A couple notes on the N-Gage front.
First off, it was reported today that the N-Gage security system has (site is reported on SlashDot, so it may be down due to high traffic). This will allow games written for the N-Gage to be copied to and played on competitors phones based on the same hardware and OS.
Second, I finally checked out an N-Gage at the mall last week. My impressions were not good. First off, I was rather surprised to see that the two demo phones were running two no-name games. That was a bit of a shock, and I can't help but wonder if there are significant problems with their big titles (Tomb Raider, Red Faction, Tony Hawk) that prevents them from demoing them.
One of the games would not run past the 10-page intro storyline, so I never even saw what its gameplay was like. It would crash at that point, which means the game just stops running and you are instantly back at the Nokia menu system. The guy at the store said they were having trouble with that game that required frequent hard resets for the game work. However that requires them to dismantle the display mount holding the N-Gage so they can access the hard reset. So that demo machine was basically worthless.
The other game on the other device (each device had a different game) was some really simple, and lame, game where you have to roll this marble down a 3D ramp. Yes, it was 3D, but the ramp was the only 3D mesh being rendered. The majority of the screen was just a static 2D bitmap. The game appeared to run at around 15 FPS at times, because I could very obviously see the frame refresh, which I usually notice below 20 FPS. So I was rather disappointed at the apparent poor performance rendering one of the simplist of 3D games I've ever seen.
The menu system was confusing to me. You could either navigate with the two primary hardware buttons in the numeric pad, or use the soft keys on the bottom left and right of the display. However those keys were backwards to me, which kept messing me up. The left key was "enter" or "next", and the right key was "exit" or "back". Anyway, the only good thing I can say about it is the little, tiny screen was bright and clear.
I really think the N-Gage is going to be a dismal failure at this point for a whole host of reasons.
Dan East
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