AllAboutSymbian On Learning the lessons from N-Gage
Wow, AllAboutSymbian has just put up a really interesting article which gives their perspective on the challenges and opportunities for the next generation of N-Gage. The article lays out some past successes (N-Gage Arena, first party games, and the marketing of Pocket Kingdom), some problems, and how they think we are mitigating some of those problems. Apart from being an excellent and objective article, it also provides a pretty good overview of how the next generation of N-Gage gaming is going to work, i.e. it’s going to work across different Nseries devices and other Nokia S60 devices.
The one thing they were highly critical of in the article was the continuing use of the N-Gage brand name, which they gave some pretty well thought out reasons for. I’m not sure it’s quite as black and white as they laid it out in the article, I think perceptions change with experience and if we can provide a great experience what the brand means will change.
BTW the guy behind the success of Pocket Kingdom, Scott Foe will be speaking at GDC, check him out if you get the chance. I’ll be there as well but not speaking, but I might be blogging about stuff going on there.
February 6th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
nice article and firm question about n-gage NAME at the bottom!
February 7th, 2007 at 12:13 am
True that the N-Gage brand has had a bad reputation in the gaming community, a better device with better games and hardware combined with good reviews from the users can definitely change the way gamers look at N-Gage today.
Hope the team behind this amazing concept understands this need. . .
http://www.theanand.com/blog/index.php/just-ripples/coming-soon-n-gage-3rd-edition/
February 7th, 2007 at 3:36 am
Thank you for the link!
On the name, just want to add that it’s fairly common practice for platform manufacturers to change the brand for each new generation. There’s no shame in doing it, it’s completely normal even when the previous generation was a success.
The Sega Master System was followed by the Mega Drive/Genesis, the Nintendo SNES was followed by the N64, the Commodore 64 was followed by the Amiga, the Apple II was followed by the Macintosh etc.
It’s only a minority of platform holders who keep exactly the same brand from one generation to another. Judging by the severe difficulties that the PlayStation 3 is running into, it seems that cross-generation branding isn’t a passport to success, even when the previous generations of that brand have sold really really well.
February 7th, 2007 at 9:54 am
Good points Krisse, but the Game Boy is maybe an example of a device that kept it’s name the same. Also the challenges the PS3 are facing have little to do with it’s name and more to do with it’s price and positioning in the marketplace… and the Wii
One thing that is different is that we are not launching a console (a dedicated device), what we are launching is a platform that will run on multiple Nseries devices and other S60 devices.
In the end I personally don’t think the name is going to be the deciding factor in this businesses success or failure.
February 7th, 2007 at 9:11 pm
“Good points Krisse, but the Game Boy is maybe an example of a device that kept it’s name the same.”
…until the DS.
“Also the challenges the PS3 are facing have little to do with it’s name and more to do with it’s price and positioning in the marketplace”
I agree, I just meant in the end the name alone isn’t worth that much even when it’s something as dazzling as the PlayStation brand.
“In the end I personally don’t think the name is going to be the deciding factor in this businesses success or failure.”
Yeah, I agree, and I did mention that in the article too. The number of people who actually buy home or portable consoles (about 25 million a year) is absolutely tiny compared to the number of people who buy phones (about 1000 million a year).
According to my back-of-an-envelope calculations, Nokia only needs to get 7.5% of its existing customers (and just 2.5% of phone buyers as a whole) to buy the Next Gen games in order to have a userbase larger than Nintendo, PlayStation and Xbox put together.
February 7th, 2007 at 9:35 pm
I need to get one of those envelopes
February 8th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
Hi guys, Krisse has a major point with the amount of customers that need to buy the software for it to become a large userbase. When I got my first N-gage and tried out there selection of games … I was astonished. I mean 3d games.
I’m thinking that this launch is going to be massive. Not for popularity (as of yet) but with pure quality in gaming. The gaming capabilities with the N-gage I found were excellent. With the new hardware in the next gen phones the quality will be there.
I think that Nokia should stay with the “N-Gage” name and maybe extend it with Next Gen name or something similar. In doing this, it will throw it in any ones face that The Next Gen is amazing and hopefully rekindle the N-Gage first edition.
If you catch my drift … thanks
February 9th, 2007 at 4:04 am
Hello !
Unfortunalty as journalists, it was very difficult to get information although we have the biggest french Ngage community. The players couldn’t buy in France some of the latest games (as Catan, Atari 2…). It will be difficult to convince them with a new Ngage if Nokia France doesn’t change.
February 11th, 2007 at 3:53 am
Побыстрее бы выпустили, запарился ждать уже!!!
