Nokia to embed N-Gage in smart phones — MobileMonday Global: Industry News

^{3D games in E3} Nokia to embed N-Gage in smart phones

19 May 2005 at 07:51 GMT Timo Poropudas

Nokia revealed on Tuesday plans to move its N-Gage gaming platform into select smart phones, starting next year. The N-Gage gaming platform, including 3D graphics and more, will be available for new Nokia Series 60 phones, the company announced at E3 (the Electronic Entertainment Expo). “It’s going into a broad range of smart phones,” said Robert Sears, community technology manager at Nokia Corp. But not all of them—at this point, The phones with N-Gage upgrade will require N-Gage’s standard 176x208 screen resolution. Nokia has not decided whether to license N-Gage to other Series licensees including Samsung, Siemens and others- Market research predicts that there will be 25 million Nokia smart phones by the end of 2005, and 250 million overall by 2008. Nokia also announced that a redesigned N-Gage would be announced this fall. This “next-generation gaming platform” launch will include devices, content and partners. N-Gage QD will not be phased out—the company plans on selling it through 2007 and beyond. The platform will be built around a refreshed Texas Instruments OMAP chip set providing real 3D graphics in a handheld platform. In the E3 Nokia showed two working concept smart phones running N-Gage games, along with demos of all of the games. The company also rolled out its slate of 2005 games, including what it called a “racing lifestyle game” that has already been rated “M” (for mature) by the Entertainment Software Rating Board.