
Nokia push games as converged media
- 19 Feb 08, 22:49 GMT
Nokia have made some of the biggest noises at this year's Games Developer Conference, re-launching its NGage platform and committing to games as one of the key services of the converged world.
, the firms executive vice president for markets, gave one of the keynotes at this year's mobile conference.
In it he challenged game developers to make games that take advantage of the mobile phone - the new graphics capabilities, its location based services, its camera, in essence the phone's place as an always on, always converged device.
Nokia needs to succeed where it failed last time around. The original NGage was a device but now it has been re-born as a service; a platform for games that works on a range of handsets.
The problem for Nokia is that the mobile game market has not taken off as many observers had expected. It may be a $5bn industry but less than 5% of mobile users tend to play games.
Nokia is trying to fix many of the problems inherent in gaming - letting users try out games before they buy them, making it easier to find and download games, and pushing titles that take advantage of the phone as a device.
The challenge is huge, not least because the mobile phone market is so dynamic and subject to pressures and forces beyond Nokia's control, such as data charges, network bandwidth, the carrier's attitude to gaming etc.
It will be interesting to see what happens because if everything goes to Nokia's plans then the Finnish company could well join the big boys of gaming: Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft.

Going beyond Tetris
- 19 Feb 08, 17:44 GMT
Classic puzzler Tetris is the world's most successful mobile phone game. It is the number one played, bought and downloaded game in every country in the world that offers games on your phone.
But if you thought mobile phones were only able to play Tetris, or games like Snake, think again.
The current generation of handsets - from the Nokia N95 to the NTTDocomo 905 series - have enough power to offer gaming experiences not unlike late PlayStation One, early PlayStation 2 games.
I've just been chatting to a British firm, Imagination Technologies, which develops dedicated graphics accelerators for mobile phones. It produces a bit of silicon that is incorporated into chips made by firms like Texas Instruments and Intel.
And the results are impressive. I'm writing a longer feature for the 蜜芽传媒 News website which looks at the development of mobile phone games and some of the issues around why the industry has yet to really take off.
But take a look at the video above - shot on a Nokia N95, as is all my stuff this week.

蜜芽传媒 programmes on your iPod
- 19 Feb 08, 09:53 GMT
Now this is an in-house story, so I'm going to have to strive even harder than usual to remain impartial, but that 蜜芽传媒 programmes are now on sale on seems really significant to me.
The idea is that after getting access to 蜜芽传媒 content for nothing for eight days via the iPlayer, you will then be able to pay 拢1.89 to download and own a programme from iTunes. It is the first time the 蜜芽传媒 has asked UK viewers to pay to download content, and it will be interesting to see how they react. Millions have been happy to pay for DVDs of series like Little Britain - but will they react differently when they are asked to shell out for something they can't stick on a shelf?
But what is really different about this move is that it makes TV portable. I've just downloaded an episode of Life On Mars, which I will then be able to view on my computer, or on my television - or transfer to an iPod or iPhone so that I can watch it on the tube on the way to work.
Atlast week there was a lot of excitement about media on the move, but not many new ideas about getting compelling content to users. This seems a step forward in that respect.
The iTunes launch is a way for the 蜜芽传媒 to try out a concept before the much more ambitious which will see a number of broadcasters come together with a platform offering thousands of hours of current and archive programming for paid downloading.
Of course, some are already swapping 蜜芽传媒 content for free using file-sharing software - and as the music industry has found it's difficult to get people to pay for something they can get - albeit illegally - for nothing. But, once you've handed over your credit card details, buying a programme from iTunes is an awful lot easier and more reliable than hunting it down on the web and trying to suck it into your computer. The 蜜芽传媒 - and other broadcasters - will be hoping that millions of viewers will now choose the simple option.

Red ring of death returns
- 19 Feb 08, 02:41 GMT
Microsoft wants consumers to believe that its with the Xbox 360 console in terms of hardware failure are over.
But wandering through the Game Developers Conference halls and it's clear that the problem persists.
On Microsoft's own stand at the show one of the demo consoles has a rather familiar problem - the red ring of death. There's no way of knowing if this particular console was manufactured before or after Microsoft identified the problems with the machines.
But at the very least it's embarrassing for the company that its own stock of demo machines are still susceptible to the problem.
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