Last we heard about Nokia’s Comes with Music service (CwM) was that it could be financially crippling. A rumor was circulating that customers would not be able to download more than 35 songs. After 35 songs, Espoo is expected to pay a wholesale per song rate to the record labels. This could mean disaster if the market is saturated with pro users. After the rumor was published, Nokia came back saying “Hold the phone! This is going to be the bomb and we’ll all be paid.” Well, sort of. They said that they “expect to make money both from [their] traditional device sales, as well as from the ‘Comes With Music’ service.” So the rumor wasn’t squashed so much as swept to the side.
Continue reading about Nokia’s CwM service
Square Enix, Music World, and SONY announced the development of “Destiny’s Child Groove,” the first mobile dance game featuring Destiny’s Child.
Continue reading ‘Square Enix, Music World and Sony to launch Destiny’s Child Groove’
Sony will not be using the help of Sony Ericsson to develop a PSP phone. Some are saying that the concept of developing a PSP phone will be relatively simple due to the fact that PSP already includes WiFi. Personally, I really hope they change the look of the PSP before they turn it into a phone. Otherwise we’ll be looking at another N-Gage and that is not cool. Other than that, a gaming phone with the capabilities of the PSP would be really great for the mobile gaming industry. We need to move beyond what even the BlackBerry can provide in terms of gaming.
[Via Engadget Mobile]
Sony was quoted at saying that they think the concept will make people “listen to more music than ever before.” Comes With Music will launch in the latter half of this year on certain Nokia models, and will tack the cost of music onto the price of the phone, giving consumers a year’s worth of access to completely free music. At the end of the year, they get to keep the music they’ve already downloaded and are given the option to sign up to a subscription service or simply buy songs individually. It’s a cool service, but I’m concerned about what kinds of DRM will be attached to the music, and what form it’ll come in. The chances that music companies — especially Sony — would be gung-ho about music without DRM is vanishingly small.
The team at mobileindustry.biz found out that PlayPhone has signed Sony onto their catalog. Sony-branded ringtones, voicetones, photos, and games will now be available through PlayPhone and their distribution networks like Wal-Mart Mobile, Cartoon Network and more. There are over 7,000 Sony tidbits available from the D2C company, so go nuts!
Sony has announced the release of a new iPod game called musika.
musika is a musical visualization game from NanaOn-Sha’s Masaya Matsuura, who created PaRappa the Rapper and is widely credited with creating the musical game genre. The game creates visuals for songs that play on the iPod. Players can simply enjoy the visualization of their music, or use some one-button gameplay by pressing the iPod’s center button in time with the letters of the song’s title. Gamers can advance to more difficult levels which use different type of imagery.
“The iPod is a device that revolutionized music and it is now poised to be a progressive gaming platform,” said Matsuura. “Many years ago Apple’s tools first opened my eyes to the power of music and multimedia, so it’s exciting to release my first game for this device.”
The game is available now for $4.99 on Apple’s iTunes.
Telcogames has announced that they have signed a deal with Sony to distribute 8 of the latter’s games.
The deal will see Telcogames distributing Sony titles across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. One of the main titles is Spider-man 3, based on the recent movie. Other titles include Wheel of Fortune, Ratchet & Clank Going Mobile, Monster House, Q*Bert, God of War and Snoop Dogg Cruisin.
“The Sony deal is an exciting new partnership that will allow us to populate Sony’s content across EMEA territories. There is a fantastic line up of games, which lend themselves perfectly to the mobile platform offering highly entertaining and state of the art gaming experiences,” said Jamie Conyngham, Telcogames CEO. “This deal with Sony underlines our commitment to distributing and marketing big-brands with sophisticated and addictive games.”
Sony Pictures Television has announced a number of new games for mobile phones, reports MobileIndustry.biz.
14 titles are scheduled for release in 2007, including God of War: Betrayal, Spider-Man 3, and Spider-Man Puzzle.
God of War: Betrayal, set after the events of the first God of War game on the PlayStation 2, tells the continuing story of Kratos as he tries to clear his name from accusations that he betrayed the Olympians.
Spider-Man 3 is a 2D side-scroller based on the movie, and Spider-Man Puzzle is a casual tile-matching game.
Sony Pictures Television and AT&T Wireless have announced a contest for players of the new Snoop Dogg Cruisin’ game.
To enter, AT&T Wireless subscribers simply buy Cruisin’. They will be given a URL and a promotion code. At the site, users can customize one of three cars and enter themselves in the contest for a chance to meet Snoop and his crew. Mr. Dogg himself will be judging the finalists and picking the winner.
Cruisin’ is a casual game that lets players customize their own lowrider, modifying the hydraulics, stereo, paint and more. The titles features four game modes–Height, Snoop Says, Freestyle, and Cruise–and three different L.A. neighborhoods, as well as single players, competition, and multiplayer modes.
The game is available on wireless carriers nationwide, however the contest is only open to AT&T Wireless subscribers.
Stuart Dredge of Pocketgamer discusses how publishers are now checking out Nokia’s N-Gage platform at a “secret workshop”. The N-Gage, which is a mobile telephone and handheld game system based on the Nokia Series 60 platform, is to be incorporated into “Smart Phones” from Nokia and released this year, and the article reports that “behind the scenes, activity is ramping up, following a top-secret workshop for publishers and developers, held in Santa Monica last week”.
Continue reading ‘Interest ramping up for N-Gage phones?’