Third Time’s The Charm for N-Gage?
MoDojo reported that a third, new N-Gage is coming very soon from Nokia, but Nokia’s own blog has broken the news that September of 2007 is when we’ll see … something that’s not what you might expect from the mobile phone giant. Its previous hardware — the N-Gage and N-Gage QD both failed miserably.
The new N-Gage isn’t so much about the phone as the software for the popular Nokia Symbian operating system. It will be a gaming platform that will be downloadable for and run on the new N-Gage hardware as well as a handful of their other, existing phones.
Their N-Gage Arena online service allowed such critically acclaimed hits as Pocket Kingdom to have online play a few years back, but the lack of an installed base doomed the platform to failure. If the Arena returns for more than just the so-far-tractionless N-Gage hardware, they could be on to something. In a field that thrives on simplistic quick games, online play could be something to push mobile gaming ahead.
I would really like to play a very portable killer app that would let me make turn-based moves or play mini-games using the mobile phone network anywhere I happen to have a few moments. Unless of course it works like everything else the carriers do: monthly subscription fees for the game plus insanely high data service fees and/or per minute access charges. Really, that’s the biggest threat to Nokia’s success with this new software platform — the carriers who stand the most to gain if they just played nice.
Image credit: Wikipedia.
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