'N-Gage' Relaunched as Service

An anonymous reader writes "In an interesting move, Nokia has decided to kill off the N-Gage hardware but carry on with the N-Gage name; a name branded as a failure by most of the gaming media. Still, Nokia has announced they'll be re-introducing the N-Gage as a gaming service for the Nokia network. You'll be able to download games that are very reminiscent of the N-Gage from their online service. This actually fits well into Nokia's statements when they announced the death of the N-Gage hardware. They said they would be focusing on their cell phones as a gaming platform in general, instead of just one or two."

Comments

Fire these marketing people.

[jx100]

Next, they'll premiere the Sony Betamax movie download service.

Re:Fire these marketing people.

[Tensor]

Fire them ?

Nokia has close to 70% market share to the cellphone market.

Around 40% and growing, of those are as powerful as the NGAGE. The newest ones are better.

PSP and DS together dont come even CLOSE to that many consoles. If Nokia is getting ready for this step they are not taking it lightly. The potential market is huge.

Re:Fire these marketing people.

[MachDelta]

I agree with grandparent. Fire the marketing team, or at least give them a smack. Just because Nokia makes good hardware that happens to be popular (I bought a Samsung! :P), does not excuse them from the fact that the "N-Gage" name makes gamers of all stripes recoil in horror.

This is like Ford trying to sell a "Mustang Pinto Edition". It MAY be a good car (note: I'm far from a ford fan :P), but associating it with one of the most infamous and least popular names in automotive history would be suicide.

Re:Come on, Zonk

[chrismcdirty]

Usually, I would chastise Zonk for duping, misleading headlines/summaries, biased reporting, or something else. But for 8 hours, he's been the only one to post anything. For that, I applaud him.

Thank you, Zonk, for giving me something to read on a Sunday afternoon.

Crazy 3D gaming on Nokia N91

[chicken_tonight]

Did anybody see this? Its a movie of a 3D fighter on the N91. Its pretty crazy. http://www.duggmirror.com/gaming/A_Cell_Phone_game _can_look_like_this_/#c1743808

Re:Crazy 3D gaming on Nokia N91

[michaelnz]

And how long will the battery last playing that?

Re:Crazy 3D gaming on Nokia N91

[Kenshin]

Ya, that's great.

But you still have to use a goddamn keypad to control it.

Re:Crazy 3D gaming on Nokia N91

[John_Booty]

Did anybody see this? Its a movie of a 3D fighter on the N91. Its pretty crazy. http://www.duggmirror.com/gaming/A_Cell_Phone_game _can_look_like_this_/#c1743808

First of all, that is extremely impressive. Looks great and kudos to the team that produced it.

However there's a huge question.

Is that actual gameplay footage? I realize that it was rendered in real-time on the Nokia. However, that's a different thing from actual gameplay. To me, that appeared to be non-interactive motion-captured animation and not actual gameplay.

It's pretty easy (relatively speaking) to mo-cap a bunch of moves, map the animations to 3D models, and play them back in real time.

However, that's a totally different thing from creating actual gameplay utilizing those mo-capped moves. Fighting games, at least the good ones, are fairly complex beasts in terms of the gameplay systems. Hit detection, combo systems, character balancing, parries, and so forth. Simply replaying a bunch of non-interactive motion-captured animations means you're about 1% of the way there; crafting the gameplay is the other 99%.

Re:Crazy 3D gaming on Nokia N91

[xiangpeng]

Not to go into details, but that's on the n93. And the N91 has very different specs compared to the N93.

Re:Come on, Zonk

[iced_773]

Surely TripMaster Monkey could do a better job! ;)

am I the only one...

[gooseserbus]

I bought my original N-Gage on launch day a couple of years ago, and I have been using it every day ever since (it is even sat here right in front of me now).

Am I the only one......

Re:am I the only one...

[NiGHTSFTP]

No way man, the N-Gage is amazing. I just bought an N-Gage QD brand new on a 1-yr contract just last week. Even came with 4 games.

I 3 NGAGE QD!!!

Its a great phone that is alot of fun, and anyone who says otherwise probably DOESNT OWN ONE.

Re:am I the only one...

[NiGHTSFTP]

That 3 was originally a heart using the left... well, whatever the thing that looks like its pointing to the left is.

Re:am I the only one...

