Nokia back in the games

After cutting production nearly three years ago, N-Gage is back, but as a gaming service this time, writes Karlin Lillingtonin Lapland.

With more than a third (38 per cent) of the mobile market in its pocket, Finnish giant Nokia apparently has enough confidence not to let its sleeping dog lie.

The dog was its N-Gage gaming handset released back in 2003, a clumsy mobile crossed with a portable games console that was intended as a competitor to hand-held consoles such as Sony's PlayStation Portable (PSP) and the Nintendo DS.

Many gamers hated it and objected to the fact that to make a phone call, the handset had to be held horizontally. Still, Nokia sold two million of them before cutting production nearly three years ago.

Now, N-Gage is back, but as a gaming service rather than a device, says Jaakko Kaidesoja, director of finance and control at Nokia Multimedia.

"Now, with lessons learned, I think we are coming back with a solution that speaks more to the mobile gamer," he said during an N-Gage preview event in Lapland last week.

Rather than promoting a single N-Gage handset, N-Gage games and related services will be available on multiple handsets - starting with the more exclusive and pricy N-series but, he says, eventually coming to most or all handsets in Nokia's line.

"We are better serving the industry if we bring a variety of devices," he says.

What has prompted such a rethink? A completely altered gaming landscape, for one. "There's a massive difference in the level of performance" of both handsets and games, he notes.

Gamers do not really need a dedicated device, with most handsets now offering good quality colour screens, powerful chipsets and internet connectivity. The latter - and networking capabilities in general - are central to the new N-Gage service.

Nokia spent the last two years researching how people use games in six global cities. It decided that people really enjoy playing with friends and sharing information such as scores and knowing what games their friends have on their mobiles.

N-Gage enables people to do these things as well as compete in tournaments, exchange and download elements of their gaming experience - for example, the odd creatures they can create in a new Nokia-developed game called Creebies, which is aimed particularly at girls.

There is also a murder mystery game called Dick Spanner and a fishing game (see panel), all part of Nokia's determination to offer games to lure everybody, including an older or a female audience which mainstream gaming mostly ignores.

For the traditional gaming enthusiast, Nokia has also signed deals with some of the biggest names in gaming to provide exclusive content - Electronic Arts, Gameloft, GLU, Vivendi.

These third-party deals will enable Nokia to offer the popular Brothers in Arms, FIFA, Crash Bandicoot and Star Wars via N-Gage, for example. Executives said they were also in discussion with top Japanese gaming houses.

Nokia is pushing third parties to develop unique versions of their top games specifically for Nokia's mobile platform.

"We don't want crap on the platform," says Nick Malaperiman, marketing director of Nokia Multimedia. "It's also important for our portfolio to have a little bit of everything."

The N-Gage service launches this week as a free trial only to owners of its high end N-81 handsets, who will be encouraged to sign up for a forum and offer feedback. Nokia said it would roll out a couple of games a week over the coming months and would roll out the service to other N-series handsets during the first quarter of 2008.

Consumers will be able to test games before buying, with games costing between €6-€10 to buy. Games makers, telecoms operators and Nokia will all get an undisclosed share of profits.

The N-Gage service will be a major part of Nokia's recently announced Ovi content portal,which will offer games, music and maps and is designed as a challenge to Apple's iTunes service.

Since the demise of the N-Gage handset, mobile gaming has also moved on and become mainstream, with one in four US and European mobile users playing at least one game a month on their handsets, according to analyst M-Metrics. Analyst Ovum pegs the worldwide market for games at $4 billion for 2007, growing to over $8 billion by the end of the decade.

Analysts say content developers and mobile operators are anxious to get a good slice of that market without repeating the experience of music publishers on dominant online music store iTunes, who have complained their profit share is too small.