Nokia N-Gage - An Overview

Nokia is returning to the games market. Its original N-Gage devices failed to either revolutionise mobile phone gaming or capture the imagination of younger phone-owning gamers. Apart from the infamous 'side-talking' phone function of those devices, just a few years on very little is remembered about them.

But the problems with the company's first gaming venture have not put them off. Nokia is readying a new gaming service for its high-end mobile phones. Its recent press release is unsurprisingly upbeat, talking of "exceptional, made-for-mobile gaming, now on a range of powerful Nokia devices". It goes on to promise the ability to "track and share your scores, and play with friends from across the street or around the world". Easy to say, but how well is Nokia delivering on these promises. The 'First Access' beta programme allowed people to try it out.

The biggest change in the re-imagining of the N-Gage brand is the focus on services rather than hardware. Nokia's next generation platform should exist happily on a variety of its high-end phones, rather than the tailored gaming handsets of the original N-Gage range. Although the beta was limited to the games-focused N81, the service has just launched, adding the N82 and N95 to the list, while the N73 and N93 will be added later. These phones already share high-end multimedia and computing capabilities and provide a ready convergence of technical features with videogaming requirements. It remains to be seen how ready owners of these phones are to sign up for a gaming service. The handsets' business focus and hefty price bracket (an N81 costs around GBP 249.99) may mean a slow initial take-up.

In terms of what to expect from the service, trialling it on the N81 has provided first-hand experience, and a few weeks with the service has displayed an impressive range of pre-launch functionality. The experience is built around the tabbed N-Gage central hub which on the N81 can be easily accessed via the media button. Once there, you can quickly select the different pages: Home, My Games, My Profile, My Friends and Showroom.

The first time you visit you are led through a five minute setup process of registering an account and specifying how you will connect to the service - either via WiFi, or a data plan on your mobile contract. You can then add friends to your friends list, track progress and (in the future) arrange multiplayer games through the tabbed interface.

Nokia scores well here by being willing to learn from Microsoft's success with Xbox Live, making N-Gage the closest experience to the Xbox 360 platform seen on a mobile phone so far. It will be interesting to see how fully-featured Microsoft's own Live Anywhere service turns out to be - although touted back in 2006 few concrete plans have yet been revealed.

The N-Gage points system also tips a wink to achievements on Xbox Live - points are awarded in-game with a familiar little pop-up notification (albeit without an associated name) as you gain high scores or complete levels. Your profile page extends this functionality by providing a solo, multiplayer and arena point breakdown.

Games can be trialled and purchased from the Game or Showroom tab and the latter also provides access to additional downloadable content for games already owned. Whether this extra content will be chargeable is not clear, but with the games themselves costing just a few pounds (either GBP 6 or GBP 8 at launch) it seems unlikely. Any of the available titles can be quickly downloaded direct to your handset with 30 seconds of free play, and if you decide to purchase, you are simply charged via your phone bill.

Progress in each game, and with the N-Gage points meta-game, is tracked on the Player tab. Here you find your points total, reputation and friends count, and you can drill into these numbers to view a more detailed break-down. The bottom of this tab rounds off the stats with a list of your recently played games.

The games themselves err on the conservative side, and so far none of them provide either local or network multiplayer - although the former is promised imminently. They don't particularly move things forward graphically with an experience much akin to the current high end Java or BREW mobile phone games. That said, the N81 does however have a pair of speakers to rival both the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable. Combine this with its ability to play music and you have an impressive audio accompaniment to the games on offer. One would hope that the ability to play your own music in-game (something akin to the 360's custom soundtracks) is not far off.

If it is true that the new N-Gage hardware is somewhere between the DS and PSP in terms of horsepower, developers currently don't seem able to capitalise on this. We should however bear in mind that many of the first crop of games are ports from other technologies and most likely not optimised for the new hardware.

This notwithstanding, a broad range of games is available at launch - Tetris, a shoot-em-up called Space Impact, World Series of Poker: Pro Challenge, a driving game called System Rush, Hooked on Creatures of the Deep and FIFA 08.

It will be interesting to see how the games improve to both take advantage of the new hardware and the N-Gage Service, although there's some way to go before we see ranked online multiplayer first person shooters appearing on the devices.

Although the move away from proprietary hardware broadens Nokia's gaming market, it also fractures it across a wide range of handsets. If this first crop of games is anything to go by, it may well be hard for developers to guarantee a quality experience for their players. The games currently have a PC-like quality where you get the feeling your hardware isn't quite up to reproducing the experience intended by the developer. A consistent experience has long been a touchstone of both console and handheld gaming (outside of mobile), so it will be interesting to see how this challenge is tackled.

It is also clear that the hardware itself is not dedicated to games in terms of its form factor. Stretching its legs with a game of Tetris reveals the exacting controls required for high-end play on harder levels, something which is difficult to overcome using the N81's buttons. Even this hardware (pitched as a gaming device offering both landscape play and gaming buttons) struggled to come anywhere close to a Nintendo D-pad and A/B button combination.

Admittedly, games such as System Rush didn't suffer as much but even its slower gameplay was somewhat dulled by short travel distances of the buttons.

The bottom line is that the current range of Nokia devices are still phones first and foremost (and frankly some of the best phone handsets around), with the games functionality reversed into it towards the end of the design.

Nokia has got a lot of things right with its thinking on the new N-Gage service, and the well-designed and comprehensive service is a pleasant surprise - gamer scores, friends lists and messaging features are all well implemented and easy to use.

It's also pleasing to discover how easy it is to demo and buy a game, despite any lingering problems with the hardware - but while this isn't a problem for the casual gamer, players who want to develop their gamer score will soon get frustrated by hardware is not up to the job.