Nokia Malaysia Showcased The New N-Gage

June 26, 2008 by Chapree

Keith Liu of Nokia Southeast Asia Pacific showcased Nokia N-Gage’s new direction to members of media.

Last month, Nokia Malaysia unveiled the second incarnation of their gaming platform, N-Gage. Ditching the purpose-built hardware concept, N-Gage is now a social gaming and game distribution platform. Yup, no more answering your handphone sideways or physical game memory cards.

To demonstrate the new N-Gage and everything that came with it, Nokia Malaysia roped in Keith Liu, Nokia Southeast Asia Pacific’s Head of Games & Communities. Go-To-Market, Services & Software team. He was later joined by Managing Director of Nokia Malaysia, Andrew Cheong during the Q&A session with members of the media.

During the media briefing, I managed test run the new N-Gage client on Nokia N81. Check out my brief hands-on test of the new Nokia N-Gage service after the jump.

Nokia N-Gage Official Website

Nokia Malaysia N-Gage Media Briefing Photo Gallery @ Multiplay’s Flickr
LYN N-Gage 2.0 Community @ Lowyat.NET Forums

The new N-Gage was known to many as “N-Gage 2.0” before it was released to the masses on 3rd April 2008 after going through eight weeks of public beta test called N-Gage First Access. The First Access program was only limited to Nokia N81 owners though.

As for now, they are currently five Nokia phones that fully support N-Gage client software:

• Nokia N81
• Nokia N81 8GB
• Nokia N82
• Nokia N95
• Nokia N95 8GB

More models will be included in the future such as Nokia XpressMusic 5320, Nokia N78, Nokia N96, Nokia N73, Nokia N93i, and Nokia N93.

Now that we already done with the brief introduction of the new N-Gage, lets check out the N-Gage client’s interface. There are 5 main modules which can be accessed through icons that located at the top of interface. They are, together with their specific functions:

• Home: the starting point.
• My Games: this is where you manage your games - the one you owned, trials and demos.
• My Profile: it sums everything about your N-Gage experience - N-Gage points earned, rankings, level achieved, reputation and game history. This is where you can set your availability to play.
• My Friends: the section where you can check out your friends stats or make contacts whether starting a game or just to chat
• Showroom: N-Gage games catalog; contained game info, screenshots, videos and reviews from fellow players.

Some of the main modules available on N-Gage.

I don’t know about you guys but I notice there was uncanny similarity between N-Gage client’s interface (and even some of its features like the N-Gage points) with Xbox Live. Regardless of that, the interface are indeed very simple and straight forward. All N-Gage major features are contained within these modules where users can simply switch between modules by using the phone’s thumb pad.

Currently, there are 12 games available at N-Gage Showroom where you are able to download and try these games before you purchase it. If you choose to download games through the N-Gage client in your phone, you can do it via GPRS, 3G, 3.5G or WiFi. If you opt to download them with your PC through N-Gage official website, you can transfer them to your phone using USB-cable together with Nokia PC Suite.

EA Sport’s FIFA’08 - one of the games currently available on N-Gage. Note the two gaming specific button near N81’s ear piece.

Each game cost between 6 to 10 euros, depending on specific country’s currency and type of access - full access or day passes. As for Malaysia, the current currency that N-Gage list for our country is US Dollar, as demonstrated by Keith during the briefing. The prices are a bit steep but Keith insisted that the prices are worth it since games on N-Gage platform have a lot of features and better quality beyond normal Java games.

In a nutshell, while the new direction of N-Gage is not foreign to PC or console gamers through services such as Steam and Xbox Live, it is interesting to see how Nokia managed to bring all those fun elements of social gaming and intergrated game distribution service into mobile phones. Sure, it can’t beat dedicated gaming handheld devices such as Sony PSP or Nintendo DS, but if Nokia manage to come out with suitable strategies for Malaysian market, I believe more mobile warriors out there will be able to appreciate and enjoy what N-Gage have for them.

Posted in Hardware, Local News, Microsoft, Mobile, New Releases, Reviews