Blog > Archive for the ‘Nokia Games Summit’ Category

Jaakko Kaidesoja at the Nokia Games Summit

So, we’ve told you who the winners of the Mobile Games Innovation Challenge at the Nokia Games Summit were but here’s a bit more of an insight into the rest of the awards evening itself.

For starters, the anticipation of winning the coveted Nokia prize wasn’t the only storm brewing on the evening, with the event being surrounded by some of the worst weather in Rome’s history. But even gale force winds and torrential down-pours couldn’t put a dampener on the event.

Puzzle solving and unravelling mysteries were the themes of the lavish awards ceremony. Based on Dirk Dagger and the Fallen Idol, the night saw attendees crack clues to complete an 8 digit code to get free copies of the award-winning game.

The stylish event took place at the Castel Sant’Angelo where the winners of the Mobile Games Innovation Challenge were announced. The spooky setting was the perfect place to find out who won the grand prize of a pre-publishing contract with Nokia for their game and the small matter of 40,000 EUR.

A Different Game claimed the glory with Ghostwire, a game that gets you talking to ghosts by taking photos of them with your device, amongst other cool features.

But, from an attendee’s point of view, it was Melokey from Jadestone and C4M who clinched it, winning the internal SMS vote that took place during the afternoon of the first day.

Read more about Ghostwire and the Mobile Games Innovation Challenge here.

N85 Extensive Hands-on

Mobile World Innovation has an extensive hands on preview of the new Nokia N85, saying it may be the best Nseries device yet. Here’s a snip:

“My overall impressions of the N85 is that Nokia has improved a lot on the n95’s series. With the added enhancements from fp2, is it much of an improvement in the hardware department NO, but has it improved on its software and design and added features most definitely.”

More over here.

The Guardian Writes Up NGS

UK newspaper the Guardian tackles the Nokia Game Summit with this new article. Less focused on upcoming games than some of the earlier write-ups, the author takes a look at the bigger picture of Nokia services and how they will relate to N-Gage. Here’s a snip:

“One of Nokia’s major themes last week was the need to integrate games with all the other services offered by your handset, specifically GPS and music playing.”

Get the whole thing here.

N-Gager.co.uk Reviews ONE

N-Gage fan site is out the door with this new review of ONE, the full-featured fighting game for the N-Gage platform. Particularly eyecatching for the reviewer were the graphics:

“The graphics in-game are certainly the best we’ve seen so far on N-Gage. Although not hardware rendered the game looks fantastic and there are no framerate issues whatsoever.”

Read the rest here.

Cindy Gomez, star of Dance Fabulous

Yesterday we announced a new first party N-Gage game, Dance Fabulous, in which you create a custom dancer and then choreograph dances for him or her based on the music you play in your device.

The stars of the game are legendary Eurythmics artist Dave Stewart and performed by up and coming singer Cindy Gomez. While Stewart would need no introduction to pop music fans, you probably know less about Cindy.

She’s a Canadian with Colombian and Belgian roots and her own MySpace page — go add her! While at the Nokia Games Summit, Pocket Gamer’s Stuart Dredge profiles her and finds out more about the upcoming game:

“Right now, the world doesn’t really know who I am, so it’s a great way to introduce myself,” she says.

Drop over here for more…

Tero Ojanperä is the executive vice president and head of the Nokia entertainment and communities business

Tero Ojanperä is the executive vice president and head of the Nokia entertainment and communities business, and he gave the keynote address to kick off this year’s Nokia Games Summit.

Pocket Gamer was there in the front row, judiciously taking notes and bringing you the full scoop. Here’s a few soundsbites from their write-up:

Tero explains the genres that Nokia targets with N-Gage. Core gamers get titles like ONE and Dirk Dagger, casual gamers get Bounce Boing Voyage and Creatures Of The Deep, Tero says the latter is the best-selling N-Gage game so far…

“We have already today over 400,000 N-Gage Arena player profiles,” he says. “This is only a couple of months that we have been active, and it’s growing fast. We are getting big momentum.”

