09 December 2007

Nokia World ’07 - N•GAGE desk
with text, pictures, and videos

Just thought I’d make a post and share some things I found out about the up and coming N•Gage platform, which is to be released within the next few weeks, no date is been confirmed by Nokia at this time, it is just "December" could be tomorrow, could be 3 weeks time, more likely 3 weeks time.

Here is just photo of the N•Gage stand, which had N81 8GB, Nokia N81 and Nokia N73 all set up with N•Gage application running on them.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to take as many photos as I would of liked to, due to my battery flat, and also I was suffering huge problems with my Nokia N95 camera (which is now fixed btw, was firmware issue).

Now N•Gage will 1st roll out within the next few weeks, 1st for the Nokia N81 and then Nokia N73 models, and then for all compatible devices after that. I don’t know why they doing it like this, but they are, and in fact, we question the N•Gage guy pretty hard he looked scared of us actually, lol, 4 freaks right in his face asking him why they release N•Gage on phone that lacks the 3D hardware accelerator his answer was, that they are aiming the N•Gage towards the masses.

It seems that Nokia are using the N81 as there primary N•Gage gaming device, as this would be released first for N81, and also as it has the extra 2 buttons. Also discovered, that the media keys on the classic Nokia N95 will NOT be used for the up coming N•Gage games, BUT they are going to be used on the Nokia N95 8GB version, again I asked him why this was, and he said that actually no final decision was made about it, but serious talks about it had been taken place, and it sounded to me that the media keys will be used in N•Gage games only on the N95 8GB version.

Again back to the questioning of this poor guy (he was scared of us Symbian Freaks I’m sure lol) we asked questions about hardware, and even showed to him the power of the N95 graphic accelerator, with the Global Race game, compared to the asphalt N•Gage game, even he was very, very impressed and couldn’t believe it was a freeware game. We asked questions like, why isn’t the N95 graphics hardware accelerator being taken advantage off in the up and coming N•Gage games, again, Nokia are aiming towards the masses.

Also below are few sample screenshots generated by the new 3D graphic engine
(*Click to enlarge )

Its a shame I think, that we have such powerful small devices like N95 which have the awesome processing power to display amazing graphic and fps (frame per second), and such promising N•Gage platform which soon to be released, but will not be taken advantage of full power such device that support the hardware, but instead make game play on all devices, like N73 , N81 etc, etc, that doesn’t support the hardware for great graphics.

However, I did get chance to play on "the one" game, which was installed on the Nokia N73 , and was quite impressive game, very smooth clean graphics, nice game play (Teo has video of me playing, along with pictures of the N•Gage stand, he will upload soon) also we played on the fishing game "Creatures of the deep" being a fisherman myself in real life, this game just didn’t impress me much at all I’m afraid.

We also talked to developer from THQ Wireless that was there on the N•Gage stand, with a Nokia N73 , which he had locked to his belt on this device was the very, very impressive star wars force unleashed game, which is due to release April 2008, it is a 3D like adventure game style which did look very nice, he only had the tutorial part installed on this very tightly attached to himself N73 , he even had to enter pin code to make the game work lol, it all seemed to be very secret and James Bond style but very impressive never the less, and very nice guy to talk to (I’m so sorry, I forget his name) so many people, so many names.

The Force Unleashed

Here is official THQ Wireless demo of this game, this was on display on one of the monitors on screen of the N•Gage stand, and also as said above, we were one of lucky ones to see real actual live demo play on N73.

Here is the video graphics are live recorded game play graphic from the Nokia N73 enjoy well that’s about all from my small report from the N•Gage scene direct from the Nokia world 2007, I hope I haven’t missed nothing, or forget anything, I will edit if I have.

The Force Unleashed

Also, Teo, please feel free to edit post to enter photos and videos, as you know, I was problem with the camera and wasn’t able to take so many pictures, and those I did take, never came out at all I took lots more pictures than what I actually have now I’m home, so lots of pictures wasn’t even saved to memory card so I apologies for this, but I know Teo took great video of me playing full round on the one game, he upload when he feeling better, or find few spare minutes

Thank you all for reading, and thank you Nokia,
Marty