Nokia N-Gage

Hey Portagame pondskippers! Now's your chance to get in on a little bit of free action. Cell phones are a (evil?) necessity in today's world, so why not buy in on a little fun while you are at it? The biggest online mobile phone shop in the U.K. is offering free game consoles and gadgets with the purchase of select phones. You can qualify for a free Nintendo Wii or DS, an Xbox 360, iPods, Tom Toms, Camcorders and Photo Printers when you purchase a phone and new plan. See the full list of free gifts when you buy a phone.

Too bad this offer only applys to U.K. residents. I'm seriously considering getting a Nokia N95 in the very near future (although I'm not sure if that phone qualifies for any gifts or not). Anyway, if you are a U.K. portagamer and ready to dropkick your old brick for a nice shiny new phone, why not go for the free goods? Get yourself a phone and a free system before they finish this promo.

[Disclaimer: Portagame is not associated with mobiles.co.uk in any way. This is a promotion run soley by them, solely on their site. But its a helluva deal if you ask me and you're Wii-less.]

When I think "N-Gage", I think "Nice concept, poor execution". Nokia showed signs of their strengths (a good thing) last year and this year is starting to capitalize on them. Now, instead of trying to beat out the PSP and DS in the "handheld" market, they are going for global domination in the "mobile" gaming market. The difference is that dedicated game systems like the DS, PSP and Gameboy are tag-alongs. They come with you if you feel like playing games during your day. Mobile phones, however, are not tag-alongs. They'll go with you whether you feel like playing games or not, simply because you have become accustomed to being reachable wherever you are. I've met many a person who is more attached to their celly than they are their own kids. Mobile Gaming is a huge market, and Nokia realizes that its ok to not have a dedicated handheld "system" to win a market in gaming. Let's review:

The old N-Gage:

"It's a phone."
"No it's a handheld."
"It's neither!"
"It's both!"

The NEW N-Gage:

"It's a phone?"
"Nope."
"It's a handheld?"
"Nope."
"What is it?"
"Software."

The N-Gage is no longer a single system. It is essentially any Nokia Nseries phone. All you RAZR buffs out there are now helpless fashion victims after a quick ass kicking from the next generation Nokia N90 or N93. The N-Series phones handle all the media that most smartphones do, but also will play some serious N-Gage and N-Gage Arena games.

With all the noise from Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo, few "not attending E3" gamers realize that Nokia has a large booth at E3 this year. Sure it may not be Metal Gear Solid in your palm, but what they are doing is is showcasing the next generation of mobile gaming to a bunch of hard core gamers who realize they are also cell phone addicts. Seems that Nokia is starting to mix their kool-aid just right.

The worse epidemic of portable gadgets of all shapes and sizes is the tangled mess they leave in your bag. Sure, portable typically means sans wires, but they all have them. Thingamajigs don't just charge wirelessly. Well, I guess they can, but do yours? No! Most likely you, like all other geeks, learned to wrap and tie a long cable faster and easier than tying your own shoes. But even with wrapping skills in hand most of us are too lazy to mess with it each time we use a device. Well in that regard, Cableyoyo comes to your rescue. This device is thin enough it can be pocketed and not show a geekyline (That's the pantyline created in your pants pockets by all your gadgets.) You can easily throw multiples of the Cableyoyo in your tech bag and not worry about untangling whenever you need gadget juice. And, it works with ALL the handhelds we cover here on Portagame.

[Cableyoyo via GadgetMadness]

E3 is all done and finished as of yesterday. It was a hard up year, with news on the Xbox 360, PS3, Gameboy Micro, and of course the Revolution! Check out all the Portagame E3 news during this past week. Who knows, there may be more too.

So what's with all the Next-gen, non-Handheld links? Well, I took the first couple of weeks in May and started working on a pet project. This project would gather news and information for me on the subjects I'm interested in and the subjects I report on here and in other places across the net. The project is basically a series of online RSS readers for my personal use, but displayed publicly. I'm still hacking on them, and not quite sure what the finished version will be like. It's like a sandbox. I currently call the project Blu RSS, or BluRSS for short. And yes, one of the subjects of huge interest to me, was E3. For the most part, BluRSS is fairly automated. So I will be able to turn the majority of my attention back to Portagame.

