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Give The NGage And Phantom A Chance?
Thanks to GameSpy for their 'Sole Food editorial urging gamers to take another look at the NGage and Phantom games hardware. Regarding Nokia's NGage game/phone hybrid, the piece suggests: "Gamers should be excited by what Nokia is bringing to the table. Mobile multiplayer gaming via Bluetooth and GSM/GPRS is a wonderful idea and definitely the future of portable gaming." As for Infinium Labs' Phantom console, the author is cautious but optimistic: "I'm not advocating the Phantom, but I'm very much fascinated by what Infinium purports it will introduce to console gaming: digital distribution. This is definitely the way gamers will buy games in the future." Reason enough to think again?
The N-Gage has justifiably gotten shitty reviews for its crappy controls, crappy looking screen, the worst system for loading games ever, is overpriced, and is just generally lousy. So, no, I don't plan on giving it a second look. While bluetooth multiplayer and a few of its features are nice, I intend to wait for them to be implemented on a device that doesn't suck.
As for the Phantom... ummm... it's best feature is the fact that DNF is going to be a launch game.
Philip Sandifer's academic website
Gather round children, and let me tell you a little story about the Phillips CD-I, or the 3D0, or the Sega 32-X. You see, all of these were systems that consumers cried "foul" on long before they even hit the store shelves. Some unfortunate souls bought these, and for their dilligence they were rewarded with very expensive door stops.
New does not mean better, and when someone is trying to tell you their product can do everything from play every game ever made, all the way to cure cancer you are completely right in smelling a rat.
Innovation makes the world go round, but clearly these two products, the phantom and the N-Gage are not the light at the end of the tunnel. They are merely C.H.U.D.s with a flashlight trying to eat your wallet.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
These guys may have very innovative systems available, they may have the right idea about the future, but NOBODY is going to buy into that.
Content people, killer apps, sorry, games in this case, or no go...end of story.
Yes, there are games available for these systems, along the lines of the multiplayer games available on my cell phone. All crap. This level of content can't even sell phones, it's just extra 'fluff'.
Now, show me a phantom system that can play halflife loaded off of the install on my pc or something and we're starting to get somewhere...
No Comment.
I think the greatest advantage of the N-Gage is that it allows the games to be downloaded as well as to be distributed on a MMC. Other mobile gaming initiatives were download only - and the device could store only one game. And when you switched games, you had to pay the entire fee again.
I'm no developer, so another benefit could be that games for the N-Gage are basically J2ME games for a Series 60 device (I hope I understood that correctly on the developer site). It could run on other devices as well, although I'm not sure about additional functions the N-Gage has to offer.
Has anyone already created some code for it and is willing to share some insights?
My cats ate my karma. They also wrote this comment.
Sure they present decent ideas that will inevitably be accepted (see Dreamcast's failure, except for the introduction of new online gaming on the console), but they are a bit early on the draw, and they are presenting them in a problematic format.
Ngage for example: Sure wireless portable gaming is a great idea, and I would not be too surprised if it made it into the next-generation GBA (or the generation after next), but there are too many design flaws with the Ngage for it to actually succeed. See it's high price (if you're going to exclusively use it for gaming) and the difficulty in changing games (you have to remove the BATTERY?)
Phantom: It's the Xbox, except a little more problematic. It doesn't have much in the way of decent developers (thus far) and it is bound exclusively to contact online for a compulsory fee. You can't go EXCLUSIVELY online with ytour games. Gamers like to own their own games too, and not every gamer has online access.
In summary: Yes, they provide great new ideas, but they are simply implemented poorly by new entries into the arena that have a high chance of failure. But only time will tell if their prophesies will be true in the long run (and I wager they will be)
Let me give my wallet another look...nope, I don't see $300 there for a handheld system that has received lukewarm previews.
Let me give my sense of convenience another look...nope, I don't see me taking off a battery every time I want to change games.
Let me give my GBA another look...decent price, convenient...yep, everything I currently need in a handheld. With the light, looks good.
I think I'll go look at all the cheap used games in my local store while I'm looking.
