Nokia's Cellular GBA - The N-Gage

An anonymous reader writes "Hold on to your Game Boys, folks! It appears that the Finland cell phone manufacturer, Nokia, will be throwing in its lot in the handheld gaming industry with its N-Gage. Not only is this critter capable of playing games, but other noticeable features include a cell phone, radio, and MP3 player. Game companies such as Sega, Taito, and Eidos have already expressed support for it."

Comments

My two biggest concerns...

[CommandNotFound]

...are price, and battery life. Neither of which were addressed on this web page. If it's $200 and lasts three hours on a battery charge, then we've probably got another Lynx. (is that what is was called? There were a couple of those deluxe handhelds out in the early 90's)

The GameBoy has survived because it's cheap and the battery life lasts forever (well, an impressively long time, at least). That, and the Mario/Zelda/Pokemon franchises.

I was lucky enough to have a play with one

[rcs1000]

I got to see one last Friday when the nice boys from Eidos came to my office, and I can say it is a lot more impressive than the GBA.

Height- and width-wise, it's about the same, but it feels a lot slimmer, which was a surprise to me as I'd been expecting something like Nokia's ill-fated 5510. It also seemed pretty light.

It also has a very nice high-res back-lit screen. It sure blew my GBA away.

Now, this doesn't mean it'll win the handheld console war. There is the question of price: can it compete with a $100 GBA? And then there are game; Eidos, THQ, Sega and Activision are (reasonably) big names, but they are not Nintendo.

That said, it will be useful indeed to see the Big N get some competition.