[taursir]

I see people using them in public from time to time... but then, that says nothing; this is Helsinki.

Re:am I the only one...

[PSXer]

That strip would have been 13.4 times funnier if the guy was sidetalkin' on his brand new N-Gage.

Re:am I the only one...

[itsthebin]

The main people who didn't like them are the fashion boi metrosexuals. symbian 60 OS , good screen , MMC card memory , bluetooth , GPRS. not much you couldn't do with this nifty computer . I still have my n-gage original - I can't bear to part with it . I now use a nokia 6630 only because I wanted edge capability.

Re:am I the only one...

[Emetophobe]

My condolences.

Re:Come on, Zonk

[StocDred]

Huh. All I ever read is the games subdivision, so for me, it's like a million games stories in a row. Woot!

Shady marketing?

[one-eye-johnson]

...it would seem that if Nokia didn't want to trash the entire project they'd keep the actual material parts, rather than the name. People will equate "N-Gage" with "shit" regardless of any changes to the system itself.

Is the right solution?

[Enderandrew]

Plenty of people have pointed out that the name itself has bad connotations, so why keep the name?

Better yet, why completely ditch the hardware?

The problem with the NGage initially was a very poor design. The QD was considerably better. If Nokia truly wants to succeed the game market, perhaps they need to come out with something that is designed well?

Hell, look how much design payed off for the iPod and DS?

The problem with their current strategy is not only are they keeping the wretched name, but by going to normal cell phones, they are doing to an even worse interface system that what they had currently.

Playing games on a cell phone is less than ideal. I liked the concept of a phone/mp3/gaming console. I'd like to see a good one.

Re:Is the right solution?

[cgenman]

Nokia's strengths are in the cellphone chain. In traditional gaming, the gatekeepers are the EB's, Walmarts, and IGN's of the world, which Nokia has no experience with. On the other hand, the gatekeepers of the cellphone world are the phone companies, whom Nokia already has established relations with (however lopsided).

Downloadable games seem like the future. Creating a great downloadable games service would encourage cellphone providers to push Nokia phones, in order to get a piece of that secondary revenue stream. They stop competing in the retail space they've done so poorly at, and start competing in the phone space they know so well. They stop pushing a single phone and start pushing their entire lineup.

And everyone knows what "NGage" is. It's a very recognizable mark. It's generally easier to move a mark from an abandoned service to a new one than it is to create a new one from scratch. The NGage wasn't a mark of death, like Enron might be, but rather a reasonably noble failure. It should be recoverable. And the years and years of exposure in the press is priceless.

This makes sense for Nokia, and I'm glad they're doing it. Of course they need to design all of their handsets with gaming in mind from now on, but they should have been doing that anyway.

Re:The N-Gage got beat on for no reason.

[geminidomino]

How was the control pad?

I ask, because there's a mod on the horizon to replace the bletcherous stick on the GP2X with the QD D-pad.

Ditch the mini-joystick!

[AFCArchvile]

In my opinion, what Nokia should do first is eliminate the "joystick" cursor controller that they have on their phones. Instead of a directional pad, as on most phones, they have a little projecting square or circle that you can press in four directions, or downward as the "Menu" or "OK" button. Unfortunately this means that you have to spend a considerable amount of time if you're going through the menus, because you have to make sure that you don't accidentally push the joystick into the case, which triggers the "Menu"/"OK" button. This is easier said than done; the "Menu"/"OK" function of the joystick is so sensitive, you're ultimately forced into angling your thumb at awkward angles to push the joystick in the intended direction, and not down into the case, which would cause a mistaken "Menu"/"OK" command to be sent.

I've tried navigating the menu in a phone with this (the Nokia 6236i). It was terrible; it took about 100% to 200% more time to navigate into the ringmode profiles than it did on my current Nokia phone with a directional pad (6015i). It's a shame, because the 6236i would be a rather good phone if it didn't have the joystick and the camera (those of us who work in visually secure places have learned to hate this trite "camera phone" trend, and how it locks us out of choosing a phone). Perhaps there's a menu function to disable the "straight down" keypress of the joystick, but I didn't hunt around for that type of function at the time.

Re:The N-Gage got beat on for no reason.

[NiGHTSFTP]

I 3 the d-pad on the QD. I never had any trouble playing tony hawk with it, doing combos and tricks and stuff. Very good d-pad.