Features

Wireless games on a Nokia phone ...

Nokia has shown its Bluetooth enabled phone/games machine, N-gage, at the big computer leisure show E3 in Los Angeles. Yes, people do play games on phones - but is this really a potential mass market? And why a combo machine, when the PMG concept has been unveiled? Both positive - and negative - reactions to the launch give a clue ...

Generally, response hasn't' been enthusiastic. Interestingly, almost nobody has really focused on the wireless inter-play abilities of the device.

For example, Games Industry published a summary of the launch describing it as "underwhelming" and launched into an interview with N-Gage manager Ilkka Raiskinen, with the blunt observation: "The $299 price point announced on Tuesday has drawn flak from most quarters of the industry, but it's not the only area that's come in for widespread criticism, with the range of publishers working on the platform and the quality and pricing of the game software also in question."

And the interviewer made it clear that the Sony announcement of the Playstation Portable was a far more significant move in the market.

Extreme Tech was even more scathing: "However, even after trotting out John Romero, butt-whomping music, a bunch of Gen-Y dancers and a belly-dancing, skateboarding, stripping blond cutie, the company was unable to shake its boring Finnish roots," said Jim Louderback.

Nokia is clear that this isn't a phone. It can be used as one, but its primary purpose is games. "It is built for active and hard-core gamers, allowing for online, mobile, multiplayer game play," is Nokia's summary.

And then it adds: "In addition to gaming, the Nokia N-Gage mobile game deck also features a digital music player (MP3/AAC), stereo FM radio," and the finally, as if an afterthought: "as well as a tri-band GSM 900/1800/1900 mobile phone."

The inclusion of Nvidia graphics technology has caused considerable interest. However, probably the most important part of any games-playing machine will be the games. At the Electronic Entertainment Expo, Nokia's partner, Gameloft, announced new multiplayer game titles for the N-Gage "game deck." And yes, they will all be multi-player, using the machine's Bluetooth feature.

"From this year on, thanks to innovations like the Nokia N-Gage and the creation of dedicated quality games, wireless gaming is becoming a major video game format, available to more than 100 million users from 2003 and one billion users in five years' time," said Michel Guillemot, President of Gameloft.

The games are described as "major Ubi Soft Entertainment's brands" such as Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon, Rayman 3, and Marcel Desailly Pro Soccer for the Nokia N-Gage.

There will be other titles when the device ships. "Tomb Raider Starring Lara Croft, from Eidos, has been extended to include such mobile gaming services as advanced wirelessly networked gaming as well as the ability for players to direct, edit and share their own cinematic gameplay sequences over the mobile network.

But even the attraction of John "Doom" Romero to the new platform seems not to have convinced sceptics.

On Slashdot, one contributor has predicted total failure: "Besides the fact that Nintendo has the obscene stranglehold on the world when it comes to portables, Nokia creates terrible, unreliable, buggy phone software. I highly doubt that their gaming software will be much different. I also bet that people will look at you like you have the retardation if you are trying to have a conversation with a friend through what appears to be a gameboy."

Since Nokia won't be writing the games software, this may be simple Eeyore tactics; but it reflects the lack of enthusiasm so far.

The launch, of course, isn't till early October - if it happens on time, that is; and there's plenty of time to see people change their minds before then. But the big problem seems to be Nintendo. Can Nokia really come into a market totally dominated by the Gameboy, and establish itself before that device goes wireless next year.

Forbes has judged the N-Gage as "competition" for Nintendo, and points out that despite having dominated the portable games business since 1989, the company isn't indomitable: it lags not only the Playstation, but even the struggling Microsoft X-box in the full console market, with its GameCube.

The problem facing Nokia is that if the wireless concept turns out to be a success, then it won't have long before all its rivals are jumping on the bandwagon. None of the games makers is going to restrict its sales of a new game to one platform. And some of the proposals for two-player and multiplayer games seem to assume that GPRS connectivity can be a great deal better than it really is in practice.

A two-player game like chess, of course, with each move sent by SMS, would work pretty well. But what is John Romero thinking of? A first person shooter, apparently. He can't be serious. Even on a very fast PC with a broadband link, you occasionally find yourself shooting at a moving targetr which wasn't actually where your PC thought it was. Over GPRS, latencies of over a second are not just possible, but commonplace.

Bang! - you're ... somewhere else?

Two players in the same room, with Bluetooth, is another matter. What remains to be seen, there, is whether Nokia can finally crack the Bluetooth configuration wizard. In survey after survey, users of Bluetooth devices have said that "it works fine when you have it set up, but it's a nightmare to do that."

Here at NewsWireless.Net our expectation is that the games writers will rise to the challenge of devising games for this platform, but that Nokia doesn't have much more than a year to get it into the market. But that may well be how long it takes for the reall "killer" game to be devised, written, tested, and launched - and it beggars belief that nobody else will come up with another platform by then.

And in particular, if Nintendo hasn't picked up on the wireless idea by then, it will be a miracle. Cleverer people, perhaps, have failed to see the future when it stared them in the face. But Nintendo?

Finally, the idea of a phone which is also a games machine, or a games machine which is also a phone, seems redundant.

The concept espoused by IXI Mobile is of a wireless "hub" which handles all GSM or WiFi communications. Then you carry other devices - a camera, perhaps, or a phone, or a games box - which link to the personal hub.

That way, when your games batteries run down, your phone still works ...