At the GCA a few weeks ago, I dropped by the Nokia booth in the business section for a presentation on the new N-gage. After the disastrous fiasco that was the original N-Gage. There, I found out more information about the new N-gage and what is the difference between that and SNAP mobile which I knew was a J2ME multiplayer platform. At the Nokia N-gage presentation, here is what I discovered
- N-gage games are developed using Symbian. SNAP mobile is it’s J2ME counterpart
- N-gage is now not a phone, but a platform supported by a series of phones
- N-gage supports try before you buy which is pretty good for consumers burnt by paying good money for a game that do not run on their handset
But then, there could be a few issues which mainly concern around the usage of Symbian for game development. Symbian development is painful in the least and after surveying a group of mobile developers, their unanimous opinion is that Symbian game development is akin to poking a sharp fork in your eye, twirling it around violently and then scooping it out with a rusty blunt spoon.
So with the choice of Symbian as a development language, the market share for the new N-gage will be quite limited to only Symbian phones and the market may be too small to give a good ROI for Nokia and N-gage.