February 12th, 2007 at 11:23 am
Krisse, I think that there is nothing wrong with the brand name, it is the first “N” series if I may say so. And your calculations must be right as nokia being the best in the phone business, a better ngage,ngage games and a better publicity are all that is required to sell this phone as a phone(as a gaming console is a different story though)!
When the qd came out, it showed that nokia is listening to the its users as it tried to fix many flaws of its predecessor. The same is expected by many on the 3rd gen phone too.
Karl said the right thing about:
“One thing that is different is that we are not launching a console (a dedicated device), what we are launching is a platform that will run on multiple Nseries devices and other S60 devices.”
If nokia can relate it to the success of the N series, it will definitely change the scenario….
And remember the Arena, the best part of the N-Gage brand. And the tagline - N-Gage, anyone anywhere, just the one to click with any gamer. . .
February 13th, 2007 at 6:01 am
I hope the next generation of N-gage could be equipped with latest symbian platform and midp 2.0
which can play 3D Java games. I think this will be a great expansion of n-gage gaming.
February 16th, 2007 at 10:25 am
doesnt the ngage already support java games?
February 17th, 2007 at 9:38 pm
I’m from shanghai china,I think java is inferior except the game made by “Lable Fish” which from Germany. Sis and sisx is better,it is known to all that “Infinite Dream” is exllent. SkyForce is one of the best game on symbian or any other platforms.I think N-Gage is classical,not only the way of control but also the variety of its games.But the hardware is poor,NG and QD only equipped the TFT with 4096 colours and it is also very narrow. The mp3 is played by software so the tone quality is worse than N-Gage.I hope nokia could promote its hardware on the gaming phone.I’m sorry,my english is poor
February 17th, 2007 at 11:19 pm
This is for “Lee” the next generation N-gage is going to be a platform that is set on s60 systems (N-series) and won’t be dedicated to one phone. So far I’ve seen the N93 with the demo for System Rush Evolution (& N95) which you could sum up as being a part of the Next Gen. These platforms support MIDP 2.0 and I’ve played games like SkyForce and Other Infinite dream games alike and it works amazingly well. The Symbian OS is S60V3 9.2 for N93 and 9.3 for N95 (latest Symbain platforms). thanks
February 18th, 2007 at 8:52 am
No no no,symbian 9.1 is for n93 and symbian 9.2 is for n95. I’ve played skyforce reloaded on n73 and krally on 3250,they don’t have any difference except the different format. You know,skyforce is not N-Gage game,it can be installed on any other series 60 phone.Althougth nokia has promoted the hardware in the next N-Gage,it is not enough,it remains far from PSP.I think nokia should take out more advantages like wi-fi , wimax ,Carl Zeiss optical system ect. But it will raise the cost and the price will be high.It is unfavorable for nokia to gain the entertainment market.I wonder that why nokia doesn’t apply CCD to N93 and N93i , because CCD is better than CMOS.Carl Zeiss optical system is not enough
February 18th, 2007 at 12:28 pm
just finished my long time user review of the ngage. . .comments neone?
http://www.theanand.com/blog/index.php/just-ripples/n-gage-qd-a-long-time-user-review/
February 27th, 2007 at 9:34 am
I’m a guy who supports rotterdam I just want to say that we are really fans of mobile phones and we just want that the new N gage have enough memory,mp3, meybe camera but it must have good graphics thats really important if you want to sell it good it also must have almost the same shape like the older n gages, and what really good was on n gage where the new fronts you can put on the n gage, we really appreciate it if you let the n gage be almost the same on the outside but much better in the inside
February 28th, 2007 at 12:46 am
Is the next N-Gage going to be as hard to program for it as the previous one? I got to love Java because of SymbianOS…
No really. It’s so hard to write stuff for N-Gage that although i’m a coder since the PC/XT days and i love to make stuff for portable devices, the only thing i managed to do was to draw a straight black line in a white background. And that after spending a lot of time trying to understand how to do a simple thing such as getting a framebuffer and using it.
In the same phone i made one of the best and fastest raycasting 3D engines you’ll find in Java.
While you were at the right direction with that Linux-based internet device, you still decide to use SymbianOS as a gaming platform. Sorry, but from a developer’s point of view, i think this is wrong. Just look what the people behind GP2X did. The have a gaming console (full, with two fast ARM processors), a complete Linux system, multimedia abilies, easy PC connectivity and hell a lot of tools for developers. There is even SDL available in there and you can code it in any language GCC provides (mosttly C or C - and they don’t have GP2X C , it’s the normal standard C that everyone already knows and loves or hates).
Now compare making a game using SDL for GP2X versus making a game using whichever of those 1000 classes SymbianOS requires, compare the tools, compare the development environment (what’s wrong with makefiles?), etc.
Sorry for sounding negative, but i’m really disappointed with the developer support. If you want games for this device, you need to make the development easy.