Slashdot Mirror
Nokia's N-Gage Officially Launches
Thanks to Reuters for their article summarizing the "mixed response" to today's launch of Nokia's N-Gage 'mobile game deck'/phone hybrid. According to the piece, "The Finnish firm said it aims to sell between six and nine million units between now and the end of 2004 as it seeks to break the grip on a market dominated by Nintendo's GameBoy", but many are less convinced, with CNN Money suggesting "N-Gage might sound great on paper, but it's a disaster in execution", an earlier San Jose Mercury News piece criticizing the N-Gage as "...a hopeless muddle - lacking in quality games, too confusing in regards to service plans, too expensive and crippled by a series of stunningly bad design decisions", and GameSpy advocating a "wait and see" approach, although they also have the inevitable contrarian view.
For Pete's sake, GameSpy's been pumping this as the Second Coming for a while now. They even have a section dedicated to the N-Gage--putting it on the same level as PCs and the various consoles!
That's the first article from them that I've heard that questions the feasibility of the N-Gage. I was beginning to think that Nokia offered them some lucrative package in return for pimping their product.
(Don't get me wrong--I like GameSpy. I just wanted to speak out against the injustice.)
This is the real signature
(Beats those shadows on the cave wall, don't it?)
The apparent design flaws are, for the most part, inexcusable. God knows what posessed Nokia to use a vertical screen - I can't recall seeing any games, with the exception of arcade games, run on a vertically-aligned screen. Having to hold the phone's narrow edge to your head to talk is reason enough to ignore the phone function. Beyond that, that orientation means finger prints galore on the screen. And having to take the battery out to change games...that was just a horrible idea.
Nokia is also missing quality games. While the games they've remade or ported are good ones, I haven't heard anything about N-Gage games beyond the launch titles.
The N-Gage has nothing going for it and will probably fail very early on. Better luck next time, Nokia.
Goo goo g'joob.
you got any idea how many phones are sold yearly?(400-500million or so) ngage isn't badly priced, it's the cheapest series60 phone. it could easily sell millions, even without the games at all!
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
To sum up (paraphrasing) the atmosphere about it at EB (the only gaming store in the city):
'The N-Gage is coming in early, but we won't sell it before the street date because we'd get sued. We won't sell it after the street date either though, because then we'd get lynched.'
'The marketing and games for the N-Gage are right here, just so you know.'
'Yeah, in case anyone wants to buy one.'
*both laugh*
(Customer) 'What the heck is that thing?'
'That's the Nokia N-Gage. It's a game system, and a cell phone and- screw it, I don't care either.'
In short: No one knows, and no one cares. The local EB has a quota to fill: 24. Think about this. The only thing it has going for it is that you can play against other people. Except that even EB's district office only expects to sell one to every two thousand people. The store's expectations are different, however:
'Man, I can't believe we have to sell 24 N-Gages. We're not going to sell a single one.'
'That's not true, we'll sell one eventually.'
In other words, the (unnamed) employees know that it's not going to happen, and don't honestly care. I played with one (not the games, just the batteryless machine) at EB, and it was neat, and might make for a good 2D game system - but NOT a 3D system, and NOT a cellphone, and NOT a notebook, and NOT an MP3 player, and NOT for $450.
--Dan