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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."
Does it run Linux? Or can we port it over? :)
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# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
...but how long until we see Half-Life 2 for it?
...another thing to distract people while they're driving.
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If the truth scares you, cease asking scary questions
As mentioned here, from IGN Wireless.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2003-08 -22&res=l
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
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!
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
I saw a N-GAGE at EBX this past weekend. It wasn't operable, but they did have some of the library for it. The Sega games made me look twice, but the rest of the library doesn't impress me any. Ahh well. I'd pay the $80 for the Neo Geo Pocket instead.
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.
Really? What if the consumer is a construction worker? Or a student?
Or imagine a scenario where they sell two N-Gages--it could be a judge and a construction worker!
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
...I suppose the important question is, does this model spontaneously burst into flames?
I think that this is just a bad implementation of a bad idea.
Inquiring minds want to know...
i am a soviet space shuttle
The gameboy owns the handheld world. It is nintendos domain.
Better specs have not won the fight. The Neo Geo Pocket, TurboGrafx Xpress, Sega Game Gear and Nomad, Lynx, Game.com.
Many have come, many have failed.
Playstation Portable sounds like it'll be the first handheld to give the gameboy line a run for it's money. But I'm not banking on that either.
Nintendo promised some amazing new revolutionary whizamajig for next year. A successor to the GBA? A successor to gamecube? Who knows...
But, my bet is a portable gamecube. This is purely speculation, but it makes sense. The miniDVD format for GCN games has always been a bit of an enigmah - until you think about a handheld device... You could squish a gamecube into something handheld for the price of an nGage..
Maybe I'm dreaming, but hot damn that'd rock. Even if it was a different console, but they had "hybrid" games, ie, one version plays on the gamecube, a "lighter" version for it's portable sibling..
Anyhow.
Woe be to all ye who enter Nintendo's sacred grounds.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Why no Slashdot articles about the GP32 and all the development efforts on that system?
I'm still a fan of convergence, even though i see it done badly so often. Kinda like horror movies. I can put up with a lot of Scream swquwls for one "Ring", and I can sit through a lot of MS Bob, NGage and fridges with net connections, for one good media and entertainment device that fits in my watch pocket and last several days on a charge.
remember listening to midi files over a 600 baud modem? in a decade (and a half) we have music studios under $1000 in our bedrooms, and we barely use them for more than websurfing...
Looks good for your age..
Having to dismantle the thing to replace the cards sounds super lame. Do you have to take the battery cover off a gameboy, remove the batteries, switch game, replace batteries, replace cover? No, because that would be retarded.
My Kyocera 7135 phone with built-in PalmOS has a nice side-loading SD slot, so what's the dilly-o with Nokia?
Those SD cards aren't just small and easy to lose, they break realllllly easily.
If they make it to nGage Advance, it'll have a handy side-loading slot, that autodetects the cartridge without powering off, just like my phone does now.
(Btw, this kyocera phone is a buggy pile of shit - it gets "fatal exceptions" when it rings and the battery cant last 24 hours in a stretch, lest anyone think I'm praising it)
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
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!
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 $750 what's the chances of it not stinking in atlest one (if not more) of these areas.
Oh, and I'm not buying the component reuse argument. A good PDA screen dosn't make a good Cell phone screen. Plus then all you get is a bunch of software emulated hardware function.. whoohoo
"Failure is not an option, it's part of the standard package"
it's not very easy to justify 300-400$ to a phone just for speaking, unless you just like shiny things.
fyi, you can get phones for much under that are perfect for 'just getting clystar clear sound', even in market areas where tying the phone and provider is illegal(that is, in finland for example). the 'crystal clear' sound hasn't been an issue for the last 5 years anymore(as long as the phone stays in one piece and doesn't break up), except of course in areas with poor gsm operators who don't think it's important to have good coverage throughout the nation(finland isn't exactly packed with population in the rural areas, but the phones work flawlessly). things like battery life(which you can't feel when buying the phone) and stylistic features and now real extra functionality have become the things to seperate yourself from the market.
the thing is.. it's also a s60 phone(and afaik, it's going to be the _cheapest_ s60 phone available, not sure on that though), allowing you to run symbian apps(c64 emulator, gbc emulator, read ebooks, read slashdot, wipe your ass, develop stuff for it with freely available tools, does your dishes, let's you get the latest news, use as a remote control for your pc through bluetooth, have bluetooth dongles at both work and home and use it as a data transferer.. it has pretty wide array of geeky uses), so it's not just a 'phone' anyways. it also has a memory slot for relatively cheap media(compared to sticks&etc) that's available too, easily in any pc store.
and as for why people buy cellphones.. they need to have it, it's no longer considered an option to have it, everybody has it and is pretty much expected to have one as well. when they get tired of the old phone(or if/when it breaks) they pretty much 'have' to get a new phone, some go for the looks, some go for the geek features, some go for the pop features and small size.
while i do agree(heck, i've heard that even nokias engineers agree) that it is retarded to have the mmc card under the battery(dunno, maybe the original design team thought that it would be only changed every once and then?).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
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
...going to Infogrames/Atari and asking them to license the Atari Lynx. So much time has gone by that the whole design chipwise could've been compressed into a single modern chip which would've cut the costs down significantly. They could've added the chip to several of their mobile phone offerings and then spent some money into beefing up the networked games for the Lynx so that they'd work over the mobile network to find other players to compete against. Say what you want but *Todd's Adventure in Slime World* was a great game when you were playing against 7 other players. The same goes for *Battlewheels,* *Warbirds* and several other titles. The problem with the Atari Lynx was, compared to the Gameboy, it was difficult finding other friends/acquaintances that owned them so you could benefit from the network gaming unless several members of a local Atari Computer Users Group also owned Lynxes (like S.T.A.R. here in Sacramento did). But with the compressed Lynx chip spread over the whole Nokia mobile phone product range, that would never be a problem.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
All games consoles, including handhelds are sold at a loss
Not necessairly true. Sony is making a profit on all the PS1's they sell now, and I believe they are also now making a profit on the PS2's.
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
"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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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
There's some key words missing from your statement: "top quality" and "well."
As in, "this is a top-quality gaming device that also does everything well that your phone does so you don't have to carry both."
Why are those words missing? Because it's not true. The convenience of one device matters not when the one device is vastly inferior to the other two. Classic 2D Sonic on a vertically-oriented screen? Insane. 3D Tomb Raider with no peripheral vision? Insane again. Look at that most-duplicated screenshot from N-Gage Tomb Raider. Think Lara's about to die because some stupid wolf ran at her from a side she (you) couldn't see? Yes!
Eventually someone will make an all-in-one device that doesn't suck. This is not it.
PS1 level graphics, maybe. TRS-80 level framerates, though.
Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.
Well, we call it "English", and it doesn't seem to be THAT crappy. Inconsistent and unclear at times, but that's mostly operator error.
Or was that William Tindall in the 1560's? It's so hard for me to keep them straight.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!