Third time's the charm: Nokia prepping new N-Gage service this week
by Chris Ziegler 
posted Aug 27th 2007 at 11:16AM
If you've noticed an uptick in the number of gaming announcements coming out of Espoo recently, there's likely a very good reason for that. As expected, the New York Times is reporting that Nokia will officially announce this week a totally revamped N-Gage platform this week, turning the brand from a series of dedicated gaming-oriented phones to a full fledged service supported by a variety of its S60-based handsets. It sounds like N-Gage will take a number of cues from the current crop of online services for video game consoles, offering "try before you buy" game demos, player skill matching, recommendations, and other features that look to give the service even more of a community feel than it had before. Perhaps most importantly, Nokia will step up casual game offerings -- crucial for those times when you have literally one or two minutes to bust out some entertainment -- and offer the games as downloads rather than pesky cartridges. There's no word yet on exactly what existing handsets will be compatible, but it's safe to say superphones like the N95 will make the cut -- and odds are this doesn't spell the end of the gamephone form factor, either.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Mike Uram @ Aug 27th 2007 12:15PM
What are the chances that this will work on my N-gage QD?
Donald @ Aug 27th 2007 12:40PM
Slim to none, and slim just left town.
It's designed for other N-Series handsets.
dextro @ Aug 27th 2007 6:32PM
None, some people on the project have been saying it won't be for quite some time around the arena chat rooms and forums and on the future watch blog.
And even on the N-Series handsets not all of them will be compatible. Chances are only N-Series S60 3rd edition devices will be compatible and some games will even require dedicated 3D hardware (like the one available on the N95).
PS: btw what's with the old logo? I know the new one sucks and all but it is official unfortunately...
Al @ Aug 27th 2007 1:27PM
I wonder why they used the old logo for this article