10/10/2008, 11:10am, EDT
Friday, October 10thfrom: www.electronista.com
N-Gage poised to rival App Store for gaming
Nokia's N-Gage download service has the potential to dwarf the App Store in terms of mobile game sales, say parties within the gaming industry. Reuters reports that while N-Gage has achieved relatively little so far in its six months of operation, this is mainly because people have mostly had to install the necessary software themselves, something which is beginning to change with phones like the N85.
While the App Store has been instantly accessible from iPhones since July 11th, and Apple expects to have sold 10 million phones within 2008 alone, Nokia is said to be such a dominant force in the global market that it could reach 10 times the number of people. N-Gage is also described as an ideal vehicle for selling games. "In many ways the N-Gage design reflects an insider's view of how to solve the merchandising challenges that we have all seen in this business for so long," says Greg Ballard, CEO of game publisher Glu Mobile. "It was like a bunch of us had gotten together and said, 'Here, this is how it should be done,'" he comments.
This view is echoed by Javier Ferreira, Electronic Arts' head of mobile publishing for Europe. Despite EA's heavy presence in the iPhone world, the company is also heavily invested in N-Gage. "All the right pieces are in place from our perspective. We're very excited about this platform. It is very difficult for this not to be successful," says Ferreira.
N-Gage is only expected to become a significant factor in 2009, as phones like the N85 and N96 enter widescale distribution. Apple and Nokia may both stand to gain considerable revenue from gaming, as games currently account for about 50 percent of all cellphone downloads, and the total worth of the 2008 gaming market is expected to sit between $4 and $8 billion.
Filed under: iPod, iPhone, gaming, mobile phones
Other story tags: iPod touch, Nokia, App Store
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We will see..
I do believe the comment is.... We will see.
Nokia sells lots of phones. Lots of cheap small simple phones. Does it sell lots of smart phones? So why have they not done all this earlier??? Maybe its harder to organize that people think.
What do you think??
Just a thought.
en
We will see..
I do believe the comment is.... We will see.
Nokia sells lots of phones. Lots of cheap small simple phones. Does it sell lots of smart phones? So why have they not done all this earlier??? Maybe its harder to organize that people think.
What do you think??
Just a thought.
en
cross platform?
I'm wondering when a 'cross platform mobile' application market will be launched?
Seems like an obvious choice with
http://windows.MobileAppStore.net
or
http://symbian.MobileAppStore.net
or
http://iphone.MobileAppStore.net etc etc.
Cheers,
Dean
Nokia equals instant
success for their app store? That's bull. It didn't do that well the first time around. Just because the market is ripe for the iPhone, it doesn't mean it's ripe for all those Nokia phones or the individuals that use them. I know the N-Gage was first, but is the N-Gage SDK and average Nokia handset hardware up to the task of knocking the iPhone aside. The N-Gage QD phone was just about as much designed to be a game machine as any phone could be, yet it didn't meet with much success.
Those handsets don't have nearly the processing power of the iPhone. The N85 has less than 100 MB of built-in memory so the user will have to go and buy a microSD card.
I'm sure Nokia users will download games and N-Gage may have a second life, but calling it a sure instant hit is really stretching it a bit.