Archive for April, 2008

Attention game developers, professional and amateur alike! I wanted to give you a heads up about a new book called Games on Symbian OS: A Handbook for Mobile Development that’s coming out this week.

The book, by Jo Stichbury, is an overview of developing games for the Symbian operating system, including an overview of the mobile games industry, key aspects of both writing games for and porting games to Symbian, chapters on audio, graphics, and multiplayer, and other exciting, computer nerd stuff.

Also included is a chapter on the N-Gage platform written by our product management team featuring Peter Nielsen and Roland Geisler. This portion of the book covers the history of the platform, the current application, and offers a deeper look into the N-Gage SDK and just what it all means for a game developer.

Here’s a snip:

“The set of S60 phones that are N-Gage compatible will grow to add more phones and, of those, a large number of additional phones will come to market after a game is shipped. How is the developer to implement the game code? How is the developer to implement the game code?

It would require a logic flow that that takes into consideration the behavior of each N-Gage phone (current and future) so that the game can adjust the graphics for the screen mode and input keys accordingly.

As you expand the number of devices the decision tree for handling all this logic becomes untenable in a single SKU. When using the N-Gage SDK, a developer does not have to manage all this logic, since it is handled for them at a platform level.”

There’s plenty more, take a look at the Amazon page for details.

Mobile Game FAQs has reviewed FIFA 2008 for the N-Gage platform and they like what they see, giving the game an overall score of 83/100. Here’s a snip from the review:

“EA have set the mantle to the other title chasers for Best N-Gage Football game. Gameloft are getting up to speed with their own game launches and hopefully it wont be too long before Real Football NG comes off the bench.”

 Check out the rest, and for those of you in select European countries, don’t forget to take of this special offer to get a complimentary copy of the game for installing the N-Gage application.

Good morning N-Gage fans, although after spending all of this morning in a meeting planning for our next meeting, it’s rapidly becoming afternoon, but such is the Nokia way. Now, on to the rest of today’s news…

Behind the Scenes with Creebies

Pocket Gamer has put up an extensive, two-part interview with Lida de Araujo, the game designer of Creebies, which of course is the upcoming creature nurturing game for the N-Gage platform. In it, she talks about the game’s influences, target audience, dynamic breeding mechanics (heh), and community aspects of the game. Here’s a snippet:

I’m really so proud of Creebies. I think it’s an incredibly rich and deep title that could easily hold its own on a console or PC. It’s quite difficult for me to say what I’m most proud of because it was a huge team effort that everyone put so much time and creativity into.

Be sure to read Part 1 and Part 2.

All About Symbian Podcast #70

The lads at AAS have posted up podcast #70, this one goes over Nokia Q1 results, a talk about Orange, and then they discuss N-Gage releases FIFA and SIKB. I’m going to give it a listen during lunch. Here’s the link.

System Rush Review
All About N-Gage wraps their big, beefy hands around System Rush: Evolution and gives it a good shakeout. All in all, they like the game, scoring it 85/100 and noting:

System Rush Evolution sums up the new N-Gage platform perfectly. The gaming is perfectly suited for a mobile device, and offers a comparable challenge to console based gaming, thanks to the strong consideration of the devices the game will be played on.

Read more… 

FIFA 2008 Review

Next up, Pocket Gamer takes EA Sports FIFA 2008 out onto the pitch and gives it a thorough examination. Here’s a snip:

In true FIFA style, the game offers plenty of modes. You can set up an individual match involving international teams, or teams from a host of domestic leagues, including England, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Holland, the USA, South Korea, Portugal and Mexico, as well as a grab-bag of teams from ‘Rest Of World’.

Read more… 

Asphalt Series Tops 10 Million in Sales

Congrats to Gameloft, whose ‘Asphalt’ series of racing games has just topped the ten million units in sales mark. Obviously that’s across all platforms, not just N-Gage but still an impressive number!

A news blast from the mothership this morning announced a new device that we’re planning on making N-Gage compatible. Called the Nokia 5320 XpressMusic, it is a music-oriented entertainment device, and the first that is not an Nseries device. From the official word:

The full featured Internet browser, access to Ovi and Nokia Search 4.1 allow users to find and share media content and information with ease.  In addition, dedicated N-Gage gaming keys and landscape view deliver a true gaming experience, while HSDPA provides fast access to N-Gage, which will be available for download. The Nokia 5320 XpressMusic is expected to begin shipping in the third quarter of 2008 with an estimated retail price of 220 EUR before taxes and subsidies.

Welcome to the family, Nokia 5320 XpressMusic. And before you guys ask, no I am sorry I do not have an update on the N73 and N93 support for you at this time.

Enter our drawing for a brand new Nokia handset and Gameloft prize pack. All you have to do is download and play a Gameloft game for your N-Gage, and submit one high score.

We are giving away a brand new Nokia N81 8GB or Nokia N95 8GB (the choice is yours!) every week for the next five weeks! Not only that, you will also get a Gameloft Prize Pack crammed full of more N-Gage and Gameloft gaming goodies! Just the perfect thing for the gamer on the go.

For more, go here.

The Asia-Pacific region had its special promotion (a Hooked On: Creatures of the Deep code bundled in some N81 boxes), now it’s Europe’s turn. According to the Kickoff site:

Install the N-Gage application on your compatible Nokia Nseries device and you will get a free license for the full version of the EA SPORTS™ famed football franchise FIFA 2008.

All you need to do is to follow the instructions to download the application first, then the game and finally request the activation code.

This is a limited offer with a limited number of available codes, so act now!

If you ever wanted to play Breakout with human beings — or just wanted to see Nokia throwing some more support behind N-Gage — you’ll want to check out this new viral video thingy called Get Out and Play!

It features a “chiseled bloke,” in the words of Pocket Gamer, starting a giant Snakes procession through an unnamed metropolis, and includes an interesting stop-motion version of the classic tile breaking game.

What are your reactions?

I have just received word from the Boys in Vancouver that Space Impact Kappa Base has been released!

While it is not yet for download available on the N-Gage.com website (that should happen Monday morning, approximately 9 AM PST), it should now be available on the application itself.

Just navigate to the Showroom module and view Available Games, and if you don’t see it right away, be sure to select the option ‘Update Now’ (like krisse explains in the Comments section).

 Update: The game is now available in the Web showroom, if you don’t want to download the trial over the air.

Normally I’m not one to believe in the paranormal or the mysterious, but I thought I would pass this one along. A colleague of mine up in the Vancouver office recently sent me this panicky email:

I just got this video from a N-Gage fanatic in Asia!?!?! Seems something is approaching and he captured this video… Can mankind be saved?

Along with the email, he attached the video, which I’ve uploaded to our server. What it all means, I’m not sure, but it could be the start of something big…

As part of an upcoming special event focused on Gameloft titles, we’d like to give you the opportunity to put questions to a representative Gameloft, one of our third party publishing partners on the N-Gage platform.

So if you have any questions about individual Gameloft games, the company’s future efforts on the N-Gage platform, or general questions about Gameloft and mobile gaming, please add them here as a reply to this post.  Gameloft titles for N-Gage include Asphalt 3, Brain Challenge, Block Breaker Deluxe, Dogz, Brothers in Arms, and Midnight Pool.

We will go through the questions, sort them and edit them, and submit them to Gameloft as part of this upcoming event.

Thanks in advance!

Update: The Questions period is now closed.