N-Gage on Maemo

[Architengi]

N-Gage needs to be part of Maemo as well. It is a very good community of gamers/players, which can be used as is because it is hard to create a new gaming community - just for playing in the network, reviews, etc.

To create a new community of gamers it takes at least 1-2 years. iPhone now has its community of gamers like XBox and PS3 and Wii do. N-Gage already exists. If Nokia decides to not diversify N-Gage on Maemo platform, they do a big mistake, because N-Gage is a brand name, well known in Symbian community. And Nokia actually bought N-Gage - another company. Hope they will not close N-Gage and leave only Ovi Gaming and Maemo Gaming.

[sachin007]

I asked Eldar about this and he said no. He said it is more buisiness oriented.

[Architengi]

I asked Eldar about this and he said no. He said it is more buisiness oriented.

The big mistake Nokia makes, and I'm talking about BIG here, is they think people who go to work in offices don't play games, and vice-versa the teen-agers or students don't need office apps or outlook exchange email or calendar.

The competitipn (Apple iPhone) were smart enough to understand it is better to UNIFY customers (with a single device) then DISSIPATE (or SEPARATE APART) customers with XP 5230, XP 5530, XP 5800, E71, N97, N900, ... tons of numbered devices. People don't feel good with Nokia because their nnnn device is left out a firmware upgrade or is lost forgotten, or it does not have office because is a N and not a E and does not have N-Gage because is an E or XP and not a N, but now a N device with no N-Gage... talking about INTEGRATION and DISINTEGRATION.

[krisse]

I asked Eldar about this and he said no. He said it is more buisiness oriented.

Nokia's Eseries devices definitely are business oriented, and they now come with N-Gage preinstalled as standard (except the E71/E72 because there's no landscape QVGA N-Gage client).

I think someone somewhere has got their wires crossed if they think that Nokia doesn't publish games on business devices. Alternatively they might just have out of date information, because N-Gage came to Eseries relatively recently.

[VDVsx]

Quoting Peter@MaemoMarketing:

There will be a good amount of games including some quite stunning games with hardware-accelerared graphics available, but, since we have no DRM yet, we don’t run ngage on Maemo 5.

Source: http://conversations.nokia.com/2009/08/27/finding-maemo-the-new-nokia-n900/

[Phen0m]

Wow.. i just google N-Gage and it sounds promising.. i'd never even heard of it until now

[christexaport]

Nokia didn't buy Ngage, they created it. It was a singular device, but now its a gaming platform installed on most Symbian devices. As I mentioned in another thread, Maemo is too open, and it'd leave the games open to piracy. DRM is mandatory to protect the developers, so we'll have to see if users want such a thing on an open device, but I think they will.

I'm surprised you guys no nothing about Ngage! It allows online gaming, too.

[zerojay]

N-Gage used to be a phone... a terrible phone for gaming. The games were on small carts but to change games you had to remove the battery.

The N-Gage QD came out afterwards which corrected a lot of the original N-Gage phone problems, but it was still rather crappy.

(Why bother making a gaming phone when most of the time you couldn't play sound properly?)

All games for the N-Gage phones were simply Java applications put on carts.

The N-Gage brand became an Xbox Live style gaming platform which apparently almost no one uses. Nokia also let go their entire Canadian N-Gage division, all of whom were working on games for the platform.

As far as I know, N-Gage is dead in the water.

[Team C]

I just hope we have some good online 2 player games we can play with friends that also support talking while playing.

[NvyUs]

some kind of gaming platform for maemo would be awesome
as for n-gage there is some great games, all games published by nokia are very good,
most the 3rd party published stuff is garbage though and is getting n-gage a bad name

[OVK]

All games for the N-Gage phones were simply Java applications put on carts.


Not really. They were native S60 aplications (at least so I remember). Some of them, for example Pathway to Glory, were actually really good games that were designed based on the strengths of the phone (multiplayer through gprs, controls that were fitted to match the phones keys and so on). The problem was that most of the games were really bad... And there was also the sidetalking issue...


