Archive for the ‘General’ Category

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.

The multimedia group is doing a survey that will help develop the next generation of the Nokia Podcasting application. There is also an update to the existing podcasting application so it will run on the N95 if your lucky enough to have one

Tip of the hat

Happy holidays from all of us at the N-Gage Arena and Future Watch to all of you out there.  

I’ve posted up the chat transcript from the Future Watch Sneak Peek in the Arena forums, so go on and take a look if you missed that event.

I’m heading off on a bit of vacation for the week, but don’t worry, Karl and Redrum will be here next week to keep things rolling along.

Have a great break and happy new year!

Welcome to the Future Watch blog, our little window into the future of connected, mobile gaming.

We realize you may have a lot of questions about the next generation of the N-Gage experience. Many of those questions pop up regularly in our discussion boards, and we also expect to see them in our comments section too. We welcome your questions and appreciate your interest in our future direction.

We’ve tried to answer the most common of these questions in our Next Generation section, so be sure to check out the FAQ there. But we also hope you also understand that as a large, publicly-traded company, Nokia has to follow a formal process on how we release information. So there’s no way for us to answer every question that will come up. Hey, we like working here too!

So that’s why Future Watch is a place for us to talk about not just the future of the N-Gage platform, but also interesting things going on in the world of mobile gaming, from the perspective of those of us working in the N-Gage Arena.

You’ll see familiar names posting here — ikona, redrum, congested — as well as new faces, other people from within and without Nokia who are working their hardest to bring the next generation of mobile gaming your way.

But just as important as our authors and are our posts are you, all of whom we hope will become regular readers. A blog is a two-way street, a place for community discussion, and your input and your insight will only increase the value of this avenue.

So in a way, this is your blog. Right now it’s an open slate, but with your feedback and interaction, it will become the resource you want it to be.

So what do you want to see? What should be talk about here? Let’s make this first thread about the Future Watch blog itself — what kind of posts do you want to see here, from who?

Have fun!