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
1) Original Games
2) Quality of games (estimated of course)
3) Will have games that you like when you buy the hardware
4) Load Times (digital distribution seems the slowest, possibly apart from c-64 casette w/o turbo).
Never ever buy game hardware for playing games for any of the following reasons (especially if they are the ONLY reason)
1) Monthly plans
2) Method of selling you games
3) Also cleans your underpants
Let's see what are their launch titles... hum...
:)
Bikini Karate Babes.
Okay, that does it. You lost your one chance at credibility.
It's such a terrible system. I can't beleive anyone, especaily someone from GameSpy would have anything nice to say about it.
I don't care who makes the system or the games, if it's good, it's good.
But this thing is just terrible. From what I saw the graphics/sound were terrible. This thing was so slow. It looked like it's wasn't pushing more than 10 frames a seconds. It looked like a high tech flip book.
The game play on anysystem that slow has got to be terrible. It reminded me of playing Doom on a 25 Mhz 386.
Penny Arcade had something to say about people who Astroturf the ngage...
As for the Phantom...
To N-Gage I say fook oof. You taco shaped, overpriced (even for a cellphone, honestly where are you people buying your phones), battery removal requiring craptastic POS.
Trust Your Technolust
"But it's supposed to be for online game play!"
Then why are the few polished titles (Sonic, etc) still carts for it?
Why would it surprise you that GameSpy would have something nice to say about it?
GameSpy Editor: "Nokia just paid us money to write about how cool their system is. Who wants to write about it?"
GameSpy Writers: (all put heads down and look at floor).
GameSpy Editor: "OK... well, Raymond Padilla; since you're playing Britney's Dance Beat you clearly have the lowest standards... write something nice."
Farbeit for the Penny Arcade guys to spur a little investigative journalism, but read the post entitled "Oh, Right" from this page.
---- http://www.opedog.com/
I'd be willing to give the Phantom a chance, regardless of what Gabe and Tycho of PA fame have to say. But I'm still operating under the assumption that it's vaporware. If it's ever actually released, I'll try it out. Still, it's a great idea. A pre-configured, upgradable, HDTV-compatable game console? Great idea. Add in a DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive, or better yet, a DVD-RW/CD-RW, the ability to save TV shows to the hard drive (And make that drive big, fast, and upgradable) ala Tivo, or record live or already recorded video to DVD or (S)VCD (Hey, I watch a lot of anime fansubs, and burning them to an SVCD is cheaper than burning to DVD), the ability to network with PCs, and the best of the PC games out there, and you've got my money.
Despite millions of years of evolution, human beings, taken as a group, are still stupid, panicky animals.
Why nokia didn't at least try to licence the current gba technology? (maybe they did) But it all makes perfect sense when you stop and think about it. You have an established chipset that already had about 250 (am i right) games available. The quality of the graphics and sound are already accepted by the general public. Now they would have had to probably make their own interface, as in the shape of the shell, buttons, as well as adding the wireless support (easy) and there you go, a good phone (love nokias) and a good protable system, at a decent price. That's what really bugs me though, is that a company as large as Nokia would even think that it's going to sell at what they're charging...
Standards... then technology...
It's almost as if Nokia tossed Gamespot a little treat and their salivating editors all leapt for it at the same time. I've read way too many reviews from people who aren't on anyone's payroll that said this thing is a total piece of crap. Maybe if Nokia had purchased some better reviews earlier it could have saved them. I'm sorry, but Cool Tech + Shitty Implementation will never equal a sale for me. I'll wait until someone puts together a less hamfisted prototype. It's really funny how much EB/Gamestop is pushing this thing, too. I've had two register biscuits try to tell me how awesome the N-Gage is. My favorite part was when they told me the "battery problem" would be solved with an automatic software upgrade. That would be one hell of a trick. -etone-
Lets face it, the GP32 hasn't been a juggernaut in the handheld scene. hell, most of you haven't even heard of it. There's a difference between a good underrated system and one that's going to flop. gp32 (which probably has the same fate as the dreamcast) is a great system and is much better than the gba in most departments. But here in north america most people need a cheaper way to satisfy their handheld needs.
