ngage 2 on the horizon
- Thread starter TEXAN
- Start date
IS this a hardware standard too, or just a software standard but N-Gage games will have to target different levels of hardware + different screen sizes etc.?
Shifty Geezer said:
http://www.allaboutngage.com/news.php?id=41063
If it's next gen graphics, then it has to be a hardware standard too.
Maybe they'll announce that all Nokia smart phones from here on in shall be powered by an OMAP2420 or something. So that the games will be playable on all these different phones and not just restricted to one.
Texas Instruments announced earlier in the year that they were making a games software environment and tools for the new OMAP SoC.
Not necessarily. Do ngage compatible phones all have the same screen size, control layout, RAM etc. so developers only need target one set of hardware? I guess a minimum spec could be used that devs target too but the how would that scale to more powerful handsets?TEXAN said:
The original N-Gage had several severe flaws that ruined its reputation soon after launch. The N-Gage QD fixed most of these - battery life, game swapping, side talkin' - but could not change the screen orientation, and by then it was too late.vazel said:
Clearly Nokia is capable of learning from mistakes, and judging by the E3 briefing is on the right lines, with a 16:9 landscape screen.
It would also appear to have a powerful platform. Comparing it to PSP will be like Dreamcast v PS2 again - but with a difference. If rumours are to be believed (the Internet never lies!) N-G 2 will be much more powerful than a DC, whereas the PSP is rather less powerful than a PS2 [1]. Comparing battery life will be interesting.
Nokia needs to get some good early software. An obvious strategy if it is PowerVR powered would be to get the better DC developers onto it. Sega supported N-Gage 1. Virtua Fighter N anyone?
Having multiple N-Gage 2 handsets allows customers to pick and choose the features they want. Carrying around several electronic gizmos is a pain: a single box that does it all would be much more convenient. I'm actually quite excited by the prospect of N-Gage 2.
I want a 3G phone, game player, VoIP, taser, HDD media player [2], DAB radio, taser, camera, taser. Oh, and a taser.
[1] Actually debatable, particularly as current PSP games run underclocked.
[2] HDD game storage hinted at E3
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Though given the small screen resolution, where PS2 has to render to 2.5x the number of pixels, I wonder what the performance per pixel comparison is like.amk said:
The Dreamcast versus PS2 parallel suits an N-Gage2-PSP comparison in several ways.
Like Dreamcast, the MBX in N-Gage2 was produced over a year earlier yet has more feature rich capabilities. Not a strictly fixed function pipeline like PSP, MBX is programmable for vertex shading above SM 1.0 and supports DOT3 pixel shading.
MBX is unconditionally precise in anti-aliasing, color blending, and floating point Z buffering, and it supports advanced features like anisotropic texture filtering as well as fractional tesselation and adaptive LOD curved surface rendering. Like Dreamcast also, image quality is an advantage for MBX as it routinely supersamples from a higher resolution for better definition, anti-aliases jagged edges with multisampling, and always blends color internally at 32-bit accuracy to avoid dithering harshly at 16-bits.
While fillrates between PSP and MBX should be comparable for a given clockspeed, N-Gage2, like DC, might not be implemented so expensively (die area, power consumption) and, most critically, might not receive a comparable level of development support, so it could very well lag the PSP in performance ultimately.
Like Dreamcast, the MBX in N-Gage2 was produced over a year earlier yet has more feature rich capabilities. Not a strictly fixed function pipeline like PSP, MBX is programmable for vertex shading above SM 1.0 and supports DOT3 pixel shading.
MBX is unconditionally precise in anti-aliasing, color blending, and floating point Z buffering, and it supports advanced features like anisotropic texture filtering as well as fractional tesselation and adaptive LOD curved surface rendering. Like Dreamcast also, image quality is an advantage for MBX as it routinely supersamples from a higher resolution for better definition, anti-aliases jagged edges with multisampling, and always blends color internally at 32-bit accuracy to avoid dithering harshly at 16-bits.
While fillrates between PSP and MBX should be comparable for a given clockspeed, N-Gage2, like DC, might not be implemented so expensively (die area, power consumption) and, most critically, might not receive a comparable level of development support, so it could very well lag the PSP in performance ultimately.
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http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/_No_New_N-Gage_Hardware_But_Lots_Of_Innovation.php
Quote:
One clear message from Nokia's 'N-Gage in Barcelona' is that there will be no new N-Gage hardware in the near future (ie first half of 2006). The continuing push on mobile gaming, and driving the N-Gage brand onto other Series 60 devices in the next few years means that any new unit development would drain too many resources. Given some of the titles that have broken cover for 2006, and the plans laid out by Gerard Weiner and Nokia, I think it's a good decision. More news and commentary from Barcelona is going to be forthcoming.
Comment: ... There will actually be new hardware, but it will be in the form of new smartphones that have faster processors, better displays etc. They won't have the N-gage brand but they will use existing N-gage games as well as being ready to use the Next Gen games which appear to be scheduled for the end of 2006 or beginning of 2007.
Quote:
One clear message from Nokia's 'N-Gage in Barcelona' is that there will be no new N-Gage hardware in the near future (ie first half of 2006). The continuing push on mobile gaming, and driving the N-Gage brand onto other Series 60 devices in the next few years means that any new unit development would drain too many resources. Given some of the titles that have broken cover for 2006, and the plans laid out by Gerard Weiner and Nokia, I think it's a good decision. More news and commentary from Barcelona is going to be forthcoming.
Comment: ... There will actually be new hardware, but it will be in the form of new smartphones that have faster processors, better displays etc. They won't have the N-gage brand but they will use existing N-gage games as well as being ready to use the Next Gen games which appear to be scheduled for the end of 2006 or beginning of 2007.
Nokia decided to start the generalization of their gaming platform, N-Gage, across their range of smartphones with the first N-Gage generation instead of the second, OMAP2 generation as originally planned, so the new iteration is being pushed back almost a year. OMAP2 phones are still expected by the end of 2005 in Japan from other manufacturers, though.
OMAP2 performance was demoed a while back by Futuremark.
OMAP2 performance was demoed a while back by Futuremark.
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Next gen N-Gage will inevitably be competing with PSP and NDS. If you have a PSP, why do you need an expensive gaming phone? As such, I have to wonder whether the delay (looks more like 6 months to me) is a good idea. It may have been (partially) forced by software delays though.Lazy8s said:
But are these the same flavours of OMAP 2?
As I'm sure you know, the vanilla OMAP2420 has an ARM11@330MHz, MBX+VGP@50MHz and DSP@220MHz. Possibly this was just the configuration first demoed. OTOH the OMAP2420 product bulletin on the TI site states ARM11 at up to 1GHz, and of course there have been rumours of MBX+VGP@200MHz, giving AFAICS double the raw fill rate of Dreamcast - although I have to wonder what a handheld would do with such fill rate.
Well, a platform's success can be judged by software sold, not machines sold. The "hardcore" gamers of course buy a substantial amount of all games sold, and these people will want to play on a device designed for gaming - decent controls and screen. The screen is going to push the price up. If they already have a PSP, do they want to spend the extra money on that gaming phone, or buy a cheaper one that does the same thing but with a smaller screen?Lazy8s said:
It may be that casual gamers can support a games platform on their own. However, this is untested.
