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27th August 2003:
N-Gage at ECTS (ECTS 2003)
Nokia held a press conference, revealing further details on their forthcoming console, plus we speak to Stefan Lampinen, their games director, about its features.
Posted by Marc Hull - N-Gage - UK and Europe

There's no doubt that Nokia have a steep hill to climb if they want to take on the likes of the Game Boy Advance and, eventually, Sony's PSP, but today their large presence at this year's ECTS helped them to reaffirm their position as a contender in the handheld games market. Despite its skeptics (and there seem to be a fair few of them), the N-Gage is going to be in shops worldwide by the 7th October this year, and their press conference at ECTS aimed to clarify any questions people had before its release. Aside from reconfirming information from previous press releases, Nokia were also able to reveal some exclusive new details to the UK press, and afterwards we caught up with Stefan Lampinen, their games director, to quiz him about the console.

Price point and contract subsidies
Although Nokia had previously announced a European price for their console in Euros, today we got the actual UK price for the first time. The device will retail for Ł220-Ł230, which is a tad more than our estimated Ł180, with games ranging from Ł20 to Ł40 each. Being a phone as well as a games machine, we expect the price of the machine itself to vary depending on the type of phone contract you sign up to, but Nokia themselves wouldn't be drawn into estimating how much the price would drop. Considering that many phones that have a base value of over Ł100 can be obtained for free on a Ł30 per month contract, we expect the on-contract price to be a fair bit lower than the handset-only price announced today, hopefully ending up around the more manageable Ł100-Ł150 mark.

Publisher support
It's tough for any new hardware company to get the support of a wide range of games publishers, but so far Nokia seem to have done a pretty good job. They reconfirmed that Eidos, Ubi Soft and Sega are all busy making games for the console, and also announced two new publishers to add to the list. Firstly, Electronic Arts are now backing the N-Gage, and although specific titles weren't announced, we expect some of their popular sports franchises to make the leap to the smaller screen. Secondly, Nokia themselves announced that they will be publishing and developing first-party titles that will make full use of the N-Gage's wireless networking and GSM abilities. The first games from Nokia themselves will appear during the first half of next year, with so far only one specific title announced, Pathway to Glory, which is promised to contain wireless multiplayer features (presumably through Bluetooth).

Multiplayer wireless gaming
We'd already heard of the N-Gage's Bluetooth support, which allows two N-Gages within a ten metre radius to communicate without wires (kinda like multiplayer on the Game Boy Advance, just without having to buy or connect up the cable), but this time Nokia revealed more about their worldwide online gaming strategy. The first stage of this is a service called 'N-Gage Arena', which N-Gage owners will be able to log on to much like using WAP on a normal mobile phone. Once connected, you'll be able to chat with others online and exchange game data, which could range from ghosts of other player's best laps in racing games to monsters that they've trained up for you to battle. When asked whether or not this would be a free service or subscription-based, Nokia said that it would be initially free, at least until the end of the year, and then they would reassess whether to charge for it or not. However, the most exciting possibility with the N-Gage has to be realtime gaming over its mobile phone connection, much like next-generation consoles get from services such as Xbox Live. On this topic, although there are no currently-announced games that support such a service, Nokia recently bought Sega's networking technology, called SNAP (the SEGA Network Application Package), which would be ideally suited for worldwide online gaming. We asked Stefan how far along the plans are for implementing true online gaming on the N-Gage: "We expect some new interesting content from the aquisition of the Sega.com assets, which is of course the technology part, but we also have 50 people working in San Francisco, we have some interesting content to follow from that ... The aquisition of Sega.com was basically to speed up the realtime online gaming, because ghost imaging is absolutely great, but that's not real online, that's a fantastic start. But with assets of Sega.com and the 50 people working in San Francisco, we can speed up that, quicker than we initially thought."

Downloadable content
With current mobile phones offering downloadable ringtones, backgrounds and themes, obviously the N-Gage could take advantage of this kind of service and offer downloadable levels, characters and other features. At the press conference, Nokia mentioned that strategy guides for games such as Pandemonium and Tomb Raider would be available for download via the N-Gage arena service, but so far there's no word on any of the games being extendable this way. We asked Stefan whether this technology would be used in future games to provide so-called 'episodic content': "That is the long-term view, yes. Today we are saying that we have the fastest finish [the ability to upload your lap times to the N-Gage Arena], you have the ghost imaging [the ability to download other people's laps or games and compete against them] and you have director's cut [the ability to record videos from your game and upload them to N-Gage Arena for others to see] - we're looking into that [downloadable content], it's not decided yet - to be announced, as you say.".

The launch
At the press conference, Nokia were very keen to point out that their launch date, the 7th October, is a worldwide date, when the N-Gage will be available in every continent around the world. They have good reason to be proud of it too, since this is something that no other company has been successful in doing, with many consoles launching with month or even year-long gaps between each territory! We asked Stefan exactly how many games would be available around that time: "Around ten games for October... for the launch I think we're looking at around 6, 7 or 8, and for Christmas around 20, but we're fine tuning that.". In what is something of a coup for Nokia, the console will be going on sale in both games and phone stores, giving it over twice the availability of any other console! We're not entirely sure how games retailers will handle selling a phone, but Stefan commented: "Obviously the games channel [games shops], I think it's going to be more selling games and I believe that the telecom channel [phone shops] is going to sell a lot of the game decks, and then there are going to be some interesting crossovers there which we'll know more about soon."

Service providers
Having phone capabilities, you'll obviously need to be tied to some sort of service provider, however rather than using any special service specific to the N-Gage, buyers will have the same choice of service provider as they would with a normal mobile. Nokia announced that O2, Virgin Mobile, Vodaphone and T-Mobile would all be offering service packages, and that it will be up to them to decide what tarifs they will offer and at what price they will sell the console at. In the end, this will place the N-Gage in the same position as most modern phones, in that there will be several different pricing options available for it from each of the service providers supporting it. This is purely speculation, but we suspect that most will offer a basic 'pay as you go' service, where you buy the console at Ł220-Ł230 and don't pay any monthly bills, or you will have the option of taking out a contract where you pay so much a month but get so many free minutes of call time, free text messages and possibly a reduction on the price of the phone. We hope to have more specific details of pricing plans from each of the service providers closer to the console's launch, but if anything it means that consumers will be able to hunt around for good deals that suit their needs, rather than be forced to pay a standard amount. What is interesting is that the N-Gage may not be able to function as just a games console - the press conference revealed that you will definitely need a SIM card in the device for it to work properly, although you can simply take one out of an existing phone and put it in the N-Gage if you want to.

Overall, the outlook for the N-Gage is now much clearer. We have a definite price point, a list of service providers, an impressive list of publishers that are supporting it and an idea of the number of games that will be appearing on it from the launch to the end of the year. ECTS has also given us a chance to playtest some of the launch games, and we'll be bringing you hands-on reports of titles such as Tomb Raider, Pandemonium, Red Faction and Sonic N over the coming days. The only thing that is still uncertain is the subsidy that service providers may or may not provide, but you can be sure that we'll be hassling them for further information right up until October 7th and will report any findings right here on the site! We'd like to thank Nokia and Stefan Lampinen for taking the time to answer our questions, and wish them the best of luck with the launch of their new console!

Marc Hull

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