N-Gage shoots itself in the foot

Published by Tzer2 at 10:04 BST, October 1st 2008

The new N-Gage platform has well and truly launched with the recent release of the N96, the first device to have N-Gage built in from day one. However, the game demos that also come pre-installed are shockingly poor, and Nokia is running the risk of ruining the platform's repuation when they need to be giving it a good name. In a special editorial All About N-Gage takes a look at what's gone wrong, and how things can be put right.

N-Gage shoots itself in the foot

As has been mentioned many times on AAN, the true moment when the new N-Gage platform launches is when it is available embedded in phones from day one. This embedding is vital because it means that tens of millions of people who've never heard of the new platform or who can't be bothered to install it manually will be just a click away from actually trying it. If the new N-Gage is a success, it will be because of such embedding.

The Nokia N96 has recently become the very first phone to launch with N-Gage on board, so one could say the N-Gage platform itself has now truly launched too. Unfortunately Nokia has spoiled this exciting moment by doing something rather stupid which threatens to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Some of the demos pre-installed on the N96: N-Gage at its worst

Does Nokia want N-Gage to fail? Why did they pick these demos? How did they choose this free game?

As well as the N-Gage app, the N96 includes several N-Gage demos pre-installed, so that the user doesn't have to download these themselves. They can just click on the demo and it will launch straight away, which is a very good way of tempting new people to try the platform. The choice of demos is important, and one would think Nokia would pre-install the very best that the platform has to offer so far, but it seems that they've lost their minds and decided to go in completely the opposite direction.

Here are the games that come pre-installed on the N96 (as far as we know it's the same on all N96s):

• World Series Of Poker - AAN's review described it as "a cheap licence cash-in game with very little depth, low quality production values, and very few options. Some kind of multiplayer mode might well have saved it, but there isn't one." It's also a title that's already available in a nearly identical and cheaper Java form, so it doesn't give anyone a reason to buy the N-Gage version.

• Tetris - AAN's review said "if you want a quality conversion of a classic game which makes full use of the N-Gage platform, this is not it." Once again, Tetris has long been available in a nearly-identical cheaper Java version (even longer if you count the original PC version), and once again it limits reasons for buying the N-Gage version.

• Snakes Subsonic - AAN's review said "It’s hampered by too many small failings, performance issues and poor design decisions" and gave it a score of 49%. Snakes Subsonic is probably the worst exclusive N-Gage game so far, and a terrible advertisement for the platform. Its demo is also extremely difficult to play and will put people off.

• Mile High Pinball - This is the one bright spot of the demos, an exclusive game which is original and very very playable, but it's not exactly showing off N-Gage's technological prowess by doing a 2D pinball game. People who only play it a short while may dismiss it as no better than Java.

• Asphalt 3 - This plays reasonably, but it's not really any different from the cheaper version already available for various smartphones directly from Gameloft's website, so it's yet another game where there's no reason to buy the N-Gage version. Gameloft's 3D engine is also much jerkier than the engines used on Nokia's own titles, so it's needlessly giving the N-Gage platform a bad name as far as graphics go.

To add insult to injury, there's a voucher included with the N96 for a free game, but you can't pick any game, you can only use the voucher to buy Tetris. Who chose this? Did they really think a direct port of a Java game (which itself was a remake of a game from 20 years ago) was showing N-Gage at its best?

The original N-Gage was a laughing stock, and the brand's reputation won't be rescued by including terrible game demos on devices compatible with the new platform.

Here's what we would have picked for the demos

Picking games and demos for inclusion on a phone isn't that easy of course, because phones aren't necessarily bought by serious gamers. If you look at the sales figures of phone games they tend to reflect a more casual audience than consoles, so more casual games may be appropriate.

There's also the question of demo size. Many of the most acclaimed games on N-Gage are 20 or 30 megabytes, so five of them would take up 100 to 150 megabytes which may be rather a large chunk of storage space on some phones (not on the N96 though, it has 16 gigabytes of on-board storage plus a memory card slot).

