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Hands-On With The Nokia N-Gage
CokoBWare writes "Finally! Gamesindustry.biz has done a hands-on review of the Nokia N-Gage cellphone/games machine. The results don't impress the judges much, but I suppose the consumer will ultimately be the judge."
...but how long until we see Half-Life 2 for it?
In order to put a game into the system, you have to: turn the phone off, take the back cover off, remove the battery, slide out the existing game, put the new one in, put the battery back in, replace the back cover, hold down the power button for several seconds, wait for the system to boot up, open the main menu, select the game, open it... And then your game starts loading.
.02
Ok, so the thing LOOKS cool but is it functional. Apparently not. Who the hell wants to fumble around with removing a battery, sliding out an old cartridge, sliding in a new cartridge, and then replacing the cover?
The wait issue is of no relevance to me, who cares, what I care about is having to hold thirty things in my hands while I fumble around trying to switch games.
In this day and age, and all the devices that have come out (especially handheld gaming units) why would ANYONE think that this design would be acceptable?
Just my worthless
This is pure opinion, but I am certain that the Ncage will fail.
Thing is, most people buy cellphones for the purpose of staying in touch. The games are just a feature. It's much easier to justify $300-400 for a great phone which will provide crystal clear sound etc than for a very expesnive gameboy.
I just don't see myself or any 'adult' wanting an ncage. Sure the "adults" may play games on their PDAs and cellphones, but they didn't buy them for that purpose. The people who buy ncage will be doing so purley to play games, I don't see the gamer market being crazed about cellphones. The kids on the other hand would proably rather have a GBA nor would they have the money for an ncage.
In Soviet Russia, the television watches YOU!
More so than a gameboy does now?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
solution: buy a game boy advance and a cell phone.
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
I'm not banking on it. Why?
The phone companies in the US will try to provision it to death, like they do everything else, which knocks it out here. But that's just the start.
You are knocking out a lot of the prospective audience by making it a games device first and a phone second. You can get away with having your employer buy a phone with games, as long as it doesn't look like a GBA. You can get away with buying a PDA and putting games on it because it still looks businesslike. This screams "I'm playing games". Older folk aren't going to go for it, which leaves the younger folk, who aren't necessarily going to have enough cash.
It also doesn't bring any cool network functionality to the table. All of the games are just that... games. I might as well get a GBA and a phone. No MMORPGs. You have to use cartrages and they are a pain in the rear to install, instead of just letting you download stuff.
Of course, they may make the v2.0 or v3.0 version actually good.
Gentoo Sucks
Sorry... dont mean to cater to the trendy aspects of soceity, but wouldnt you feel like an idiot talking into this thing in a crowded room? You gotta admit, for a good chunk of people ( the majority? ), a cellphone isnt just a tool, its also a piece of fashion. Why do you think they sell custom vanity face plates, or branded ( Gap, Roots, etc... ) cell phones. This one though... hell, im a geek and it still screams geek to me !!! :)
Not to mention that fact that you have to remove the battery to put the games in?!?!?! Um.......... how the hell did that idea make it out of engineering. That one design failure alone, leads me to believe that Nokia isnt that serious about entering the gaming market... either that, or the are just not meant to be there!
what makes them think that the combination cell phone/game machine is what people will want? I think that there are two seperate markets that they are failing to recognize. Are they trying to sell it as a cell phone that plays good games or a game machine that is also a cell phone. If it is the latter, then it is doomed to failure real gamers are going to be more concerned about functionality as a game playing machine only. In that regard, it doesn't appear to be ready to compete with the new backlit, rechargeable battery gameboy advances.
Frankly, that research sounds like bullshit to me.
I have never had three people run me off the road in two minutes playing with the radio.
I never have to wait on an asshole at a green light because they are putting in a CD.
Phones are more distracting. People wave their arms and go to their special place on the phone.
Its a shame they didn't pay attention to detail. The problems outlined by the article will definitely steer me clear of the system all together. A horrible UI, pain in the ass to change games, can't listen to the MP3 player at the same time as playing the games, etc.
I disabled all of the extra features on my cell phone because they weren't worth the extra $ every month. I tried to buy tickets for a movie once on it and when I went to pick them up they handed me 3 pair of tickets when I only ordered one! The UI for the browser would bring me pack to the confirm page each time I opened it - I decided then that the service was not ready for prime time.
I come from the school of "design the device/application to do its primary job right and do it well". If your going to try and sell me on half assed features, then I'm not buying. My phone handles phonecalls well and thats why I bought it. The NGage looks uncomfortable as a phone, and falls short on everything else.
Sound waves should be free!
Maybe your uncited research shows this, but my observations have been that people drive worse when on mobile phones. Not that they were driving all that great to begin with, but whenever someone is going extremely slow or making idiotic, erratic, and dangerous lane changes 9 times out of 10 they are on a mobile phone.
Am I the only one that dosn't want to make calls, store my calander, play games, listen to MP3's, email, IM, Text Message, all on the same device. What if I deside I want a better game player, what do I do with the rest.
Not to mention a GOOD mp3 player is $200, good portable game system is $100, PDA: $250, Cell Phone: $200. So unless this thing cost $750 what's the chances of it not stinking in atlest one (if not more) of these areas.
Oh, and I'm not buying the component reuse argument. A good PDA screen dosn't make a good Cell phone screen. Plus then all you get is a bunch of software emulated hardware function.. whoohoo
"Failure is not an option, it's part of the standard package"
A Gameboy Advance SP is $100. If the N-Gage were, say, $150, THEN I think they'd have something. But for $300, it has to be both a great phone, and a great gaming system, and its only target market is those people who were thinking about buying both a Gameboy and a cell phone at the same time.
At a price point around $150, it would only need to do ONE thing well, and the other integrated feature would merely have to justify the additional $50 or so.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
1) Size ...we were still struck by the size of the device ... . It looks and feels like an Game Boy Advance on a diet, and although it's large by modern mobile phone standards, it fits comfortably in an average trouser pocket and is light enough to carry around comfortably.
2) Backlight N-Gage, by comparison, has superb resolution, a consistently bright display and excellent colour contrast.
3) Graphics Processing ...we do wonder why Nokia chose not to put something like ATI's mobile 3D graphics chip into the N-Gage ... The inclusion of a dedicated 3D chip would also have eliminated the framerate problems which plagued a number of the games we tested on the unit...
4) Battery Life ...and I'd be a bit worried about the battery life too - my current phone lasts for days without a charge, but this one seems to run down pretty fast when you're playing games on it."
Those are retty critical design tradeoffs in embedded systems. Also the headache symptoms in the review may be due to the LCD clock and the backlight pulse width modulation frequency being out of sync. This is known to cause eye strain in optical designs.
Holland
"I never have to wait on an asshole at a green light because they are putting in a CD."
I'd prefer that a person return to the full upright position with both hands on the wheel, even if I wait a second or two at a green light, rather than have them speed off into traffic partially hunched over and with only one hand on the wheel.
Most drivers are lax in their attention while on the road, and it's very dangerous. Any time you do not have both hands on the wheel and are not scanning is a time when an accident is going to happen. You only have 400ms to react, and the time it takes to process + understand something is usually around 200ms -- assuming you're giving 3 seconds following distance.
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