Recreate the classic console games, or emphasis the differences in a mobile phne. Which direction will the Mobile Games Market take (ask The Feature)? Given Pathway to Glory, Snakes and Pocket Kingdom were the games that showed the N-Gage could actually work (and Call of Duty failed to do anything impressive in the handheld), it's a fair bet Nokia are banking on the second. What do you think?
Somewhere in Finland, they've worked out that Demo copies of the N-Gage games sells more N-Gage games. Now we've got a demo version of X-Men Legends for free download over at the N-Gage Arena, along with Worms, Colin McRae, Pathway to Glory and others.
Richard Hodges has been happily falling off the road, crashing, and chasing the opposition round some of the craziest road courses seen on a Symbian device, in Fathammer'sStuntcar Extreme. Find out more in his review of one of the smoothest looking games yet on Series 60.
New N-Gage boss Gerard Weiner has said Nokia will make "a couple of significant strategic announcements" at E3 in May, in response to a question about how N-Gage would be promoted in 2005. He also said (in a Business 2.0 interview) that Nokia was still mulling over whether to release another N-Gage model this year, saying "the question is one of timing". He also revealed we can expect some new colours of QD this year (a common marketing tactic in the games and indeed phone industry), and confirmed Nokia would support the current generation of N-Gage to the end of 2005 at least.
...and you can download a free demo version of Worms World Party for your N-Gage from the N-Gage Arena. Looks like the releasing demo versions meme is working for N-Gage sales. Good.
Ilkka Raiskinen, until now head of Nokia's Games division, has been promoted to head the entire Nokia Multimedia division (which Games is a part of). Replacing Raiskinen as head of Games is Gerard Wiener, a games industry veteran who joined Nokia as part of a deal with Sega last year which included the purchase of Sega's Online divison, the SNAP network and Pocket Kingdom (which runs on SNAP). In an interview at GameSpot after the reshuffle Wiener sounded particularly rugged and upbeat, contrasting the strong support Nokia is providing the N-gage with the lack of support Sega gave the ill-fated Dreamcast: "The N-Gage will be here for as long as it takes. I remember the sickening feeling I got during the Dreamcast era when I was at Sega, and this situation isn't the same. Every time we get hit, we learn more, and it just makes us stronger."
Actually no, it's just a very good photoshop, but given Nokia's product cycles, it's a a fair chance that there'll be a new N-Gage model at some point in 2005. So have a look at the pictures here and ask yourself if adding a 1.3 mega pixel camera, and a landscape sized screen (which means using the latest version of Serries 60) is something Nokia would do with the N-gage?
Vampnet have announced the availability of vSun, a SNES emulator for Series 60. The emualtor features sound, load/save functions, key mapping and support for zip files. It runs best on a 6630 thanks to its faster processor, but runs at roughly 10 fps on the N-Gage (depending on the game). You can find some public domain ROM's here.
Part of Nokia's Financial Results for 2004 included numbers on the sale of the N-Gage and N-Gage QD - 1.3 million units to the end of Dec 2004. Given Nokia launched the device in October 2003, that works out to an average of around 92,000 units a month. Nokia have been reluctant to give out any more figures on intermediate sales, so it's hard to place an exact number per month, or if the QD really did shake up the market, but let's have a look and compare those numbers.
In their end of year report Nokia has said they've regained the market share lost during 2004. They are now back above the 30% mark, which is twice the share of their nearest competitor Motorola. Profits were slightly down (perhaps because of recent price cuts) but sales set records over the Christmas period hence the rise in market share. In the report on their multimedia division it says "Nokia had cumulatively sold 1.3 million N-Gage devices", the first official statement since their "1 million" announcement in September. It's slightly less than the 1.5 million mentioned by Vir2L, but still shows the QD outselling the original model very quickly. On a side note, N-gage QDs are now on the market in China.
Not exactly N-Gage news, but a nice little heads up. Sony have announced an online music store for the Playstation Portable to download music direct to the device. Which sounds awfully like thier Sony Connect service, except it will also "offer PSP users free additional game levels and upgrades." Sounds like the PSP Arena is coming. Is this going to be an area where the N-Gage and the PSP will have parity to fight it out? We'll find out in Q3.
While Nokia sit back and enjoy the really weird Snakes Outbreak website, you can download a .sis file for Snakes on N-Gage from this link. Thanks to Matt Croydon for spotting the link.
