HOLLYWOOD, Calif. – Following numerous delays due to technical problems, Nokia Corp.’s N-Gage gaming platform has been live for six weeks now, and the company said it’s pleased with the initial response to the service as it builds up its catalog of available titles.
Kay Gruenwoldt, head of the company’s North America marketing team and who’s been focusing on the company’s internal game publishing arm, said the company’s decision to offer every game on a limited free trial period has proven successful right out of the gates.
N-Gage has already generated sales in 130 countries, Gruenwoldt told RCR Wireless News at the Mobile and Games Forum last week.
“It’s been a wild ride. This whole thing has been in development for three-and-a-half years,” he said. “It’s like having a little baby finally walking its first steps.”
With nine titles on board, Grunenwoldt said the company is focusing on two business streams: Nokia’s publishing business and third-party game publishers – large and small.
Connecting with devices
N-Gage’s overriding goal is to build up a catalog that pushes the boundaries of the platform by pulling in the capabilities of the devices themselves and connecting them with game play, Gruenwoldt said. Cameras, GPS and accelerometers are just some of the features that the company wants to see put to use in a gaming environment, he said.
Gruenwoldt said he’s particularly excited to see developers come up with entirely new games for the platform.
“People do not have to rely on big brands. It enables original IP (intellectual property) and original brands again,” he said.
Short-term licenses for the games cost as little as $3 while purchasing a game outright can cost as much as $10 or $15. The company is clearly targeting an upper tier of gamers with the new platform.
Cautious approach
Although the company is ramping up to launch more titles, it’s cautious about flooding the platform with too much too soon, he said.
As it builds a strategy around release time lines, it’s also looking at how it will all be implemented under the umbrella of Nokia’s Ovi, which the company formed to organize all of its service and content offerings under one virtual roof.
Gruenwoldt admits the technicalities haven’t been worked out yet, but there are opportunities for integrating things like a device’s address book for chatting with friends on the N-Gage platform, for example. “I hope that we have that one day,” he said.
In the immediate term, the N-Gage team is working with game developers and their six-to-18-month production windows to bring new titles on deck.
