Nokia adapts N-Gage to new environment

Like a high-tech runaway bride, Nokia Corp. is readying for another N-Gagement.
The handset maker is preparing to dust off the familiar-but tarnished-brand next year, expanding the N-Gage from a single, gaming-focused mobile phone to a platform for sophisticated wireless games across a variety of devices. The effort will include an embedded or downloadable application and initially will be supported by roughly a half-dozen Series 60 smart phones, including some models currently being shipped.
“Essentially, what we’ve been doing is building the infrastructure, the tools, to support the platform,” said Gregg Sauter, Nokia’s director of games publishing. “The platform will sit across most of our S60 devices going into 2008.”
A bulky, taco-shaped handset, the original N-Gage received mixed reviews following its 2003 launch. An aggressive but flawed device based on Nokia’s Series 60 platform (which runs the Symbian operating system), the N-Gage suffered from a lack of quality games, a steep price tag and a form factor that made voice calls a cumbersome application.
The device failed to lure users away from the Game Boy Advance and other handheld gaming devices, and Nokia offered two revised versions of the N-Gage before pulling the plug on the handset.
The company has continued to promote its brand, however. Its N-Gage Arena remains an active virtual community, and the N-Gage logo dominated the company’s presence at the high-profile E3 Electronic Entertainment Expo last summer.
“What a lot of people don’t realize is that, from our studies, the people who bought the N-Gage had some of the highest consumer satisfaction rates we’ve ever seen,” Sauter said. “The problem was, the install base was just too small.”
N-Gage Arena satisfied
Much of that satisfaction stemmed from the N-Gage Arena, one of the first virtual communities for mobile gamers. The online and mobile battleground offers leaderboards and tournaments as well as more sophisticated features like multiplayer functionality, downloads and player profiles.
Indeed, cross-platform capabilities will play a large role in the new platform, and the company hopes to leverage Wi-Fi technology to bring more immediacy for its multiplayer titles.
Nokia is betting that offering a sophisticated gaming experience across a variety of devices helps grow its N-Gage following. Indeed, while the N-Gage was seen a gaming-exclusive phone, the S60 line is targeted at a wide swath of subscribers including early adopters and business users.
And while smart phones remain very much a business-targeted device in North America, they’ve gained substantial ground in other markets where users are accustomed to paying for games, music, video or other 3G services. And, true to form, Nokia appears ready to support the initiative with plenty of marketing muscle-even in the United States, where smart-phone uptake continues to lag.
“We’ll be pushing it where our device volumes are. China is a huge market for us; Europe is a huge market. North America is a huge opportunity,” said Sauter. “The fastest-growing segment of our product portfolio is these higher-end devices. It’s where the future is.”
The gaming effort is part of a larger move by Nokia to move beyond multimedia phones into a range of specifically targeted devices. The company’s 3250 model, for instance, targets music lovers with FM radio functionality, 10 hours of audio playback and dedicated “music keys” on the back of a swiveling keypad. The company recently launched the N95, a GPS-enabled device for road warriors, and the new N93 is specifically designed for on-the-go video use.
“One of the things you have to realize is that we are really focused on convergence devices; devices that play music, that double as cameras, can access e-mail, the whole thing,” according to Sauter. “What we need to do now is make sure we’re delivering an incredible experience to those devices.”