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Opinion: iPhone poses a significant threat to N-Gage

Could Nokia's platform risk looking like yesterday's technology

Opinion: iPhone poses a significant threat to N-Gage
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Think back to two or three years ago. Back then, there were two predicted game-changers for the mobile games industry: 3D and connectivity.

There were even well-attended conferences purely devoted to these two subjects, and every developer and publisher was buzzing about them.

Now think about today, and what's causing similar levels of excitement in 2008. It's not so much 3D and connectivity, but instead it's two other features: touchscreens and motion-sensing.

If you read the title of this piece, you probably know where I'm going with this. 3D and connectivity are the twin pillars of Nokia's N-Gage platform, which was formulated around the time that everyone was going to those conferences.

It does both really well. Games like System Rush Evolution have eye-popping 3D visuals, while the N-Gage Arena has delivered on its promise of cool community features, not to mention (usually) seamless billing.

The danger for Nokia is that any comparison with iPhone runs the risk of making N-Gage look like yesterday's technology. Why? Because iPhone can do the 3D and the connectivity, but it's got that touchscreen and accelerometer, too.

Nokia has yet to release a touchscreen phone, and while it has accelerometers in a select few handsets, it's unclear when N-Gage games will be able to tap into them. Apple has stolen Nokia's advanced gaming ball and run off with it cackling, in other words.

A direct comparison of N-Gage and iPhone is unwise for several reasons, with the main one being that iPhone is a handset that does a lot more than just gaming, while N-Gage is a pure gaming platform that (in theory) works on a lot more than just one handset.

Yet the problem for Nokia is that it's not just journalists making comparisons between N-Gage and iPhone: it's developers and publishers, too. While many have warm words for N-Gage's capabilities (if not for the speed of its rollout), they positively rave about the iPhone's potential for gaming, and the likely rival handsets that'll also incorporate motion and touch.

What's more, this is showing through in some of their games. Is N-Gage really just a step on from Java or BREW – a platform that you port your existing mobile games to with souped up graphics and N-Gage Arena community features? You'd think so from some of the third-party games that are being released for it, with a glaring comparison to the games being published by Nokia itself, which are pushing the platform.

My point isn't that N-Gage is an outdated games platform that's been blown away by iPhone. Once Nokia kicks its rollout into gear and gets N-Gage onto millions of handsets to be discovered by users, publishers will surely invest more resources into making more ambitious games for it.

But the point is that Nokia faces two tough challenges in the months to come. First, how to convince publishers that N-Gage isn't just an iterative improvement to existing mobile games, rather than the completely new platform that iPhone is being portrayed as.

Games like Reset Generation could lead the way here, particularly if its Facebook spin-off takes off. Expanding the connectivity within N-Gage Arena could also pay off, if it lets publishers try their hands at episodic content and micro-transactions.

But the second big challenge for N-Gage is how to seize some of that all-important buzz back. Specifically, how to integrate motion and touch into the N-Gage roadmap without a platform fragmentation headache.

N-Gage against iPhone isn't like PS2 against Dreamcast (remember those days?) – there's no winner or loser in terms of numbers, because Nokia will eventually come good on its promise to distribute N-Gage onto millions of handsets. But it's all about the games. If Nokia doesn't convince developers and publishers to put as much resources, effort and creative thinking into N-Gage as they are into iPhone, the former runs the very real risk of not delivering on its promise.

Stuart Dredge
Stuart Dredge
Stuart is a freelance journalist and blogger who's been getting paid to write stuff since 1998. In that time, he's focused on topics ranging from Sega's Dreamcast console to robots. That's what you call versatility. (Or a short attention span.)