“Casual location” Nokia gaming coming to life soon

GLOBAL – Recently we were lucky enough to grab a quick chat with Mark Ollila, Director of X-Media Solutions at Nokia. An intriguing job title, indeed, backed up by an exciting role. See, Mark is responsible for running a worldwide team focused on creating new cross-media services, cross-media games (including N-Gage) and evolution of current services such as Ovi Share (whilst juggling and balancing plates on his head). Certainly, no small task. We spoke to him briefly at NW09 about the hot topic of location-based gaming and he gave us a better idea of when we can expect what he calls “casual location” games to leap out of the conceptual arena and spring to life.

GLOBAL – The concept of ’social location gaming’ is reasonably simple, but this innovative twist to more traditional mobile gaming engagement promises to change the way we play games on the move and how we behave socially through mobile play. It’s an exciting area of development, and one that Nokia is keenly immersed in evolving. Nokia’s Director of Games, Jaako Kaidesoja, has written an interesting essay all about it, simply entitled ‘Location, location, location’. Earlier today I began picking out the highlights to run in this piece, but quickly realized that the it’s much better enjoyed in its entirety – there’s so much interesting stuff in there, it’d be a crime to put it under the editor’s knife.

His article addresses the ’social location’ buzzword and asks the questions of what it actually means for mobile games and the industry? Read on for the full-length essay on social location gaming from Nokia’s Director of Games.
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Ngage and the N97

BARCELONA, Spain – The N97 is the going to be the next big Ngage device, so we caught up with Jaako Kaidesoja, vice president of Ngage, to find out what we might expect when it launches. Widescreen games is the first thing, with current and future games getting the full widescreen treatment. Touch, and tilt based gaming is also on the cards. All sounds pretty exciting – full video after the jump.