[qi:83] Try, try and try again! That has been the mantra for Microsoft (MSFT), and now Finnish cellphone maker Nokia (NOK) is embracing it as well. The New York Times reports that the company is going to announce its third push into the fast-growing mobile games business. According to Ovum, a London-based research firm, the mobile games market will reach $4 billion this year and will more than double by 2010.
Nokia has been trying to overcome the problem of commoditization and fierce price competition in the mobile handset business by becoming a mobile services company. From mobile photos services to music to social networking, it is trying anything and everything. Mobile gaming is also part of that plan — never mind that it has failed twice before.
The progress made in mobile processors and graphics combined with a lack of any special hardware requirements means Nokia has a good chance of making an impact the third time around.
While the first two attempts were tied to nGage, a hardware device, this time Nokia is skipping the specialized device. Instead there are plans to make these phones work on a new line of Nokia’s high-end N-Series smart phones, which are rumored to be launching later this month. The nGage is now the name for this new mobile gaming service that will serve content from most major publishers, including Electronics Arts (ERTS) and Digital Chocolate.
Hey Om, thanks for the right up. Actually the games are going to work on several existing Nseries devices that are in the market now, and will be embedded most of the future ones. In the end game developers need a significant install base to put the time and effort into creating games for a platform, so getting away from dedicated hardware is important.
Doh, I meant “write up” 🙂
Karl
I wasn’t aware of that, but if it is true then boy we arein for some mobile gaming. I like the idea of good games on mobiles. yum!
Yeah, Jaakko was quoted in Pocket Gamer saying:
“We are planning to support something like 5-7 devices when we launch, some of them are already being sold today”
http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/Various/N-Gage+(next+gen+platform)/news.asp?c=1950
All those customers with compatible “N-Gage ready” devices will just have to download the N-Gage application.
all those current handsets in market include n93,n93i,n95.These handsets have dedicated hardware acceleration chips made by cortex i guess.The n95 already comes with system rush evolution demo game.which plays excellent on this abovementioned headset.but other n series cant handle it properly.Thus indicating that this handsets n93 and n95 are already n gage compatible.