Nokia’s recently-started N-Gage gaming service has started to pick up steam as biggies like EA announced their plans to provide games for the platform. Unfortunately, they (like Apple) have very little experience in the ESD (and, essentially, shareware) business…which sometimes leads to truly boneheaded decisions.
The latest example comes to us via AllAboutSymbian – according to them, customers can now transfer their purchased games when upgrading phones…but can do so only once.
While this may be better than the original agreement, it still leaves a lot to be desired. For example, customers with a stolen phone are still left in the rain – while this also happens when a Nintendo DS gets stolen along with a game module, the damage is more severe on the N-Gage handset, as the entire game library gets wiped out.
I think that a solution for this problem should be found ASAP: why not require customers to go to a police station and get a theft notice filed before porting the games? This would serve two masters: first, customers are motivated to the police; and secondarily, Nokia could lock affected IMEI numbers out of the N-Gage service.
Unfortunately, the question remains if Nokia actually wants to stop cell phone theft. Carriers and manufacturers alike benefit big from every cellphone stolen (it must be repurchased, but still counts as a sold device, thereby increasing market share) – this IMHO is why IMEI blacklists, etc have not proliferated so far…
What do you think?
Related posts: