — we can wait a bit longer. By mid 2008 N-Gage will be available for all top-end Nseries S60 smartphones and there should be three times the number of game titles for download. We shall see.
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May 27th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
[...] don’t know the latest news about the N-Gage the future of gaming? Here are the first access [...]