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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."
...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
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?
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?
Forget Half-Life 2, will it run Doom 3?!?
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
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.