N-Gage games cannot be disengaged

Just how much more bad news can the N-Gage brand sustain before Nokia gets around to writing off the whole shebang as the shambles that it has been from pretty much start to finish?

Well, add this little nugget to the N-Gage List Of Duffness: if you upgrade your N-Gage-supporting phone, you can kiss goodbye to your cherished collection of N-Gage games. Well, unless you’re prepared to pay for them all over again, that is. Nice one, Nokia.

Why? Well, first a quick recap: N-Gage was first a phone-cum-games-console and later, when that idea had clearly failed, Nokia turned N-Gage into a ‘ platform ’. You know, a bit like Windows XP or Mac OS are platforms. So, instead of producing specifically N-Gage-branded handsets, Nokia would produce any number of differently-marketed handsets that could run N-Gage games.

N-Gage games can be bought and played on any device that supports the N-Gage platform, much like Microsoft Office will run on any PC with Windows. Simple, right? Not simple enough for those bad-news-seekers at Nokia’s N-Gage division, who have been forced to admit that N-Gage games are purchased under a license that allows “one private installation on one N-Gage compatible Nokia device only”. The upshot of this clause is that your N-Gage games are forever tied to the first N-Gage-supporting phone to which you install them.

We bet Microsoft wishes it had thought of the idea first. Much more over at All About N-Gage.

[via All About N-Gage]

Originally published on www.mobilecomputermag.co.uk, now incorporated into Broadband Genie
© Dennis Publishing

 

 

 

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