Widsets, 3D, and Reviews of PSG
Happy Friday, friends and neighbors, it’s your friendly neighborhood Ikona here, back from vacation and ready to rock 
and/or roll.
Sorry, no Top 5 Sales Story for you this week, since the data was unavailable. However here are some nice links of interest…
Pro Series Golf Reviews
These may be old news to you but they are new to me, so bear with me. N-Gation and All About N-Gage both have posted reviews of Pro Series Golf. N-Gation gives the game a Gold Medal, while AAN notes, “Is Pro Series Golf worth £8? Undoubtedly yes.”
Pro Series Golf Tutorial
Need help with Pro Series Golf? Long-time N-Gage veteran Shadowspan has put up a handy tutorial on his blog for all to enjoy.
Widsets for N-Gage Forums
N-Gage fan and blogger h0ax has gone ahead and created N-Gage widsets for many of the official N-Gage forums. What is a widset, you ask? 
“With WidSets you can get your favorite web content straight to your mobile phone. Find news and information, stay in touch with email and blogs, play games, share pictures and more.” Ta-da! Basically it’s a shortcut on your mobile that lets your browse forums and other web content.
It’s not perfect, as h0ax notes, “You can only see the 1st Post for each topic, and not all topics but its still good for getting a quick update and you cannot reply to threads either…” but it’s pretty neat anyway, especially for your Forum addicts.
Have fun, but remember these are not official N-Gage downloads and are not supported by Nokia.
To 3D or Not to 3D
All About N-Gage takes a look at an issue near and dear to the hearts of many users: support for 3D hardware on the N-Gage platform. After all, it’s the top issue burning up the charts on our new N-Gage Feedback Forum. (You have checked out our Feedback Forum, right?) .
Writer Tzer2 examines the different options, and concludes, “Ultimately, Nokia should go for whichever option lets them sell the most N-Gage games to the largest number of people.”
For what it’s worth, my understanding is that OpenGL support is still on the roadmap and will be introduced in a future version of the N-Gage SDK. This is something we talked about at GDC back in February, where a demo of ONE running on a 3D chip was shown.
July 25th, 2008 at 10:23 am
Hi Ikona,
thanks for the PSG review. An greatings to AAN, you guys are making a really good job
The Game is great but a bit to hard for no Golf freaks like me (i’m game freak!) The other thing is, that i hope, that the 3D Chip will be never used for N-gage Games. The XMusic, N81 and N96 dont have a 3D Chip and so, not all users can use it. That is and would be really bad. At the time, the Gamerooms (online in arena) are still dead, noone is online and to finde a player is really hard and could take about some houres (i remember Snakes). So when only N95 and N93 users can play this Game only, noone would play online cause other (3 N-gage Phones) users like me dont have the chance to play cause i only have the N81 and i woudn’t buy a N95 (cause i dont like it) and the N96 which i really like (it looks mutch like N81 so maybee thats the reason) and this phone wont use the 3D Chip too. So i hope i can play all games on my N81 also in the future 
And, maybee you have some news whats up with some new games, thats always intressting for me
Greetings SonicSayin
July 25th, 2008 at 10:25 am
Hehehe that´s me, i´m the one who write the top idea!!!
C´mon Iphone 3G have 1 month and like 5 3D games using the OpenGL… and nokia n93 sence 2006 have it and……. nothing…
July 25th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
It would be great if someone could piece together a comparison video between the original 3D chip supported SRE demo, and the full game which lacks the 3D chip support where it keeps switching between the two, that way we could see exactly what difference it makes. Tzer2?
July 25th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
Sonic a you sirius????????? Wowwwwwwwwwwwww i never see such a crap like that, if you don´t like n93 n95 or n82 not buy, but don´t take that chance to people how expend many dollar in N series with 3D chip… soooooo i look foward to 3D chip games… and now i hope you get nothing but crap java games!!!
July 25th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
“t would be great if someone could piece together a comparison video between the original 3D chip supported SRE demo,”
There’s a video of the actual full SRE game (which doesn’t use the chip) at the beginning of the article. In the caption below that video there’s a link to the 2006 SRE demo (which does use the chip).
If you watch the video, then click on the link to see the other video, you’ll see how the two compare.
To be honest I think even the non-chip version of SRE is easily good enough for a 10 euro phone game. Ideaworks (who developed it) have always been good at squeezing excellent 3D out of phones even without 3D hardware.
July 25th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
Tetlee what makes you think he his tyzer2,he is not him as far as I’m aware.
Would 3D accelerated graphics be that beneficial on a screen what are this small and got 240×320 resolution’s anyway ?
i think there’d be little benefit from it unless you play using TV-out and most don’t use it
July 26th, 2008 at 12:39 am
“Would 3D accelerated graphics be that beneficial on a screen what are this small and got 240×320 resolution’s anyway”
Well that’s the main argument against 3D chips on N-Gage. The cheapest N-Gage phones have 2 inch QVGA screens, and it’s the cheapest phones where N-Gage is likely to sell the most games because cheaper phones sell better.
July 26th, 2008 at 3:07 am
and dont forget, its just a mobile phone, not a psp, ds or iphone. Also ngage games have to work on many nokia phones and not only on one like the other 3. So its better when everyone gets the same game to play.
July 26th, 2008 at 9:13 am
@brainimpactrush, I think you misunderstood my comment there, I didn’t mean I thought it was him in discuise, I meant he could be the man for the job(regarding piecng together the video).
@krisse, thanks, I hadn’t noticed that, will check it out now.
July 28th, 2008 at 10:36 am
Look!!!! look´s like my idea has won!!!!
Official response
Thanks for the suggestion guys, just to let you know his will be in the next release of the N-Gage SDK so game developers will be able to take full advantage then. This also includes OpenGL.
- karl
July 28th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
@ Tetlee
yea i noticed right after i submitted it
it was a hard day for me that day and for some reason i misread the whole section lol
as soon as i realised it was too late to correct b/c no way to edit comment’s .i was hoping it would’nt pass moderation b/c i knew it would make me look stupid lol
July 30th, 2008 at 3:42 am
Test