The N-Gage brand became an Xbox Live style gaming platform which apparently almost no one uses. Nokia also let go their entire Canadian N-Gage division, all of whom were working on games for the platform.

As far as I know, N-Gage is dead in the water.

But the online infrastructure is still there.

I think that Nokia needs to integrate the platform more solidly to their OVI-portal and new phones and also get some new good games available. The potential is huge: there are tens of millions of S60 phones on the world and there will be at least millions of Maemo-phones.

[christexaport]

Its more about waiting for Ngage to have minimum hardware settings. Right now, the hardware is too broad. But Ngage is NOT dead

[Architengi]

why n-gage games are not for sell also in ovi store?

N-gage as a gaming platform, to connect users and let gamers play over the network, or review games, or send messages one to another and friend invitations, is a powerful gaming platform.

The titles are also very good lately. Very good games.

[REMFwhoopitydo]

N-Gage needs to be part of Maemo as well. It is a very good community of gamers/players, which can be used as is because it is hard to create a new gaming community - just for playing in the network, reviews, etc.

To create a new community of gamers it takes at least 1-2 years. iPhone now has its community of gamers like XBox and PS3 and Wii do. N-Gage already exists. If Nokia decides to not diversify N-Gage on Maemo platform, they do a big mistake, because N-Gage is a brand name, well known in Symbian community. And Nokia actually bought N-Gage - another company. Hope they will not close N-Gage and leave only Ovi Gaming and Maemo Gaming.

the OP is correct, nokia needs commercial games if it wants to compete with the iphone/istore.

given the identical hardware (Omap3) shared with the 3GS they would be stupid not to permit commercial games developers to easily port their games to the n900.

if maemo5 lacks DRM which permits a commercial app-store then it needs to get one soon.

[REMFwhoopitydo]

Its more about waiting for Ngage to have minimum hardware settings. Right now, the hardware is too broad. But Ngage is NOT dead

i would suggest the Omap3 used in the n900.

it has the immense advantage that it is common to the iphone 3GS and Palm Pre, nothing like common hardware for making app porting as easy as possible.

[REMFwhoopitydo]

why n-gage games are not for sell also in ovi store?

N-gage as a gaming platform, to connect users and let gamers play over the network, or review games, or send messages one to another and friend invitations, is a powerful gaming platform.

The titles are also very good lately. Very good games.

this would be the most sensible solution; to roll the ngage platform into the Ovi store, then release an Ovi client for the n900.

[Architengi]

the OP is correct, nokia needs commercial games if it wants to compete with the iphone/istore.

given the identical hardware (Omap3) shared with the 3GS they would be stupid not to permit commercial games developers to easily port their games to the n900.

if maemo5 lacks DRM which permits a commercial app-store then it needs to get one soon.


N97, a touch device with wode screen and keyboard, mostly landscape oriented for other applications, like N900 is, has the N-Gage client.

Because N-Gage is written in C++ (the N-Gage service was bought by Nokia from other gaming company), it will be a very smart move to port N-Gage platform to Maemo and to integrate it into OVI as a new category.


Looking at the POLL in this_thread (http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=319042), most of the people choosed to have N-Gage, followed by MS Office applications. I believe Nokia needs to provide N-Gage to N900 Maemo devices, because there is a big customer demand for it.

[NvyUs]

just so ppl know you can already get n-gage game demos from the ovi store, they have in game purchase methods to unlock to full game,
of course you still need the n-gage client installed before hand to run the games but the merge you talk about seems to already be happening

[Architengi]

just so ppl know you can already get n-gage game demos from the ovi store, they have in game purchase methods to unlock to full game,
of course you still need the n-gage client installed before hand to run the games but the merge you talk about seems to already be happening

So you can buy a N-Gage game from Ovi Store from the Games category? Didn't try that. And it states in the comments that is a N-Gage game and you need N-Gage to run it? Not sure about the second part, because N-Gage games are native s60 applications or Java applications, so they might run even without N-Gage. But having N-Gage is good because of the community of users, not only for payment method through N-Gage.

