Nokia Unveils Portable Gaming Unit

Nokia, a company usually noted for its cell phones, unveiled a portable gaming device in London yesterday.  

http://gamespot.com/gamespot/stories/news/0,10870,2910373,00.html/

Dubbed the N-Gage, it appears to have few influential companies lined up to publish games for the system. Representatives from Sega, Activision, Eidos, Taito, and THQ all were present to show their support for the system (and to display some of their demos).

The N-Gage works as a cell phone, but is meant to be used for games.  It is powerful.  Eidos had a playable demo of Tomb Raider running on it already that looked to be a port of the original Playstation version. The unit also features multiplayer support via Bluetooth.

Here is list of publishers the games that each has planned thus far (as taken from Gamespot:)
Eidos
Pandemonium
Tomb Raider
Nokia
Bounce
Kart Racing
Virtually Board Snowboarding II
Sega
Puyo Puyo
Sega Rally
Sonic N
Super Monkey Ball
Virtua Tennis
Taito
Puzzle Bobble
Space Invaders
THQ
Major League Baseball
Moto-GP
Red Faction  


Nokia currently plans on the N-Gage being released sometime next year. Pricing for the system and games is not yet known.



Will the N-Gage challenge Nintendo’s dominance in the portable gaming?
-No, I don’t think it will.
Is it a good idea?
-Maybe.  
Is it good for gaming?
-Most definitely.  

Competition, in my opinion, is a good thing. I honestly know next to nothing about Bluetooth, but if this system has a chance to be successful, it will probably be through it.  If the N-Gage can make a niche in multiplayer games, it just may survive. And I think its survival would be good for gaming.

Hopefully, there will be a good deal of competition between Nokia and Nintendo.  Many have criticized Nintendo recently ignoring customers’ requests for a backlit GameBoy Advance and then announcing the GameBoy Advance SP (which boast the feature of being backlit) after the market has already been saturated with the regular unit.  One can only hope that business practices like this will fall by the wayside because of each companies struggle for dominance. With any luck prices will fall with them.

This is just a dream though probably. Nintendo holds such dominance over the market already for it to seem unrealistic for the N-Gage to be anything but a minor success. Here’s hoping the N-Gage doesn’t go the way of the Game Gear though (not that the Game Gear was a good portable system ^_^ ).




Source: Gamespot