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April 14th is the day when details of the "N-Gage 2" are first supposed to be revealed to the public. No more sidetalkin', they say. ("They" consist of Nokia senior manager of developer relations, Kirsi Kotilainen; communications manager Damian Stathonikos; and communications specialist Steven Knuff.) No more disassembling the system to swap in games. Full backwards and forward compatibility. N-Gage games will remain N-Gage games, the same game cards driving the same hardware -- just in a different shape and size.
And then N-Gage 3, and 4, and 5, and...
Well, they didn't tell us that exactly; yet it is not far from the mark. For Nokia, the N-Gage is a stable platform, like their series-60 or series-80 formats.
As a cell phone company, Nokia addresses problems with their products after they go to market; not in testing. New models are introduced to address existing complaints. With the current state of the market, a large prototyping and testing phase is not the ideal the way to supply consumers. As we sat, Steven Knuff explained how feature segmentation provides a valuable sense of variety, for a market increasingly focused on personalization. The cellular market, that is.
Nokia is set to reveal forty new mobile devices over the next year. I asked how many of those devices we can expect to be N-Gage devices. "Fifteen!" someone exclaimed, in jest. They had no official comment.
We spoke for a bit on the difficulties of the American cellular market, relative to those in Japan, Europe, and Korea. The problem is one of fragmentation; Japan and Europe have it easy, with only two major cell networks, one of which is clearly dominant over the other. In comparison, the fractiousness of the North American system makes it difficult to come to any standards. While, thanks to the recent Cingular and AT&T deal, we do have one dominant phone system in place, in the form of GSM, the US remains a three-network country. Until that structure gets straightened out, progress for games will be an uphill battle.
We asked if they could envision a Japanese N-Gage system, in the near future. Damian Stathonikos was quick with his reply: "No."
We wondered what Nokia is doing to entice more developers to the N-Gage. They reminded us of the ConnectCoder competition, which had just ended during the GDC. The winner (Countdown, by Game Design Systems) received 15,000 euros and the opportunity, alongside other teams, to pitch their game to the management heads of Nokia's publishing arm. The N-Gage needs fresh design ideas, Kirsi Kotilainen explained; reaping from the developer community, in this fashion, is exactly what will help their catalog. She assured us that there will be more competitions like this in the future.
If so, perhaps they should rewrite some of their legal terms. I heard a fair deal of grumbling over how entering the competition also meant relinquishing one's IP rights to Nokia. It was not so much the finalists complaining, as it was the losers, who disliked not being allowed to shop their unsuccessful entries elsewhere. The words used were a bit stronger, of course, but that is to be expected after a tough night of drinking.
Kirsi then illustrated Nokia's technical support scheme for developers; all authorized developers have access to a two-tiered system. Have a problem with bluetooth implementation? Need to lessen the memory impact? Nokia will provide help within a few days.
More interesting was Kirsi's picture of who was and was not an authorized developer: While Nokia recognizes all current, established development houses, Kirsi admitted that Nokia probably won't pay you much heed on the publishing or development front if you're just "a guy with one colleague, and maybe a cat," supporting you.
I asked about series-60 Symbian developers and, if they Nokia is attempting to woo any of them to the N-Gage side. While they were certainly happy to see developers turning their projects into N-Gage projects, they insisted that in no way does Nokia actively convince developers to do so. They were rather shocked at the suggestion. "That is not our policy," Kirsi explained. To behave this way would stand in the way of any trust and long-term relationships that Nokia has worked to build with developers. When it came to developers for GBA and consoles, they replied similarly. She quickly added that Nokia is willing to take on publishing duties for any worthwhile development projects.
When a drunken European developer stumbled into me on Thursday night, he certainly had a different story: one of "financial incentives". I also heard something about "RTS", which would make sense considering the N-Gage's current library. The Nokia representatives seemed unthreatened, and joked of other drunken ramblings they have heard in their time. They assured us of their focus on mutual trust.
Unfortunately, there were no drunken European developers around the morning of the Nokia interview to confirm or deny this.
Or perhaps the cat got their tongues.
Vincent Diamante
is sober, honest!
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