[NvyUs]

in theory the games would work without n-gage app yes, but b/c the xbox live like system you need n-gage client for your achievments, loggng in to your profile, chatting with friends etc, so the way they set it up means you can only launch games within the app, but i'm guessing it would need very little modification to run games without it, matter in fact during open beta before launch i think some one modified games and did it
the n-gage games on ovi store have little n-gage banner running across bottom of icon

[ysss]

Looking at N-Gage's current games line up, I think they need to make a higher tier to compete with iPhone games. This is needed because the current N-Gage titles still need to maintain compatibility with the earlier devices with much less horsepower than the N900, whereas the N900 shouldn't be tied down with such limitation to be able to compete well against its competitors.

Comparison: The Sims 3 version that's in N-Gage is 2d sprites based game (charming graphic i must say, but a little dated) whereas the iPhone version is completely in 3D with great textures.

[mrmcq2u]

Why not create an open alternative to n-gage for maemo? I have wrote about this in a similar post in the games thread but that post seems dead.

[GeneralAntilles]

Why not create an open alternative to n-gage for maemo? I have wrote about this in a similar post in the games thread but that post seems dead.

SDL/OpenGL ES 2.0 plus the Application Manager?

[Architengi]

i would suggest the Omap3 used in the n900.

it has the immense advantage that it is common to the iphone 3GS and Palm Pre, nothing like common hardware for making app porting as easy as possible.

The hardware for "Maemo N-Gage" should be set as minimum of what is in N900. And this is more powerful than Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable. It will do very well.

[mrojas]

if maemo5 lacks DRM which permits a commercial app-store then it needs to get one soon.

Just to imagine the reactions on this forums if some form of DRM gets in Maemo... the horror...

[REMFwhoopitydo]

you and I both want the n900/maemo5 family to do well.

i believe that to 'do well' this will require support for a commercial sales channel that is attractive to the same developers making their fame and fortune in the itunes app store, you may agree with this.

and both of us realise that just because the platform supports DRM does not mean that everything is all of a sudden locked down and out of our control, i.e. if you want to stick with open source then you will be able to do so and no-one can gainsay you.

i don't like DRM either, but i'm willing to be pragmatic on this.

[mrmcq2u]

SDL/OpenGL ES 2.0 plus the Application Manager?

Because you obviously didn't read the post I was referring to I will copy and paste it here ->

I think we should start thinking of a more open replacement.
I personally think that maybe there should be some cooperation on this front to compete with the likes of apple.
An open gaming alliance for example, which spans across Maemo and android devices.
In a perfect world there would be more devices running Maemo but I don't think that will happen any time soon.
The reason why you need an open gaming alliance is to set some standards for portable gaming, standard hardware specs, standard social features etc.
One of the reasons why the iphone has been successful was because the device itself was sort of a standard.
The developers knew what the lowest spec device was going to be.
So the open gaming alliance would set a spec to guide developers.
Hardware wise the n900 has a shot but having something similar to n-gage arena would help in marketing it as a superior gaming device.
The iphone os currently has lots of games available, trying to compete in terms of scale is probably the wrong approach to take.
But there are issues with the current implementation of n-gage, its a very closed approach.. It doesn't take open source into account.
Having an api open and available to developers has its downsides also, its not as simple as making the current one available as that could enable people to break the social aspects of n-gage.
Maybe to avail of social aspects an open source maintainer must register his project with the open gaming alliance, the oga would distribute the games and the social aspects would only be available from games which were obtained from this repo.
I think the concept of n-gage is a good one but it should not be locked in to any one vendor.
There is also other aspects which could be considered like revenue for open source game developers.
Developing open source games is a very different thing than creating open source applications.
There is a lack of great storey driven open source games. Instead of open source games developers moving onto the next project they improve the current one.
This leads to a lack of diversity in terms of genres.
It also leads to a complete lack of commitment in terms of story telling, instead focusing on the hands on experience and thus ending with dull experiences which are not very compelling.
Its all due to the development model, time=money and unlike application development you are unlikely to get any corporate sponsorship when creating an open source game.
There are many ways this could be changed, having a way to donate directly to the maintainer of a game is a great method.
One of the best methods I have spotted in supporting open source games developers is through a sort of ransom.
The way it works is they show what they have and take donations until they reach their quota at which point they make the source available.
This encourages the developers to start new projects and also concentrate on different aspects of the development process like story telling.
They could also sell a game and when they have sold a set number of copies the code is released, this could encourage closed source games developers to start releasing code.
Maybe the games developers who distribute through the oga and choose the ransom method would receive a small grant to get it finished.