However, even taking these into consideration, there are still much better games on N-Gage than Nokia's choice of demos would have us believe. Here are the demos we would bundle with phones (and if Nokia is worried about storage space, just pick one or two of these):

• Hooked On: Creatures Of The Deep - It's a very easy game to learn, the controls consist of just the direction pad and its button, there's a very relaxed mood, and we feel this is very "casual-friendly" indeed. But it's also got spectacular graphics for a phone game, there's LOTS of gameplay, the music's great, the attention to detail is amazing, the concept is very original in the phone world, and it's totally exclusive to N-Gage. COTD really does show the platform at its best, and according to the sales charts it's Nokia's best-selling first party game.

• Bounce: Boing Voyage - A very straightforward simple game which has an excellent in-game tutorial that introduces the game's concepts one at a time. This is a very easy title to pick up and play, it looks and sounds good, it plays well, the game setting is friendly and inoffensive, and the learning curve is very generous. It's exclusive, it shows the platform at its best, and the Bounce character is already well-known to many people from games embedded on Nokia's previous phones, so it gets across the concept of N-Gage very well.

• Star Wars: The Force Unleashed - A familiar brand name always helps to attract new users, and you can't get more familiar than Star Wars. More importantly though, as Ewan Spence noted in his recent review of the game, Star Wars for N-Gage is still a very good mobile game even if you ignore the famous licence. It plays well, the control system has been specially created for phones so it's easy to use, and it looks great too. This also helps to prove that there are good third party games on N-Gage.

• Reset Generation - Some may say this is a game intended for hardcore gamers, but it's not really. It contains many references to gaming of course, but you can safely ignore them if you want to and there's still an extremely good game at the heart of it. RG is also a very easy game to learn thanks to the offline levels which introduce the game's concepts and characters one level at a time. It's not 3D, but that's missing the point: RG contains some of the most detailed and lovingly-created graphics of any phone game. It's easily good enough to be a full price game on, say, the Nintendo DS , but it's exclusive to N-Gage and designed to show the platform at its strongest. The identical PC browser version is available for free on the RG website, but how many people have actually visited that site? We would bet that discovering the demo embedded on their phone would reach a far wider audience.

• Mile High Pinball - Okay, so this was the one choice that was correct on the original demo lineup. It's addictive, it's original, it's exclusive to N-Gage, it's easy to start playing but difficult to stop.

If Nokia feels they have to have some more third party titles on there too, we'd choose FIFA08 or Brain Challenge.

Here's what we would have chosen as the free game

The N96 comes with a free voucher to get the full version of Tetris. Instead, we would have chosen... no game in particular. The voucher should let people choose whichever game they want from the platform, including those which aren't one of the embedded demos.

When this writer bought a Nokia 5320 XpressMusic, it came with a free voucher for any five music tracks from the Nokia Music Store. Why can't N-Gage have the same system? Letting the user decide which game they get free of charge would allow the widest possible audience to get a game they actually want to play. If people get a game they want to play, they're far more likely to then buy more games.

However, if for some technical reason this isn't possible with the N-Gage platform (why not?), if we absolutely had to choose a single game to give away free with N-Gage-compatible phones, we would probably pick Bounce: Boing Voyage. It's a good solid game, it's exclusive to N-Gage, it easily crosses language and cultural barriers, it has lovely 3D graphics which are friendly-looking for a wider audience but also Mario/Sonic-esque for gamers, and the Bounce character has a proven track record in previous embedded games on Nokia phones.

N-Gage at its best, so why aren't these games' demos pre-installed on the N96?

Why Nokia have to get the choice of demos right

The N-Gage brand itself is pretty low in people's estimations, and it was probably a mistake for Nokia to continue using it for the new platform. However, what's done is done, they've stuck with the name so they'll have to live with the consequences.

One of those consequences is that people who know the brand will almost certainly have heard some very unfavourable things about it. If the demos included on N-Gage-compatible devices are very poor, it will simply confirm those prejudices, and people won't touch the new platform either.

If Nokia wants to resurrect the N-Gage brand and make people think about it in a positive way, they have to make sure that people's first impressions of the new platform are favourable. People should see games which are highly playable, which look good, which sound good, and which they can't get anywhere else. The demos currently bundled with the N96 simply don't fulfil these criteria, and they may actually make people less likely to use N-Gage.

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Categories: Comment, Software
Platforms: N-Gage