Get more of the story here.

Scott Foe, executive producer of Reset Generation, took the stage today and gave a talk detailing the game’s overall success as well as an overview of developing next generation games for the N-Gage platform.

Pocket Gamer was in attendance and taking notes. Here’s a snippet from their coverage, of his talk, regarding Reset Generation online usage:

“Reset Generation has nearly 100% of all multiplayer traffic on N-Gage, and about 75% of ALL online traffic on N-Gage, including rankings and other elements. Meanwhile, 80% of Reset Generation’s online users are playing from their phones - a stat which actually goes against the perception that lots of people are playing from their PCs for free.”

Go here to read the rest.

Today in Rome, Nokia announced a new first party N-Gage dance game for release in 2009. Called Dance Fabulous, it is an innovative mobile dance and music game where players are given freedom to create unique choreographies to all the music store on their mobile device. Players are emotionally connected to their music through avatars that they create, customize and control.

Other features include customizable male and female dancers, the ability to use any music stored on your device, and one-touch gameplay. Included with the game will be custom music created by legendary Eurythmics artist Dave Stewart and performed by up and coming singer Cindy Gomez.

The game is being developed by Digital Legends and will be published by Nokia in 2009.

The city of Rome hosts the Nokia Games Summit, which kicked off today with exciting news and game announcements and confirming Nokia’s commitment to the N-Gage gaming platform.

Speaking to the state of N-Gage today is Tero Ojanperä, executive vice president and head of the Nokia entertainment and communities business. He gave some interesting details, as well about which countries are the most active.

“With the N-Gage service now live for six months, we have a truly global service on offer with sales transactions in over 130 countries and tens of millions of N-Gage compatible devices available,” said . “The most active players reside in the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, Australia and Spain, but we’ve seen active players worldwide with repeat purchase rates over 35% globally. Game trials have also proved to be important, with download to purchase conversions up to 30%.”

The summit runs through tomorrow, October 30, and we are expecting lots of news and announcements.

I’ll be posting summaries of the announcements and links to press write-ups right here on the blog, so you can follow along at home. Here’s what’s been announced so far:

* Dance Fabulous by Nokia

* EA SPORTS FIFA 09 by EA Mobile

* MONOPOLY Here & Now by EA Mobile

* Spore Origins by EA Mobile

* Boom Blox by EA Mobile

* Need for Speed Undercover by EA Mobile

* The Sims 3 by EA Mobile

* Tiger Woods PGA Tour by EA Mobile

* Tomb Raider Underworld by EA Mobile in partnership with Eidos

* Pandemonium by EA Mobile in partnership with Eidos

* Asphalt 4: Elite Racing by Gameloft

* Real Football 2009 by Gameloft

Tell us what you think!

Nokia Games Summit is Coming
Next week, we’ll be hosting another Nokia Games Summit for games journalists and the mainstream media, Look for fresh title announcements, lots of hands on news and previews and other good N-Gage stuff. I’ll be getting some updates from some attendees, as well as linking to coverage from the journalists as it goes online.

Cafe Solitaire Review
N-Gager is the first site out the gate with a review of Digital Chocolate’s Cafe Solitaire 12-Pack. Overall, they enjoy the game, noting: “At the end of the day Cafe Solitaire is £6 and you do get a lot of time-wasting fun for your money… Definitely worth a pop to keep yourself amused when you’ve got an hour or two to spare.”

N-Gage in India
Bossfight.in, a gaming blog based in India, has taken a good hard look at the new N-Gage service. Basing their experience on the Nokia N81, they talk about using the app, how easy it is to try a game before buying, and their reactions to the games they’ve played.  The author adds, ‘I will be covering N-Gage extensively on this blog in the coming weeks. So stay tuned,’ so add it to your bookmarks.