29 October 2008

The faces of innovation gather
at annual Nokia Games Summit

Nokia hosts games industry leaders from around the world today in Rome, Italy to discuss openly about how to evolve, innovate and cooperate together to grow the mobile games business globally.

In addition to discussions around trends in mobile gaming, publishers' perspectives and visions of the future, attendees learn how the N-Gage service has been doing since its launch six months ago, hear how Nokia Games Publishing is innovating with new games like Dance Fabulous, and see concepts of the top three finalists of the Mobile Games Innovation Challenge.

"With the N-Gage service now live for six months, we have a truly global service on offer with sales transactions in over 130 countries and tens of millions of N-Gage compatible devices available," said Tero Ojanperä, executive vice president and head of the Nokia entertainment and communities business.

"The most active players reside in the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, Australia and Spain, but we've seen active players worldwide with repeat purchase rates over 35% globally. Game trials have also proved to be important, with download to purchase conversions up to 30%."

"As we continue to scale with N-Gage, games remain a key part of our vision of context aware internet services and important to our overall services strategy," Ojanperä continued. "But, we have a challenge for the future: how do we work together to innovate in this new environment, around Internet and services? The Nokia Games Summit is a great platform to discuss some of these challenges as well as the opportunities."

Nokia Games Publishing has been creating unique made-for-mobile games for many years and the latest game coming exclusively to N-Gage in 2009 is Dance Fabulous. Players can create their own dance moves to any music stored on their mobile device.

As they hone their dancing skills, players will be able to share their best choreographies with friends to see who has the most fabulous moves. Nokia together with music legend Dave Stewart, who is working with Nokia on the Nokia Artists' Advisory Council, are introducing up-and-coming singer Cindy Gomez through the mobile game with brand new songs including the theme song, "Street Dancing".

Few sample screenshots generated with OMAP 2420
(*Click to enlarge )

Publishers also continue to bring more games to N-Gage. EA Mobile(TM), a division of Electronic Arts Inc (NASDAQ:ERTS), continues its support for N-Gage at the Nokia Games Summit with the announcement of an extensive global release schedule for the platform. EA will be bringing some of its popular franchises to N-Gage in the coming year, including EA SPORTS(TM) FIFA 09, Need For Speed(TM) Undercover and The Sims(TM) 3.

Asphalt 4: Elite Racing by Gameloft is also coming to N-Gage offering the largest number of high-end cars ever in your mobile device: 28 prestigious dream cars and bikes including the Bugatti Veyron, Ferrari F430 Spider, Nissan GT-R and Ducati 1098. Enjoy the real-time multiplayer mode to prove that you are the fastest!