But since it is a much smaller sized company than Nokia it has the option of keeping it's system localized to avoid any loss that might be incurred.
Nokia doesn't have this option, with the huge design flaws and poor games the plan to mass produce and distribute to the millions of people in north america???? HA! i'm gunna count the days until nokia stops production of the n-gage
You know, I should be surprised by the tone this article takes, but somehow I'm not. More and more major game review sites are taking the corporate marketing juice and injecting it into articles. GameSpy's been teetering on the brink of corporate lapdog status for a while, looks like they're taking the final plunge.
As far as the article's content goes:
Don't be hatin'???
What is there to love here, exactly?
The article goes on to talk about the new concepts that these 2 systems are introducing, and I agree that these concepts are the up-and-coming as far as gaming goes (wide-area wireless, downloaded content). But they're not there yet. All too often gaming systems that are on the cutting edge of technology rely solely on new technology to sell the system, forgetting the minor details of good games and playability. Turbografx, 3DO, Jaguar, all with the latest technology when they came out, all now a brief burp in gaming history.
Also, just because these consoles have good innovations is NO REASON to buy the system. It IS a good reason to use this technology to make an system that's actually good. I believe the best thing to come out of this will be to break some ground for the next-gen systems to build on. But the systems themselves are likely to fall and fall hard.
On a side note, I'll believe the Phantom exists when I see a picture that's not CG.
"Not all who wander are lost" -- JRR Tolkien
Were it not a cellphone first and a gaming platform second. I've read the Nokia propoganda they send to the local video game chains. They expect people to come in, spend 450$ CDN on it, and then go home and play games that look marginally better than GBA games (note: GBA SP -- 150$ CDN) on a crappier button layout, while also required battery swapping to swap carts.
They expect that the bluetooth multiplayer and fact that you can upload your times in games via GPRS to their Nokia wireless service will be worth the 3x upfront cost. This is despite the obvious caveat that most cell plans with data transfer are stupidly expensive. The pamhplet says in bold, "User must have data transfer features on their cellular plan." I'm not paying an extra 10$ a month of cell fees for what I can spend half on (Xbox Live! centralized scoring and multiplayer) -- especially since an Xbox is only 250$ CDN. The extra 200$ I save not going with an N-Gage buys me Live! and a couple of games.
This mobile wireless niche Nokia wants to dominate doesn't exist. It won't exist for a few years yet, since GPRS and CPDP are still prohibitively expensive and unused by the general populace.
As for the Phantom -- only 1 company can be succesful on a the platform which is based around XP Embedded; Microsoft.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
It occurs to me that they're simply not willing to take the gamble that all other console makers do. They're trying to sell the hardware at a profit instead of a loss. Then when it fails and they discontinue it in six months or a year, they'll whine that "the market wasn't ready" - a thinly veiled attempt at blaming the public for their failure, when in reality it's their unwillingness to conform to the stardard console sales practice. If this thing was selling for $150 or $175 USD, it'd sell like hotcakes, but the people who have $450 to burn are too smart to pay that much.
Back in the 90s, Sega had a game download service with a special cartridge modem. It failed.
Voodoo Girl is the bomb!
What about that was flamebait? I played the thing for a bit at E3. It was clear the original poster hadnt. So I made a joke at the end? Thats flamebait?
And on top of that we already know the PSP will have wireless capability.
Now what exactly does the N-Gage offer that the PSP won't have at a lower price and, with the possible exception of the cell phone part, better quality?
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
I managed to get my hands on one at the n-gage stall in ETCS, when I stepped up to have a go on tomb raider the N-gage bloke's actually words were
"It has a lot of controls and its a bit difficult"
Nuff Said Really
While I usually lash out against the morons who mod down comments, I'd actually have to agree with the Flamebait mod. You sound like a Nokia drone, dude. "Playstation quality graphics"?? Give the slashbots a little more credit than that.
The thing is a steaming pile of crap. It hurts to play it...both physically and mentally.
The crew at my Gamestop will basically say "I'm not aloud to say anything bad about it *whisper* but this thing sucks." Maybe thats just because they know I know better, being a regular there and all.
