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Developers, publishers and networks take part in N-Gage vid
The official N-Gage YouTube channel has published a short video of various mobile developers, publishers and network operators discussing the new N-Gage platform. Click on the headline of this item to watch it.
N-Gage developer list points to unannounced first party games
Nokia's recently relaunched developer site N-Gage Insider has a list labelled "our developers" which apparently includes all of Nokia's current first party game devs. Four of the companies listed haven't any games announced on N-Gage so far, yet there they are on the list, which suggests their titles are in development but so far unannounced.
Nokia's game concept contest ends soon...
Over the past few months Nokia has been accepting entries for their Mobile Games Innovation Challenge, with the winner receiving 40,000 euros to develop their game. If you're thinking of entering you'd better get your skates on as the closing date is the 20th of August. Just to emphasise, they don't want actual games or code, what they're after are detailed game concepts including a text description and optionally mockup screenshots and video too. This compo is only open to game development professionals however.
N-Gage developers (and potential developers) get a new site
If you work in the game industry, you may be interested to know that there's a new official N-Gage development site called N-Gage Insider. The site contains a developers' forum, technical information about the new N-Gage platform, how to publish games on N-Gage, how to become a first party developer for Nokia and much more. (via Taskussa.fi)
Nokia to buy and unify Symbian, and what this means for N-Gage
You may have seen Nokia making the news today as they've announced they're going to buy the operating system maker Symbian. This is tremendously important because all N-Gage-compatible phones run on the Symbian OS, and what happens to Symbian will ultimately determine what happens to N-Gage too.
N-Gage Inside: Nokia starts shipping first phones with N-Gage built-in
By a curious coincidence, just hours after AAN posted an editorial discussing N-Gage being embedded into phones, Nokia has announced on its official N-Gage blog that it has begun shipping the very first phones with N-Gage pre-installed. This means people will be able to access the new platform on their new phone straight out of the box, which will hugely expand the platform's userbase.
The N-Gage platform must embed or die
N-Gage was meant to have a potential userbase of tens of millions a year, but so far we estimate it's only reached a tiny fraction of that. The main reason for this is the N-Gage application, which has to be installed manually instead of being built into the compatible phones. The embedding of N-Gage in phones straight out of the box will mark the platform's real launch, but it STILL hasn't happened. Why is everything going so slowly? Click on the link to find out...
Nokia change their minds, game transfers between phones WILL be possible
It took them a couple of days to respond properly to our article about games being locked to one phone forever, but it now seems that Nokia have made the right decision: you WILL be able to transfer N-Gage games between phones! At first it will work through customer service, but later it will use some unannounced longer term solution (possibly software of some kind). Nokia has sent us an official statement on this issue, which you can read by clicking on the headline of this news item.
N-Gage's Ikona - For The Love Of Blogging
While in San Francisco last month, Ewan popped in to see N-Gage's 'Ikona'. Here's his exclusive interview with the man who is N-Gage's public 'face'. Find out how he got started with N-Gage, and find out just how important the N-Gage blog now is to Nokia.
Nokia keynote speeches from Game Developers Conference 2008
Nokia has recently published videos of the two keynote speeches they gave at the Game Developers Conference 2008 in San Francisco in mid-February. The first is by Anssi Vanjoki about the N-Gage platform in general, and the second is by Dan Scott about Nokia's first party games. Click on the headline to view the videos. (via the Official N-Gage Blog)