Also, while we're on the topic of E3, did you catch all the E3 news over at 4ColorRebellion? Or what about Ferrago, which includes all the headlines from the best gaming sites on the net (including Portagame). Our pal dmgice had some well done video coverage, especially of the Gameboy Micro. Also check out NDS.Progressive who caught the DS version of A Boy and His Blob (nice!). Don't miss the console videos dug up by iamlegend. Or the DS title list. I'll be doing PSP, Gizmondo and GBA wrapups this weekend too, so stay tuned. There's plenty more out there, these are just to help you get started. We didn't see anything Tapwave or GP32 related, looking specifically for third-party applications. We didn't expect any either, so no big deal. Next year we'll do a scavanger hunt or something.

Screw GameSpot. When you want coverage of all the handhelds and games you come right to the source right? So what if Jason didn't pay for me and my DV camera to go to E3 this year. There's always next year right boss? Anyway although my video camera and I couldn't make it check out these feeds from the kids over at GameSpot. They (being the rich bastards they are) have some excellent reviews and video from E3.

E3 PSP Video [LINK]

Behold all 5 N-Gage Games! [LINK]

E3 GBA Coverage [LINK]

And last but not least check out the Nintendo DS Coverage
(make sure you watch the horribly un-informative DS Hardware Video) [LINK]

LOL. Enjoy. I will be waiting by my phone for Jason to call and explain why those E3 tickets never came. = )

While I'm on my N-Gage kick, I figured I should toss out these. Nokia announced some new accessories for their existing N-Gage QD unit. Aside from typical cases, headphones, and S&M leashes (or lanyards, whatever) that most portable units already have--there were a couple of unique items. Of note were the Aluminum MMC Game Card folio and the MMC expander. The folio is slick and slim and easily fits in your front pocket behind your pocket protector. The MMC expander will let you load two game cards into it for easy swap and play. Switch games just by flipping switch. Odd, easy game swapping is what I thought the whole QD redesign was all about. Oh well, anything to make me lazier and fatter, I'm all for.

Via NGage Gaming.

Nokia announced their future N-Gage plans this week. No new phone, as we had hoped but knew we wouldn't get. Instead there will be many new phones. Start thinking of N-Gage as a platform, not a unit. This move will allow Nokia to make different phones for different personalities and have them all be N-Gage enabled for some quick gaming.

Think about it, you have a GBA, a DS, a PSP, and a cell phone. Which one of those items are you most likely to have on you at all times? Ok, I realize that question might not work with Portagame's audience. Let's try this: which one of those items will an average, ordinary person have with them?

The phone.

Nokia has the right mindset. Get more phones in peoples hands that can support the software, you'll sell more software. MP3 phones and camera phones went through a same evolution. At first, they were pretty exclusive. The bleeding-edge technod0rks all had them, but they paid a premium to have those features. Now, you can't go anywhere without some etiquette-challenged mobile user snapping shots that you happen to be in. This is what Nokia is hoping will be the new era of Mobile gaming.

Nokia may also open the doors to third party manufacturers. Imagine an LG or Samsung N-Gage enabled camera phone--now that's exciting. Not only that, but this business move will put Nokia's Symbian operating system in front of more developers. The true race here isn't Nokia vs. Nintendo or Sony. No, Nokia's battlefield is versus Microsoft. Symbian vs. WindowsMobile (or whatever it's called now). And Nokia just made a big move.

As a gamer, imagine the next time you sign a contract for a cellphone service, and you get to pick out a new phone. Half of the phones are N-Gage enabled. Would you pick an N-Gage Smartphone over a Microsoft phone? I know I sure would.

Asides from new phones, Nokia also announced a new Games Locker service. This will allow you to download, store, and manage all your games content on your PC. Nokia has tested the waters for this model and has seemingly decent results.

All-in-all I think AllAboutNgage.com stated it best:

Sounds like the other experiment, having Snake on electronic distribution only (no MMC card copies for the public), along with the popularity of 16MB downloadable demos for titles such as “Pathway to Glory”, has proven to Nokia that they can ship games out this way. Add in Nokia’s Preminet system to charge the end-user for the games, and the building blocks for a huge online gaming system become clear.