I didn't double check the claims about N-Gage performance.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
"Blah blah blah give the hardware a chance."
No, I'll give games a chance. I don't give a crap what hardware it's running, or how cool it's wireless networking is supposed to be. Unless it's running games I want to play, I'll pass.
Of course, the fact that the Phantom is probably an elaborate hoax has nothing to do with it- at least I've seen (crappy) games on the Ngage.
skye
As much as I'd like the NGage to succeed (I develop mobile titles for a living) it simply won't. It's not a gaming platform, it's a funny looking, expensive phone that plays games. It has a lot of the right ingredients but the awkward, albeit high quality, screen coupled with a proprietary (read expensive) game cart tucked under the battery are just a few of the many annoyances. But, I hear you ask, what about low-cost Java gaming?! Well, J2ME on Nokia's Series 60, for most parts, is inferior to their low cost Series 40 devices. So we're just left with plain old Symbian stuff, which also runs on Nokia's other Series 60 devices, offering no real reason to stump up the cash for an NGage.
After about three months of relentless Willy action I reckon I'm now as good as when I was 10.
Gamers are enthusiasts. Sure, there are the fanboys that are predisposed to criticizing anything except for [insert random console or - gasp - operating system - here], but by and large gamers are interested in, well, games.
There are several products that fall right in the vein of the N-Gage and the Phantom that gamers never vehomently criticized. The late Indreama was received fairly well by both press and public. The Wonderswan remains a cult hit.
Gamers are generally excited about anything new.
But here's the thing. In regards to the N-gage, from the get-go Nokia has shown obliviously but inadvertantly flanted their ignorance of games, ranging from a website ripped straight from A&F, to outright insulting Nintendo. Moreover, the basic fundamental design of the portable reveals that it was not designed by anyone who had ever really played games, just looked at people playing games. The appearance of a Sony handheld on the horizon doesn't help either.
With the Phantom, what do you expect? It's called the *Phantom*. What's more, only one journalist claims to have actually seen it. It's pricey - $300 for the bottom of the line - and will be launching (snicker) at a time when the consoles will be no more than $100 a piece. Also, having an actual physical address and not swearing at story investigators over the phone might help.
Before we can take these newcomers seriously, they have to take us seriously. I think gamers are generally inclined to accept new things merely for the sake of novelty. Hell, look at how many gamers buy games on the first day before reviews even hit the web.
What does the N-gage have to do? Get more than rehash games. And dear god, fix that battery/cartridge issue. Stop advertising like you're mountain dew (for a good example, see Sony's ad campaigns)
The Phantom? Make a console and show it to more than one person.
How ironic that Gamespy just put up a dedicated NGage page a few weeks ago. Advertising dollars are whats important, not credibility as seen by this gamespy article. A few months before articles like these, the editors where probably making credible observations, not just an attempt to appease advertisers. I'm just bitter I guess, plus the N Gage adverts border on insulting.
First off, I think the N-Gage is dead. I've seen it, touched it and run screaming from it.
As far as the Phantom, that's some PR stunt. What's funny, is it's pretty damned good PR considering they keep us talking about it. Why do I get the feeling that just maybe, they've got nothing right now, but with all the buzz, they'll score enough investment cash to actually build it. I project a late 2004 release date for it, after they get some VC's who don't know gaming to jump in and save their bacon.
One thing I never hear mentioned in "vapor" discussions is the Helix, which seems like another "me too" console. Tapwave, yet another new company jumping into gaming, seems to think we'll fork over $300 (actually, they haven't given a final price) for a Palm with "enhanced gaming." Mind you, it's also supposed to use Bluetooth and other hot hot hot technologies. But as of yet, I've seen nothing but hype about it. Supposedly, it's the "bridge" between the GBA and a PDA. http://www.godoplay.com/tapwave.html
Yes, I said BACKPACK!.
Many Thanks,
Luke
when you want to join the parade, go buy a real instrument. armfarting isn't going to win you a grammy.
I dunno; Michael Bolton has a grammy...