[Architengi]

I think we should start thinking of a more open replacement.
I personally think that maybe there should be some cooperation on this front to compete with the likes of apple.
An open gaming alliance for example, which spans across Maemo and android devices.
In a perfect world there would be more devices running Maemo but I don't think that will happen any time soon.
The reason why you need an open gaming alliance is to set some standards for portable gaming, standard hardware specs, standard social features etc.
One of the reasons why the iphone has been successful was because the device itself was sort of a standard.
The developers knew what the lowest spec device was going to be.
So the open gaming alliance would set a spec to guide developers.
Hardware wise the n900 has a shot but having something similar to n-gage arena would help in marketing it as a superior gaming device.
The iphone os currently has lots of games available, trying to compete in terms of scale is probably the wrong approach to take.
But there are issues with the current implementation of n-gage, its a very closed approach.. It doesn't take open source into account.
Having an api open and available to developers has its downsides also, its not as simple as making the current one available as that could enable people to break the social aspects of n-gage.
Maybe to avail of social aspects an open source maintainer must register his project with the open gaming alliance, the oga would distribute the games and the social aspects would only be available from games which were obtained from this repo.
I think the concept of n-gage is a good one but it should not be locked in to any one vendor.
There is also other aspects which could be considered like revenue for open source game developers.
Developing open source games is a very different thing than creating open source applications.
There is a lack of great storey driven open source games. Instead of open source games developers moving onto the next project they improve the current one.
This leads to a lack of diversity in terms of genres.
It also leads to a complete lack of commitment in terms of story telling, instead focusing on the hands on experience and thus ending with dull experiences which are not very compelling.
Its all due to the development model, time=money and unlike application development you are unlikely to get any corporate sponsorship when creating an open source game.
There are many ways this could be changed, having a way to donate directly to the maintainer of a game is a great method.
One of the best methods I have spotted in supporting open source games developers is through a sort of ransom.
The way it works is they show what they have and take donations until they reach their quota at which point they make the source available.
This encourages the developers to start new projects and also concentrate on different aspects of the development process like story telling.
They could also sell a game and when they have sold a set number of copies the code is released, this could encourage closed source games developers to start releasing code.
Maybe the games developers who distribute through the oga and choose the ransom method would receive a small grant to get it finished.

That would be good, a gaming arena alliance between Android and Maemo, but I think Nokia already has Symbian N-Gage, so they can easily have this multi-OS gaming arena platform be avaialble on Symbian and Maemo - and the gaming community will be excited about it.
Now, there are 2 pre-requisites for N-Gage arena gaming to run on Maemo:
1. To have Java on Maemo because many N-Gage games run on Java
2. To have a common API for Symbian and Maemo, so the gaming industry can easily target both platforms with just a re-compilation.

[christexaport]

Exactly. Figure out how to publish games running on a Qt-like engine on Symbian, Maemo, and even the other mobile OSes. I don't know if Qt will allow rich 3D games, but I bet Nokia makes it somehow do so. If it can be the preferred gaming platform and ecosystem, its a beast.

