Tech Shout!

Nokia has announced the winners of the Nokia and SingTel Multiplayer Game Quest 2006, the multiplayer Java game development contest organized by Forum Nokia.

Nokia and SingTel Multiplayer Game Quest was launched in June 2006, the winners and runners-up get opportunities to offer their mobile games for commercial distribution with SingTel and its regional partners, to more than 112 million subscribers in the Asia Pacific region.

G-mode from Japan, Mauj from India, and Taito from Japan took the top prize in the cross platform gaming, multiplayer gaming for the male segment and multiplayer gaming for the female segment categories. They won in excess of US$5,000 each in cash and prizes.

Runners-up in the categories were Hungama Mobile from India, Activate from Singapore and 01 bit-side from Germany, winning more than US$2,500 each in cash and prizes. *

All of the games developed in the Nokia and SingTel Multiplayer Game Quest 2006 are running on Nokia Series 40 and S60 devices.

“We are pleased that the recent Nokia and SingTel Multiplayer Game Quest 2006 has brought the creation of multiplayer games to new levels and allowed fresh talent to showcase their skills. This collaboration with Nokia paves the way for SingTel to further leverage on our regional customer base for mobile content distribution and mobile commerce. We would like to congratulate the winners and look forward to bringing the games that they have developed to our local and regional subscribers.” said, Mr Philip Wu, SingTel’s Director of Content Acquisition and Marketing.

“The SNAP Mobile platform, which made it so simple for developers to enable Multiplayer mode, has provided SingTel with an efficient and convenient solution by which to offer these exciting online multiplayer games to our customers.”

Regional Director for Forum Nokia in the Asia Pacific region, Mr Shankar Meembat, also praised the participants for their hard work and winning entries, thereby making the joint initiative with SingTel a successful one. The entries were judged on their creativity, attractiveness and entertainment value, quality, playability and user interface.

“Through Forum Nokia PRO, we give operators the ability to reach out to the best developers of mobile applications around the world, hence expanding their revenue opportunities through downloads. The games that were created by the contestants of the Nokia and SingTel Multiplayer Game Quest 2006 - when offered to consumers - are sure to provide the large masses of Nokia mobile device users in Asia Pacific with hours of multiplayer-gaming fun,” he said.

The Nokia and SingTel Multiplayer Game Quest 2006 was run on SNAP Mobile, Nokia’s end-to-end solution for developing connected Java mobile games.

SNAP Mobile head, Antoine Doumenc said, “Using the connected multiplayer features embedded in the SNAP Mobile platform, publishers and developers participating in the competition have been able to create some exciting new games that push the Java envelope.”

He added “They range from arcade games with online features that enhance the playing experience, to exciting sports games with realistic head-to-head action.”