Archive for January, 2007

Pocket Gamer has posted a list of the 50 best-selling mobile games for 2006, and — surprise, surprise –  Tetris is on top of the charts. Probably no surprise there, Tetris has probably been ported to every platform every made — I’ve even played a version written in Microsoft Excel, of all things. Kudos nonetheless to EA Mobile for publishing the best-selling mobile version.

Unfortunately no Nokia or N-Gage games made the list, but Pocket Gamer also put up an interesting report up about a recent, alleged workshop Nokia held for publishers and developers last week. While we can neither confirm nor deny the event, we thought you might like to read about it anyway.

Congratulations to the winners of our 2006 N-Gage Player Awards, as selected by you, the members of our N-Gage community.

In particular, a hearty congratulations to N-Gage Arena member Kusia_7, who took not only the Best All-Around Gamer Award, but was also named the N-Gage Arena Player of the Year for 2006.

Complete winner list and discussion thread is here.

“Puppy look, I have a new head.”
“I would like also to get a new head. Where did you find your new head?”
“I got it from robot head store. Just go there and get a new head for you too.”

Some of Nokia’s engineers have been busy demonstrating the use of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, attaching it to a robot model kit and creating the “Nokia Robot Puppy.”

The robot was built with off the shelf robot kits, runs on Linux, and of course, his head is a Nokia 770. The idea is to use Robot Puppy as an example of what can be done with the 770 tablet. Learn more about the project on maemo.org.

Since then, Robot Puppy’s adventures have since been uploaded to YouTube and shared with robot and Nokia enthusiasts around the world.

The engineers also need help coming up with a name for the puppy, so tell us your suggestions!

Episodes
Meet Robot Puppy
Puppy Gets a Friend
Puppy Has a Dream
Puppy Gets a New Head (best robot puppy dialogue ever!)

Just a quick reminder to everyone to be sure to vote in the N-Gage Arena 2006 Player Awards.

This is an annual event we’ve held in the N-Gage Arena since 2004, honoring some of our most standout gamers and community members in the N-Gage Arena — not only the best players, but our best artists, most entertaining board posters, most helpful players, and even our funniest community members.

Make your vote count today!

It feels like we’ve barely started the new year, but the Game Developer’s Conference is already looming large. The conference better known as GDC runs from March 5 - 9 and is being held this year in San Francisco, California.

Today it was announced that this year’s keynote address will be given by Shigeru Miyamoto, probably the most influential game designer of all time and the creator of such beloved Nintendo classics as Mario, the Legend of Zelda, Donkey Kong, and many more.

Of course there’s more to GDC than a single career no matter how luminary, and mobile gaming will again have its own dedicated conference track. Nokia of course will not be absent from the proceedings.

For starters, Matt Levy, the technical lead for the SNAP Mobile team, will show how to turn a standalone Java game into a feature-rich connected mobile game using the SNAP Mobile technology.

Another announced event will feature Gregg Sauter, Nokia’s Director of Third-Party Publishing, who will give a talk on the Next Generation of the N-Gage Platform. This will be held On March 5, from 1 to 1:30pm.

As other Nokia-related events are added, we’ll keep you posted. Early registration for GDC ends on January 31.

Here’s a quick follow up on a post we made earlier this week about the Nokia Design Center concept videos posted on YouTube.

The videos were first shown at Nokia World last year, generating a buzz among the bloggers who attended the event. Some of these bloggers even posted short clips of the videos on their own sites,  using camera phones. It was in reaction to that interest that Nokia Design Center then “officially” posted the full-length videos on YouTube.

Putting the videos in context is Alastair Curtis, Nokia’s Chief Designer, who said:

“Design is undoubtedly a key, defining issue in our industry. This is only set to increase over the coming years as we see people demanding mobile devices that more closely match their lifestyle.”

“As designers we have to be constantly looking ahead, predicting how these trends will develop and provoking new ideas. Making these videos public and sharing some of this thinking with the people who use our phones will help us do this.”

Since we’ve blogged about this, the videos have been picked up by a few other blogs and the number of views on YouTube has gone up quite a bit…we’re happy to say!

If you haven’t checked ‘em out yet, be sure to do so. They’re a bit like A Scanner Darkly meets the Matrix, minus the Orwellian overtones, of course. And remember, they’re not showing prototypes of actual phones or devices that Nokia is currently working on, but just exploring futuristic concepts and potential new ideas.

Our good friends from north of the border have created a really awesome online ad campaign that involves some online gaming, and in fact the idea is that it’s your left hand competing with your right to see who will control the phone It’s called Push to Start:

I know it’s not next gen gaming but it’s a really fun campaign. What do you think “eh”.

The Nokia Design Center has released four short videos on YouTube that explore how mobile phone design may change in the next few years.

These videos are not showing prototypes of actual phones or devices that Nokia is currently working on or plans to launch.

They are exploring futuristic concepts and potential new ideas that may or may not be produced in years to come.

Check ‘em out below:

Connecting Simply (1:41)
An amazing visit to grandma’s high-tech refrigerator.

Inspiring Scenes (1:45)
Can you do some mad edits on the nightclub floor?

Achieving Together (1:50)
No more telecommuting in your pajamas.

Sharing Discoveries (1:36)
Don’t try this at home.

As a follow-up to one of our earlier posts, I found a good interview with Anna Kang of Fountainhead Entertainment (developer of Orcs & Elves and the Doom RPG) talking about the mobile games market.

Here’s her take on some of the challenges the industry is facing, particularly in North America:

I believe there’s a bit of re-inventing the wheel that needs to be done in North America when it comes to mobile gaming. Similar to the early days of computer gaming, the mobile gaming industry isn’t being taken seriously at the moment.

The service providers are in a similar place that computer manufacturers were in the early days. The primary objective of said devices were not to play games, but when good games came along, gamers helped drive the sales of computers.

The gaming industry is now a multi-billion dollar industry and gamers are an important customer base to computer manufacturers. Cell phone service providers will have to learn that getting good games to their customers will help drive sales of mobile devices, mobile services, and create a revenue source that can enhance their services and their bottom line.

Read the whole thing on Games Industry.

The comparison to the early days of personal computing — specifically the era before the predominance of the IBM PC, when multiple manufacturers were releasing incompatible systems (Commodore, Altair, Amiga) — is an interesting one. What do you guys think?

Greetings from the Nseries booth at CES! We’ve got a huge tent dedicated to Nseries located just outside the building, you can’t miss us when you arrive at the show. We’ve had lots of visitors checking out the new devices we just launched, N93i and N76, plus a selection of new enhancements and other cool stuff. There are lots of photos of the booth on the Nseries CES site. I’m used to game industry shows and this is nearly twice as big as E3 — just masses of people!

I’ve been demoing the next gen N-Gage platform and a few games to visitors. People especially like System Rush Evolution and the game does look really great up close and personal. It’s fun to work shows because you get to chat with people about gaming and N-Gage and hear their opinions about it all.

Working the show has also given me the chance to check out some other cool technologies, such as the video blogging series called Vox, which enables you to upload video blogs directly from Nseries multimedia computers. Or the music recommender service, which offers personalized top picks from music experts around the world.

Another cool demo is mobile TV on the N93i’s nice big screen. A couple of guys in mobile TV development work in my office and they recently acquired a mysterious silver box on wheels — turns out it’s a mini TV broadcast station and they’re using it to stream a few channels to their N93i’s in the booth. Very impressive I must say.

Well back to booth duty now. Over and out.