Ok, i think the open source/Linux community has an interest in gaming, but lack the funds for hardware production which keeps console systems out of our reach... So my idea? create a framework, of APIs, opengl, etc. with a nice gracphical development enviroment to program a full blown game. These games wouldn't run on a console, necesarily, almost a virtual machine(similar to a java program). This console software could be put onto a linux desktop box and run as a program, or even have an option as a bootable drive, that makes the desktop act as a client(restart your computer, if you have a linux-console-cd inserted, it will boot to your linux console).
That way, in the future, some company can take this console software and build a custom console box that is tailored to run the games/virtual machine really well.
Note: this would turn into almost a very custom distro, with the goal of playing linux-console games very well, and developing the tools to make coding new games very easy...
Just a thought
Rule of thumb: Every "Mike" on slashdot is a tosser.
They doomed items of crap that you will find as rare and very expensive collectors items on eBay in about 20 years time.
The Nokia abomination will only be bought by fuckwits, and those with exceptionally rose tinted glasses.
The current range of Palm and PocketPC based devices, including hybrid 'smart phones', are already better than this device - they can clock up twice the frame rates at a higher resolution.
Nokia slagged of Gameboy Advance players as part of their marketing hype - who in the name of sweet Jebus on a bike are they trying to market to?
You know this, but I'm going to say it again:
YOU TAKE THE BATTERY OUT TO CHANGE GAMES.
THAT. IS. RETARDED.
As for the phantom, yeah big fuckoff PC's retagged as 'consoles' but with DRM, that's what the industry wants. Just look how successful the XBox i....oh, wait. I haven't played any games on my XBox in months, let alone bought any software for it. I was starting to wonder if they were still *making* software. I actually got so board of waiting for Midtown Madness 3 to come out (having really liked the first two) that I shelved the entire console, and was apathetic when it was released because after looking at all the damn movies and screen shots for 6 months I felt like I'd played the game already.
The XBox is a superb console, but it's struggling. And that's with Microsoft behind it, remember they are the marketing geniuses that manage to sell us second rate criminally overpriced software year after year, and they are still struggling in the console market despite clearly having the best hardware going.
I bought a new PC with a Radeon 9700 Pro recently because I couldn't find any new software I wanted to play for my XBox or GameCube. AFAICT, the ONLY console platform with new software being released is the Gameboy advance as far as I can tell (and most of them are tedious sequels - e.g. Advance Wars 2, or ports of older games, Final Fight, Street Fighter Super Ninja Mega Turbo Speed III Ultimate Movie Edition). There are quite a few good Japanese import GC title's around, but I gave my GameCube away a while ago following being devastated by the tedious pixel perfect tedious jumping filler experience that was the obviously rushed to market game known as 'Super Mario Sunshine'.
The Phantom doesn't have a hope in hell. It's going to lose someone a LOT of money, and you've have to be irresponsibly optimistic to think you could make it a success. You need a huge, vast, marketing campaign to convince a sceptical Playstation hugging public to part with their cash and you need really good games.
Phantom investors deserve to go completely bankcrupt and have their familes forced to live in garages, they been warned, I have no sympathy for their blinding greed.
...a great idea gone horribly wrong.
The major flaws that I see with it are:
1. Removing the battery to change games? WTF? Who was the idiot who thought of this? Maybe if the phone design doesn't allow otherwise, then they should spend a month on redesigning it because this alone is a major turnoff.
2. Small vertical screen. This screen layout works well for a cell phone but not for games. Hell, they're selling a Sonic game. That's the one where you run around with the blue hedgehog at wicked fast speeds - horizontally. A vertical screen doesn't make sense for this type of game, you simply can't see where you're going. A vertical shooter, maybe, but Sonic? No.
3. Price. Given nokia's trend in phone pricing, I'd expect the n-gage to be horribly expensive and way out of the price range of the average consumer. Why would they get an overpriced phone with a few crappy games, when they gan go get a GBA (if they don't already own one) with an already huge game library?
Nokia really need to get their act together because this is just going to be a horrible flop.
but the Phantom is vaporware of the first degree and anyone who doesn't realize that believes what they read way too often.