Who will win one of the most prestigious mobile gaming prizes of 2008?

Nokia has announced the top 10 developers of its Mobile Games Innovation Challenge. The winners, to be announced at an exclusive awards ceremony later this month, will take home a total prize value of 70,000 EUR. The three most innovative game concepts will be offered Nokia Publishing pre-production contracts. In addition, the first winner will be awarded 40,000 EUR, the second 20,000 EUR, and the third 10,000 EUR to enable further development of the chosen concept.

An independent panel of industry experts from across the globe has spent the past few weeks deliberating over hundreds of entries to come up with a shortlist of the most innovative mobile games concepts. Entries were judged on game innovation, fun, feasibility of execution, and market potential. The top three developers who best meet these requirements will be invited to present their concepts at the upcoming Nokia Games Summit in Rome, Italy on October 29, 2008.

Top 10 developers and their concepts:

• Active Tecnologia e Consultoria Ltda. (Brazil) with Cinemarena – set in a movie theatre, controlling avatars on the big screen
• CreatePlayShare (India) with Ball – play any ball game on your mobile or even create your own new game
• Different Game (Sweden) with Ghost Wire – use your mobile device to communicate with ghosts
• Eclipse Interactive (UK) with Watchers – conspiracy adventure game that uses Nokia Maps and other real world tools to find locations
• Int13 (France) with Kweekies – augmented reality virtual pet game
• Jadestone (Sweden) and C4M (France) with Melokey – a music game for mobile devices where you learn to master songs and play them against other in-game characters to win the hearts of your fans
• LemonQuest (Spain) with Wave Pirates – turn into a pirate navigating the seven seas, looking for gold and glory
• Onur Yazilim (Turkey) with Comet Hunter – a 2-D shooting game which combines the excitement of shooting with natural sound effects made by players themselves
• Simlife (China) with XDancery – a music game where players can touch the screen, draw patterns on screen, shake the device or sing into it to hit the music tempo notes
• TechnoBubble (Spain) with Fun Cam – a mixed reality game that connects your camera on your mobile device to the TV

"The Mobile Games Innovation Challenge has demonstrated the huge potential of this industry on a global level, and the innovation that can be applied to mobile games," said Dr Mark Ollila, director of games publishing, Nokia. "We've seen some groundbreaking ideas and some really unique concepts. It just goes to show how many creative minds there are out there and it really looks like we're going to set out what we wanted to achieve with this Challenge — to rock the industry. Everyone's now talking about the awards ceremony and we're looking forward to an exciting outcome."