Nokia's N-Gage adopts a sensible smartphone family

Hola! Crave has just returned from Barcelona, where we saw Antoni Gaudi's spectacular but unfinished basilica, La Sagrada Familia, and heard about Nokia's ambitious but incomplete plans to rule the mobile gaming world. "It's a marathon, not a sprint," said Gerard Weiner, Vice President of Nokia's Games division. How appropriate, then, that he was speaking to the press in Barcelona -- home of a church that has been 'under construction' for over 100 years.

Nokia's plans might not be as baroque as Gaudi's, but they're better funded and likely to come to fruition sooner. The foundation was laid in 2003 with the launch of the N-Gage, a mobile phone that doubles as a handheld gaming console. Two years later, with two million handsets sold and over 50 games, N-Gage is ready for the next step: expansion to Series 60 handhelds. In a gilded Gaudi-style nutshell, that means next year you'll be able to play connected, console-style games on smartphones like the 6680 and 3250. The market for N-Gage games will expand to around 25 million handsets, which should mean more titles and many more members for N-Gage Arena, the N-Gage gaming community. That's the benefit for gamers; if you're a suit with a smartphone, you'll be able to join the fun without downgrading to a gaming-specific handheld.

And there's more: alongside the Sophisticated Temple of Smartphone Gaming, Nokia is building the SNAP Mobile Chapel of Casual Connected Gaming on Java Handsets. The SNAP Mobile programme aims to bring some of the features of N-Gage gaming -- including multiplayer mobile gaming and community features such as buddy lists -- to Java handsets. Games in development range from old favourites such as backgammon and dominos to Age of Piracy, a massively multiplayer connected game that lets you trade, loot and do battle on the high seas.

Nokia still has some stones to shape and tiles to lay, but both initiatives should be throwing open their doors sometime in 2006. -ML