Ilkka Raiskinen on N-Gage, and more

The Third Man

Nokia is leading the way in terms of publishing games that really show off the possibilities of mobile multiplayer and N-Gage Arena, a task which it considers to be part of its duties as a platform holder. But it hasn't been ignoring its third-party partners either - and it hopes that other publishers will follow it in developing N-Gage titles that take advantage of the platform's possibilities.

"We anticipate more publishers coming on board," Raiskinen says. "Of course this is a question that we unfortunately can't answer on behalf of the publishers, but I personally believe that the relationship [with existing N-Gage supporters] has been extremely fruitful. Our friends from the publishing world have been extremely helpful in giving suggestions and improvements, and of course we are proud that they have also started to endorse wireless and are adding in mobile and connectivity elements in their well-known franchises."

N-Gage is a somewhat fraught proposition for third-party publishers, however - the platform has a low installed base and suffers from software piracy problems (both issues which Raiskinen hopes that QD will go some distance to solving). Also it faces constant competition from Java-based games, which are much cheaper and more widely available than the MMC card based N-Gage exclusive titles.

Raiskinen is unperturbed by the popularity of Java titles on N-Gage - he welcomes it. "Basically it's not really a concern because all of those will of course promote the fact of playing wireless games and playing online games," he explains, "and that will of course help devices like N-Gage because they are optimised for gameplay - we will always have better ergonomics there and so on and so forth."

He believes that the case for N-Gage games as against Java games is simply a matter of keeping ahead of the pack - with N-Gage titles presently offering functionality which won't be available in Java games for as much as a year and a half, he claims. "Right now, you can do much more hardware-related stuff with N-Gage - you can do the Bluetooth multiplayer, you can have better audio, better graphics and so on and so forth. However, 12 to 18 months from now, what you see with N-Gage today is something that you'll be seeing in Java at that time. So, all the time you have to renew your portfolio and justify that you have an edge. "

He also defends the often-questioned decision to opt for the MMC game distribution system in the first place - stating his belief that the types of games being seen on the N-Gage simply wouldn't have been possible if Nokia had advocated pure digital distribution for the platform.

"I believe that there will always be a need for physical distribution, for various reasons," he says. "There are always games which are so big that for some reason or another, the download is not possible. If we take the current context, the games which we have been discussing will vary from 8MB to 64MB - and there are still areas in the world where downloading a meg will cost you more than one euro. The economics for downloading big amounts are not yet there."