Nokia’s N-Gage says it’s not dead

I feel happy! I feel happy! *smack* Ah, thanks very much. Not at all. Here’s your ninepence.

The proprietors of all those awful mobile ringtone-and-crappy-game companies that advertise insults to the broadcast infrastructure they are aired on are probably very worried right now. Nokia has resurrected its ill-fated side talking taco phone and game console concept to try and grab a slice of the portable gaming pie.

It’s not a new phone this time round, it’s a software application. You’ll see it on the N81 first, and then after some more testing it will arrive on the rest of the N series. You’ll be able to rent games for one day, one week or buy them outright. Either way, your credit card bill will be a little scarier at the end of the month as a result.

From what we saw, it’s similar to Xbox Live, thanks in part to its profile management and score tally systems. The good news is that the system uses your SIM card, so if you swap phones you get to keep your profile. And you’ll get to keep the games you’ve bought outright by downloading them again, sifting through your email for the recept, and punching in the activation code.

There will be a website where you can download games and throw them onto your phone using Nokia’s synchronisation software to bypass data transfer charges that your telco will slug you. If you do download games through your telco, you can set up bandwidth alerts that will warn you before you start downloading the game over the air.

Unexpectedly, the games aren’t programmed in Java, they’re made with C++. But before you get your hopes up, you won’t be able to get your hands on an SDK without applying through Nokia and presenting a showreel. And yes, I did all I could to convince them to release the SDK, without success. Specifics weren’t divulged, but it takes somewhere between three to five hundred thousand US dollars to get a game off the ground.

There will be five games at the launch, and between 25 and 30 available within the next four to five months, developed mostly by EA, Game Loft and Nokia.

And that’s the news. Now it’s time for good old, honest opinion.

All the games that were demoed were utter crap. And despite this, mobile gaming is generating a huge amount of money. The height of current N-Gage gameplay is Tetris, and the other launch titles were mediocre rehashes of old classics - Space Impact and System Rush are clones of Raiden and Wipeout respectively. We’ve played those games. We want something new. And speaking of something new, the 843rd version of FIFA will no doubt find a home on the N-Gage in good time.

There’s nothing wrong with that, but there is something annoying about it. Perhaps I’ve overdosed on Portal and its inspired imagination, but if rehashes are all we can expect from the N-Gage, it will never be a serious platform. Profitable? Perhaps. Serious? No.

And so I’ll publically implore Nokia to do the same thing I implored them to do at the N-Gage launch. Please encourage the homebrew scene. Follow Microsoft’s lead with XNA. You’ve got a portable device with loads of cool features just begging to be used, and in the hands of backyard developers with cool original ideas, your system could be fantastic.

You’re calling the N-Gage the new wave of mobile play over at your site; let it be all it can be.

What’s a few lines of code between friends?