But I also like the buzz I'm hearing from others:

Russell Beattie:
Nokia just announced their plans to support N-Gage Games across their smart phones starting next year, essentially turning "N-Gage" into a brand rather than a specific device. Just like I predicted... W00t! I love it when I'm right. Well, I was right on the details, but my predictions of timeframe still need some work. But that's okay, I've learned a lot more about the speed of handset manufacturers since November of 2003 when I wrote this

NGage Gaming:
For developers, this means less effort spent creating dozens of versions of the same game. We will provide a robust development environment with the first set of tools expected to be available in Q4 2005 and a range of APIs native to the smartphone.

In addition, all mobile games available through this next generation Nokia solution will have advanced connectivity features, making connected mobile gaming easy over mobile networks via the N-Gage Arena, Nokia's global mobile gaming community.

For operators, this solution provides the opportunity to expand their current mobile gaming offering. Nokia is able to offer operators with a modular turnkey solution, including scalable investment options and community management that will assist in driving subscriber revenues.

Someone at into-e3.nl got a very exclusive sneak peek at the E3 floor. Many things caught our eye in the video, not the least of which was this mysterious N-Gage banner, minus the N. Now, as we were previously discussing the N-Gage, this COULD be the next big development from Nokia. To bad the lighting was bad to see exactly what unit was being displayed. I assume a new version of the current hardware to match their new branding efforts. But it could also be the bad lighting also blinded out the N, which if was the color red, would make sense since red-on-black has difficulties contrasting.

I say, free N-GAGES / GAGES / WHATEVER for everyone!

[UPDATE 5/17/05: Everyone (us) relax. Gizmodo Joel cleared it up for us: It's just the angle. I've seen that--it's the regular N-Gage.]

Joel of Kotaku, err Gizmodo, fame is raising a very interesting question about this year's E3: What's up with Nokia? Will we see the mysterious N-Gage 2.0? Or will we just see N-Gage colors? Some (Joel) say that Nokia will brew out a whole series of N-Gage capable phones, and that's fine alright by me. Nokia, while you're at it, how about a N-Gage 5.0 MP camera phone? And for $99 please, without contract.

Seriously, we've always been overly-opinioned that if anyone had a sure shot at truly competing with Nintendo in the handheld gaming arena, it would be Nokia. They truly know how to get consumer electronics in the hands of millions. Now if they could just figure out that secret formula...oh, that's right: more games! (And a bigger screen).

I really don't know how geeks and/or bloggers are going to survive this week with the Launch of Star Wars Episode III on Thursday at Midnight. If you, the innocent public, have never heard a geek orgasm (and it's not pretty), you will by the end of this week. Perhaps multiple geekgasms. Starting today, E3 is taking on L.A. and the internet, and all its kinds of bloggers, by storm. If you happen to have a Willy Wonka golden ticket and are inside the E3 doors, you'll most likely notice hundreds of teenage-to-twenty-something video game geeks walking around with a digital camera and 50 memory cards on a giant keychain and a laptop, most likely light--but any will do, permanently open with one hand strapped to it. This known as an E3 blogger (and yes, they are half-droid for you curious Star Wars fans). The E3 bloggers Laptop serves two purposes. With a camera fed directly into the laptop, it serves as navigation so the blogger can avoid eye contact and immediately take a picture of any game and/or "booth babe" that gets within range. The second purpose is to blog the picture they had just taken.

And sadly, this year, I will not be one of the E3 blogger half-droids. No, sadly I'm missing this show due to a recent "incident" involving myself, my car, some dude, and his car. No one was injured, it's just the traffic lawyers that like to charge more than typical bloggers make. So I'll be armchair quarterbacking E3 this year with most the other Portagame editors. I do know of one editor that was able to make it and we look forward to his updates. But in the meantime we'll keep you updated on all the other news we find about E3 that you might have interest in (99% will be portable gaming, but we'll probably make the obvious PS3 and Nintendo Revolution announcements). And since there ARE so many bloggers at E3 this year, it will be easy for us to datamine the important stuff and spit it all out here. So, sit back, relax, it's E3!

(PS: We did create a series of other sites that will track the most prominent RSS feeds of all the the systems that will be displayed at E3 (and beyond) , but due to another agreement we have, we can't publicly share them just yet. You'll need to wait until we make a formal announcement, which will be this week or next week).