At its annual mobile Internet conference, this time held in Munich - Germany, Nokia unveiled its new project, N-Gage, aimed directly at the handheld gaming console market. Nokia have also taken on a patner with some experience in the field, announcing a deal which will see Sega developing games for N-Gage.
The handheld segment of the gaming market has long been Nintendo's playground. Nokia however, in a move that surprised most analysts, decided, not only to produce the phone/console but to begin developing games for it as well. Based on an established business model in the games industry, Nokia plans to change mobile gaming by utilizing the full potential of mobility. As mobile network capacity increases over time, mobile gaming interactivity will also reach new levels together with game optimized mobile devices that offer consumers a truly rich, interactive mobile gaming experience.
Games are an exciting way to communicate and connect with a larger community of like minded people. Rich mobile games, combined with connected near distance multiplayer gaming over Bluetooth and wide area gaming using cellular networks, opens the door for totally new gaming concepts. Mobility will add a whole new dimension to innovative and creative games concepts and will provide opportunities for the games and telecom industry alike, said Anssi Vanjoki, Executive Vice President, Nokia Mobile Phones.
Rich mobile gaming represents an appealing business opportunity for game publishers and operators. Nokia will be working with top games publishers and developers to provide the most appealing games catalogue for consumers. The rich games will be distributed on memory cards, and Nokia will also act as a game publisher. Operators will gain new revenue streams through increased data use and outbox memory game cards will complement operators' current game business by bringing rich quality games to game optimized mobile devices.
As an initial step in the converging trends in enabling technologies, and also in devices, Nokia will introduce the first game optimized device in its mobile game deck category, the Nokia N-Gage mobile game deck device, together with branded game titles from top games publishers and developers in February 2003. The Nokia N-Gage mobile game deck will run on the Nokia Series 60 platform and the Symbian OS (Operating System).
SEGA
Nokia and Sega, announced their collaboration to provide branded games for Nokia's new mobile game deck device category. According to this collaboration, Sega will develop games for Nokia N-Gage, mobile game deck. The branded outbox games will be available separately on memory cards.
Nokia believes that games is the next big thing in mobility. The mobile game deck devices takes us to a new level of mobile interactive gaming, offering totally new and unique possibilities that were not previously available in this quality for publishers or end-users. We are excited to provide rich, high quality games from world known game publishers such as Sega. Sega offers an excellent variety of games with several genres, said Ilkka Raiskinen Senior Vice President, Entertainment and Media Business Unit, Nokia Mobile Phones
It is our pleasure to join hands with Nokia for their innovative project, said Tetsu Kayama, Chief Operating Officer, Sega Corporation. We promote a multiplatform strategy to supply content to all type of hardware globally and we believe that Nokia and us will create the new-genre of mobile games.