The only thing genuinely gaming-oriented about the N-Gage was its horizontal casing and button layout.

N-Gage was a great smartphone, but it was seen as a disappointing consoleĭespite the claims of Nokia's publicity machine that the N-Gage was a games console with a phone built into it, the N-Gage hardware contained absolutely no gaming-oriented features and was almost identical to the Nokia 3650 smartphone. The publicity surrounding Pocket Kingdom managed to come closer than anything in turning around the N-Gage's reputation with the professional gaming media.ġ. The promotional drive for Pocket Kingdom (a Massively Multiplayer Online game from Sega and exclusive to the N-Gage) somehow managed to generate a huge amount of positive publicity for the system, even winning the support of the ever-cynical game site Penny Arcade. After a slightly shaky start with Ashen, most Nokia titles proved to be the finest smartphone games ever created: Pathway To Glory, System Rush, Glimmerati, High Seize, Mile High Pinball, ONE, Rifts and Snakes all received excellent reviews. It features a single login for all games and community functions, truly mobile online gameplay wherever the phone works (no need to be tethered to hotspots), and one of the most well-motivated and intelligent group of moderators and forum participants on any gaming site.ĭespite their hamfisted launch of the N-Gage itself, Nokia managed to prove itself a very capable first party games publisher.

What Xbox Live is to home gaming, N-Gage Arena is to mobile gaming. Nokia turned this bundle of talent and infrastructure into their greatest success so far in the portable online gaming world: the N-Gage Arena. When console maker Sega left the hardware world after the Dreamcast stopped production, they sold their online division to Nokia along with many members of staff and a gaming network called SNAP. In order to cut through all the ideological hot air, this article will just look at the problems and successes of the first generation of N-Gage as if they were many individual targets to be hit or missed: to succeed with its Next Gen Games Platform, Nokia must deal with the failures of the old N-Gage whilst preserving the things that worked. There has been an endless amount of text written about mobile gaming and the original N-Gage smartphone, much of it driven by personal taste ('I never use phone games' or 'I never use games consoles') rather than a balancing of the facts.

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