Insight 33: N-Gage, Samsung, comparisons and open source

[Rafe]

In AAS podcast 86, a.ka. AAS Insight 33, Rafe and Ewan talk about N-Gage's Brothers in Arms and Reset Generation, Samsung's 8 megapixel Innov8 device, the challenges behind device comparisons and open source in relation to Symbian.

Read on in the full article.

[Tzer2]

With all due respect I'm not sure if I agree with Ewan's comment about N-Gage having to succeed by February next year. N-Gage is not a console, S60 hardware sales aren't driven by games, and N-Gage hasn't even launched yet really.

This "cut off date" mentality is how publishers think about dedicated gaming devices, because a gaming device only sells on the basis of its games. If it hasn't succeeded as a gaming machine by a certain date, it will never succeed, because it has no other raison d'etre. But that's not how Java or Flash succeeded, and the new N-Gage platform is a lot more like Java or Flash than a games console.

Java and Flash as gaming platforms took a LONG time to get going, they didn't spring into action within a year of their first downloadable release. Publishers waited for Java and Flash to gradually be embedded into more and more devices, and committed resources to these platforms as the userbases grew. Nowadays Java and Flash games are everywhere, purely because they have been embedded into so many computers and devices by default. No major publisher would ignore these platforms, because so many people have Java-compatible and Flash-compatible hardware.

It's the embedding of N-Gage in new handsets which will mark its real launch, because that's when it starts to follow in Java's and Flash's footsteps. If people have N-Gage by default on brand new S60 devices, that's when third party publishers will be interested in it, for the same reasons as they're interested in Java and Flash. The embedding in brand new models hasn't happened yet, but it should happen by the end of this year.

It's also worth remembering that S60 hardware isn't a console manufacturing business, games are not the driving force for hardware sales. People are buying S60 devices anyway, so it costs Nokia absolutely nothing to increase N-Gage's userbase through embedding. If they eventually include N-Gage on every new S60, and these phones carry on selling as before, then that will be about 50 to 60 million new N-Gage-capable devices sold every year.

If by 2010 or 2011 N-Gage is embedded on, say, 100 million phones, third party publishers aren't going to ignore it just because it didn't do well in February 2009. All that publishers care about is selling games, and if lots of people use a platform they will publish on it.

In a way it's a mistake to even talk about an N-Gage launch, because its future (if it has one) will be a much more gradual process. No one knows if it will succeed, but if it does succeed it will be more like a tide coming in than a huge explosion of sales.

Hi,

The 'Download' link does not seem to be pointing at the source file. but rather the parent directory.

Bye For Now

chris

[Rafe]

Thanks fixed.

The problem is still there when I want to download the podcast via the podcasting application, so I guess there is still something wrong in the rss feed...

[Rafe]

The feeds should now be updated (just checked). Sometimes the backend software caches thing for longer than it should.

[stuclark]

"It can't be a high end smartphone unless it's got a touch screen" ... does this mean we've got to consider the K850i as a smartphone now?

(...there's a reason I haven't been replying to any comments in the last week, and the UK national censor might have been an influence...)