Nokia commits to next-generation mobile gaming

Finnish mobile phone giant Nokia has given its first party developers a hands-on experience of its next-generation mobile games development platform during the inaugural next generation mobile gaming workshops in Helsinki at the beginning of December.

Sixteen first party developers were invited to experience and discuss first hand the evolution of the N-Gage platform in two day workshops which gave developers a chance to engage with the new tools, discussing directly with Nokia any issues relating to game design, middleware, tools, certification, software developer support, hardware and the continuation of the acclaimed connected gaming experience through the N-Gage Arena.

Kamar Shah, head of industry marketing, games at Nokia, commented: "Working with first party developers at each workshop is a crucial initial step to introduce the new end-to-end gaming platform. Our first party developers have already worked on the N-Gage platform and know how to push the boundaries of mobile gaming to ensure that our next generation mobile gaming platform offers a plethora of rich, immersive mobile gaming experiences from launch."

Focusing on advanced 3D gaming compatible with a broad range of handsets, Nokia hopes to recapture the market by enabling developers to create high quality single-player and connected games for a far broader selection of handsets. The connected gaming features will continue to tap into the rapidly expanding mobile gaming community, with both first and, eventually, third party developers offering user-friendly search, purchase and installation of high-quality games for multiple handsets.

Xavier Carrillo Costa CEO, Digital Legends Entertainment, said: "Nokia's next generation mobile games platform will allow developers to reduce their development costs by bringing a unique development platform for a wide range of mobiles devices. We believe this new platform has the potential to set a new reference in our industry to bring 3D high quality games to the mass market."

The N-Gage game deck has suffered somewhat of a chequered history since its launch in 2002, failing to inspire consumer demand and ultimately falling considerably short of the firm's six million sales projections, despite a re-designed QD game deck which attempted to address some of the fundamental design and ergonomic failings of the initial device.

Nokia has remained committed to the platform however, recently announcing a new line of accessories and exclusive gaming content for the device. Though it would appear that the limitations imposed by the single compatible game deck has finally taken its toll, as Nokia's VP of corporate strategy, Antti Vasara, recently confirmed.

"N-Gage is still being sold but it was not a success in the sense of developing a new category. We learnt that people want to play games on all devices. As such we are integrating the gaming software into Series 60 phones," Vasara stated.

Plans to implement the N-Gage gaming technology in a much wider range of series 60 mobile handsets have long been rumoured, though Nokia had so far declined to reveal any concrete details for the roll out of the new development platform. Nokia has confirmed that it will continue to produce the beleaguered game deck, primarily for the Chinese and Indian markets, though no new versions of the device are planned.

New, exclusive game content will continue to be developed, licensed and published for the device, and a further development tool workshop event is planned as part of the 2006 Game Developers conference.