Posts Tagged ‘n-gage’

Nokia & N-Gage — the company’s still 1.0

Monday, November 10th, 2008

Dear me.

We’re all rooting for Nokia, we really are.

But consistently, it’s a total fook up. Clearly, there are some smart folks at the company, but these smart cookies don’t appear to be actually running the company.

Nokia, alas, is still stuck in its rubber-boot-manufacturing mindset.

If you’re an N-Gage customer (cue: groan), then Nokia are counting on the fact that you will only ever buy two devices from them.

Seriously, some chap, somewhere at N-Gage/Nokia has actually implemented the following policy.

There must be emails and project plans and memos and policy documents outlining this utter bollocks. And no one’s thought to actually correct it.

Here’s the problem.

You like N-Gage, right? You’ve got an N95 1st Edition (”Phone A”), for the sake of argument. You buy a game for your handset from N-Gage. Brilliant.

Buy another one, go on… aye. It’s wicked! Buy a few more. Before you know it you’ve got 7 games and a good few quid invested. All good.

And then you decide to upgrade to your N95 8GB (”Phone B”).

You can transfer your purchases from N-Gage to your new Phone B.

But… Lock that phone up.

Have it padlocked to your hand.

Don’t you dare lose/break/upgrade your handset.

If you lose the handset, if you drop it in a pint of proverbial beer, if you slap it against the wall by mistake… Your problem.

That’s right, Phone C — your NEXT Nokia handset doesn’t count.

Not at the moment. There’s no way — so I’m told by the All About Symbian geniuses of transferring your purchases to your next device.

Stupid.

Ridiculous.

1.0.

You really have to wonder how a behemoth like Nokia and their darling, N-Gage, is going to cope in this new mobile order that’s upon us. When you can one-click upgrade or restore your iPhone in triliseconds, this sort of thing isn’t going to wash with Nokia fans.

Let’s face it, if you’re serious enough to buy an N-Gage game — i.e. you’re THAT much of a Nokia fan… you’re not going to be happy.

Expect news from Nokia/N-Gage/Someone’s Mate From The Pub about this, at some point, once the Geniuses in Helsinki have evolved into the real world.

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Nokia’s Big N-Gage conversation; news soon?

Monday, June 2nd, 2008

James over at Nokia Conversations has bravely highlighted the issues that the blogosphere (in particular) has over the controversial IMEI-tied N-Gage game policy.

He comments:

This has caused consternation amongst the gaming and mobile fraternity. We’re not in a position to comment on this right now, but we do want to highlight the discussion right here on Conversations. Once we’ve had a chance to catch up with our gaming colleagues, we’ll be back with more. Meanwhile, here’s a quick roundup on the main stories around this.

Here’s what we wrote last month. Note: It does make reference to grannies.

Good news on Nokia at least having a conversation. I trust that the N-Gage team is having a conversation of their own about how they’re going to tie their games to username/password in future.

I still can’t believe I’m having to actually type this out though. WHO in the N-Gage team thought tying your game ‘ownership’ to your handset’s IMEI number was a good idea?

That’s like buying a music track on iTunes and only being able to use it on your Shuffle. Ridiculous.

Deep breath, deep breath.

AAAAAAAND relax.

One, two, three… and you’re back in the room Ewan.

:: calm ::

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Nokia finally sets N-Gage free

Tuesday, April 8th, 2008

Nokia has officially unwrapped N-Gage, the games platform that’s come from the ashes of the now very much defunct gaming handset of the same name. The N-Gage games service has gone live with just a few titles, including FIFA 08, Asphalt 3: Street Rules, World Series of Poker Pro Challenge with a handful of N series devices - N81, N82, N95 - able to use the service at launch.

Nokia has also unveiled an N-Gage community area for the service, for gamers to find friends, arrange some multiplayer gaming or participate in tournaments and chat with other N-Gage users.

Nokia will need to spread this to more devices if it wants to get some serious take-up, but I’d be surprised if it wasn’t planning to add to its roster in the near future. Cleverly, it’s also made sure there’s an N-Gage web portal so gamers can get their fix on the internet as well as mobiles - so that’s expanded the potential user base to just about everyone, then. It’s also promising 30 gaming titles in the near future - including old favourites like Tetris - but I can’t help but think that having them available at launch would have been a better bet.

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