Next-Gen N-Gage Getting Ready to Go 53
We've previously discussed the lackluster performance of Nokia's N-Gage handheld system. Just the same, despite a market seemingly sewn up by the DS and PSP the company is getting ready for another go. Pocketgamer reports that Nokia had a group of game development houses down to Santa Monica, to check things out and decide for themselves whether they wanted to make a game for the new platform. Another two-day event is slated for Madrid next week, and you'd expect there to be some discussion of the platform during GDC in March as well. No word on a release date from the article, but these certainly point to signs of Nokia's product having at least some chance coming out of the gate.
Just Throw a Couple of Buttons... (Score:2, Insightful)
Hell, do a flip up design like this (http://www.nokiausa.com/phones/9300/0,7747,,00.h
Slap an ARM in there and your done.
New comers (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Just Throw a Couple of Buttons... (Score:4, Insightful)
Nokia phones, and most likely most others, have done exactly that for like a decade now. Maybe your provider removes the functionality, but that's another problem entirely.
Here's your MAME for N-Gage: http://www.harmonicode.com/EEMame/ [harmonicode.com]
You've got to be kidding (Score:3, Insightful)
That's pretty fucked up, right there.
Sigh, Nokia, so close (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, what should you do? The Internet Tablets. These things are hot. However, they need some major tweaks. Stop trying to use your current smartphone batteries for them, their restricting your battery life and your power budget WAY too much. You need something beefier, around a 2200-2500mAH battery. What to do with the extra power? More CPU for Crissakes. The 300MHz arm is not doing what you need. You need either a much faster chip, or one of the hot new dual core ARM SOC. Also a media accelerator. Let's see some 2D acceleration on that bad boy. THIS is your game machine. It'll do everything. Wi-fi internet, SKYPE, media playback. Its potentially an iPhone AND PSP killer. Put some money into bluetooth gamepads and its suddenly a far cooler game machine than the PSP and GP2X combined.
GP2X lacked two things: bricks and mortar (Score:3, Insightful)
The "more to it" involves at least the following:
GPH just failed to market the GP2X in the United States. It was difficult to learn of their existence, and anyone who wanted one had to have it individually shipped from overseas.Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
This point of view comes up whenever there's a topic about a new gadget on a phone. The answer is very simple. I have a DS, PSP, GBA, and a digital camera. Most of the time, I ONLY have my phone on me. When I'm at work, or shopping, or eating out, I don't carry all those other things with me. Sometimes, though, I find myself in a position where I could really use one of those devices but they're not on me. Just the other day I was at Best Buy and I decided I was on the market for a new digital camera. So, I went around, saw what they had, and I used my phone to take pictures of all the cameras at the store that interested me. I'm going to go through the images, pull out the camera models, and do a comparison review. The camera in the phone was more than sufficient for that. I wouldn't use it for the tourism photos I like taking, but for informational purposes, it was great. Last week the network was out and it totally killed my ability to do any real work. So I played Indiana Jones on my phone. (SCUMM is cool.) I'd rather have played Liberty City Stories, but I don't often have my PSP at work. (not that I'd want to be seen playing it anyway.) I've got plenty more examples, but I hope the idea's becoming clear. The gadgets I've had on all my phones have become useful in some form or another. Heck, I even use it as a back-up alarm clock.
Yes, the battery issue one is a significant one. But to be honest, I just let it charge while I'm asleep. As long as I'm getting my use out of it, it really isn't that huge of inconvenience. If my phone were just a phone, it wouldn't be as useful.
"I guess on the plus side it couldn't suck as badly as the original N-Gage, they must have learned something from the horrible control layout and weak graphics capability. Good luck to them, and let's hope for a solid implementation."
Despite what I said, I do agree with your assessment of the new N-Gage. Though it's great to have additional features in a phone, it's hard to run out and buy a game-specific phone. I appreciate what Nokia's doing, but honestly, I'd be far more interested in a GBA being built into a phone. I have zero confidence in an interesting number of games built specifically for the phone being developed. I think an MP3 phone would be great, but a game phone? Eh... Maybe I'm a fuddy duddy.
Re:Do a deal with Nitendo (Score:3, Insightful)
Nokia is the biggest makers of Mobile phones in the world, with a huge market share. It is pretty obvious for them to expand in this direction. Some products succeed, and some products fail, for a number of complicated reasons. But nothing new would ever happen if you were in charge. Lets hope that never happens!