Interview: Nokia’s Head of Games Global Sales, Antoine Doumenc

Games Industry has a brief one on one with Antoine and from the first question and answer you can easily see how hard Nokia (NYSE: NOK) is trying to make N-Gage work:

GamesIndustry.biz: Can you begin by telling us a little more about the thinking behind third-party and first-party publishing on the new N-Gage platform?

Antoine Doumenc: The fundamental thing is that we’re definitely a device manufacturer. Nokia was one of the first companies to put Java into mobile phones and we invented customisable ringtones, so we’re a company that is about developing a market not just for our business but for other businesses too. The way we look at the mobile gaming business is that for Nokia it’s not just a focus on pure hardware. We need to allow the ecosystems around these developments to grow. That’s the philosophy behind everything we do.

A mobile phone has no value as a piece of hardware if you can’t put great content on it. Our focus is on helping the third-party publishers make the best games they can. We have to allow them to leverage the device as much as possible. If they are successful we are successful.

In terms of our first-party publishing, it’s about pushing the envelope and showing what’s possible with the technology.

Hat Tip: All About Symbian

I’m just going to pull a Jerry Maguire and say "show me the games!"