[zerojay]

That would be good, a gaming arena alliance between Android and Maemo, but I think Nokia already has Symbian N-Gage, so they can easily have this multi-OS gaming arena platform be avaialble on Symbian and Maemo - and the gaming community will be excited about it.
Now, there are 2 pre-requisites for N-Gage arena gaming to run on Maemo:
1. To have Java on Maemo because many N-Gage games run on Java
2. To have a common API for Symbian and Maemo, so the gaming industry can easily target both platforms with just a re-compilation.

All N-Gage games are Java... and you're forgetting something:

DRM.

[christexaport]

well, Ngage games have a unique file extension. maybe not allowing any app but the Ngage app install .Ngage files could be a start, though I'm sure the pirates around here would get around that soon...

[ArnimS]

I see these as main categories of sources of games:

1) Existing PC linux games that can be squeezed into 800x480

2) Non hardware-specificVM type games (Java, Flash 9 (10?)...)

3) Emulators (emulating specific systems to run old games)

4) Games written for similar portables (iphone omap3, pandora)

5) Open-Source Games written specifically for N900

6) Commercial games written specificially for N900

Each of these deserves promotion and persistent efforts by those of us who want to see the device and platform succeed.

In particular I would encourage anyone reading this who has contacts or 'roots' in the iPhone scene to start talking to them about Maemo5 and how to ease crossplatform development. I haven't followed closely enough to know whether this is a work in progress, but for my money, I would invest in helping iphone developers port their stuff over to maemo5. Tap into that honeypot of development-hours...

[christexaport]

I think Nokia has a strategy for Ngage and it should include Maemo, but not until DRM gets here for Maemo 6. Look for Nokia to have two Ngage levels, one with 3D acceleration and one without, similar to Sony's PSP and PSPmini creating two distinct gaming levels. Ngage will have to work between Symbian and Maemo, too.

From what I see, there are already plenty of console emulators for Maemo. I don't see the point in porting the iphone games as much as making competing and better games.

[Architengi]

Originally Posted by Architengi
That would be good, a gaming arena alliance between Android and Maemo, but I think Nokia already has Symbian N-Gage, so they can easily have this multi-OS gaming arena platform be available on Symbian and Maemo - and the gaming community will be excited about it.
Now, there are 2 pre-requisites for N-Gage arena gaming to run on Maemo:
1. To have Java on Maemo because many N-Gage games run on Java
2. To have a common API for Symbian and Maemo, so the gaming industry can easily target both platforms with just a re-compilation.

All N-Gage games are Java... and you're forgetting something:

DRM.

Not all of them are Java, some of them are Symbian Native.

What I was saying is the C++ API for N-Gage gaming for Symbian and Maemo is good to be close, if not identical.

For OpenGL the API is already standard, so the games with video 3D accelerated which are possible only on a handful of devices (N900 being oen of them) represent another category for powerful devices (And I don't think N97 is one of them with its processor which is less powerful than N900).

[NvyUs]

most n-gage games are not java,
not a single first party game from nokia publishing is java. non of Vir2l games are java, the few games from THQ wireless, capcom and Konami are not java
the ea and gameloft games are complete copy's of there java and sis versions and they suck and ruined the platform but dont be thinking all n-gage games are java b/c its not correct

[christexaport]

MOST are NOT java, guys. Look at "the One" game. Think that's java??

[patlak]

I know I'm resurrecting an old thread, but just wanted to make it even clearer how Nokia innovates, others profit on it since Nokia doesn't go full force with it. Original N-Gage arena and the second app were what Gamecenter and the future Google Gamecenter version would be. If only there was 3D acceleration in the post OMAP 2420 devices.

http://www.phonearena.com/news/Google-reportedly-making-a-Game-Center-for-Android_id30026