Ovi Store launching soon apparently...

[krisse]

Just in case anyone's missed it, Nokia's upcoming content shop (covering apps, games, themes, ringtones etc) is called Ovi Store and it will apprently be launching soon on a range of their S60 smartphones and Series 40 normal phones. It should (eventually) make its way onto some Maemo devices too.

Here's the address, and it will also be available as an on-device app too of course:

http://store.ovi.com/

Just to make clear the shop is only one part of Ovi.com, alongside other Nokia services like e-mail, maps, file storage, music downloads, calendar/contacts sync etc.

I've just been busy as part of the team on a new site which will cover Ovi Store games:

http://www.ovigaming.com/

The site used to just cover N-Gage stuff under the name All About N-Gage, but it will now be ready to cover Ovi Store titles too.

[jandmdickerson]

krisse,
thanks for the great info. on a side note since your working on n-gage, what is a good gaming phone for my 12 year old son? It is to use with a US gsm provider...perhaps you have a link on these type phones compared or reviewed.

[krisse]

krisse,
thanks for the great info. on a side note since your working on n-gage, what is a good gaming phone for my 12 year old son? It is to use with a US gsm provider...perhaps you have a link on these type phones compared or reviewed.

Oooh, well... there aren't really any gaming phones any more. The original N-Gage was discontinued in 2006, the current N-Gage service is entirely on "normal" smartphones (the idea is to sell games to people who are buying these particular models anyway).

If you want a dedicated gaming device I would recommend a handheld console, especially the Nintendo DS.

If you want a general phone that also does games, pretty much all of them offer at least some kind of game compatibility (usually with Java), but the quality of these games will vary tremendously.

Smartphones tend to be more expensive but they also tend to have much better games with higher quality graphics and other features. You can get games for many different smartphone platforms including Symbian S60 (which N-Gage is technically a part of), iPhone, Windows Mobile and others.

One interesting twist Nokia has put on phone gaming is through their "double-slider" smartphone models, which allow you to control N-Gage games somewhat like a console:

http://www.allaboutngage.com/images2/icons/nokian86horiz.jpg

The slider also slides the other way to reveal the keypad. This arrangement is used on the N95, N95 8GB, N96, N85 and N86.

For what it's worth, you can see a list of N-Gage-compatible phones and more details about the platform here:

http://www.ovigaming.com/features/item/Nokia_Next_Generation_N-Gage_FAQ.php

Ovi Store hasn't launched yet so it's not clear which models are compatible with Ovi Store games, but it will presumably be a lot longer than the N-Gage compatibility list (it could even cover Nokia's entire current phone range).

[jandmdickerson]

Thanks!!! Always very helpful and informative!

[Texrat]

One of the goals of the N-gage effort is to drive the games down to phones "lower on the food chain" than typical smartphones. Eventually there will supposedly be a number of mid-tier devices supporting the games but they are slooow in coming...

[ARJWright]

I wonder if the App Manager on Maemo will become part of the Ovi Store. Or ar least one of those application repositories that can't be removed.