Nokia Finally SNAPs

In Nokia’s Smart Move: Scalable Network Application Package, Matt picks up on a story I only kind of glanced at last week, and then didn’t have time to post a response to his thoughts before now on account of being busy. Here’s the gist of the story:

Los Angeles, California. May 12, 2004 – Nokia today premiered the first multiplayer Java games based on its SNAP Mobile solution at this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3).

At the slight risk of sounding like I’m showing off, Sega Mobile demonstrated some multiplayer Java games at E3 in 2003. That was before Nokia bought the SNAP technology, so we’ll let them off with that, I think ;-) However, although it’s cool that they’re finally doing something with this, I’m not as impressed as Matt is:

• Why don’t developers (maybe) get the API until Q3 2004? Surely that’s already fairly settled?
• Why is it available on MIDP2.0 on Series 60 only? They’ve been working on it long enough to have tried tunelling over HTTP, which seems to work fairly well on most of the handsets I’ve tried it on.
• It doesn’t really do anything new, and the other systems that do the same thing all work on MIDP1.0 handsets.
• It won’t work on N-Gage, which as I’ve previously reported, is reasonably popular for playing games on amongst the people who own one.

These points aside, Matt seems most excited by the business model Nokia have proposed:

It’s a perfect strategy too: a small mobile gaming startup creates a killer game. It includes some multiplayer aspects that require the Nokia server components. All of a sudden they’ve got to license the server side stuff directly from Nokia or make a deal with a carrier. Everyone is free to create a killer game, but if you need the server side stuff, Nokia’s going to be making a buck one way or another.

The first point is that even if a small mobile gaming startup comes up with a killer game, an operator won’t touch it unless it has a big massive brand attached to it (unlikely), it would most likely have to be done via an independent channel (of which there are none… so far). If said startup decided to do everything on its own, it would probably need some serious cash behind it to get the server side stuff (plus kit to run it properly), never mind actually promote it. Even if they go for the hosted setup, I doubt that is a cheap way out.

Nokia don’t note anywhere in the press release if they are actually reading my mind. Maybe there’ll be some announcements soon…

As an aside, Matt closes with:

Does anyone else smell an N-Gage 2 featuring S60 v2.0 and MIDP 2.0 coming in the next few months? I think I do. Jim at All About N-Gage thinks it might be a possibility too.

I believe I already told them to do that, specifically by focusing on the J2ME environment ;-) The MMC cards are a losing strategy.