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The Seven Deadly Sins Of The N-Gage
Decaffeinated Jedi writes "GameSpy has posted an interesting article examining the so-called Seven Deadly Sins of the N-Gage. The 'sins' of Nokia's mobile phone/portable gaming unit cited in the article include problems with inserting and removing games, the less-than-intuitive interface, and the relatively high price. In all fairness, however, GameSpy also looked at the Seven Virtues of the N-Gage in an editorial from December 2003."
There wasn't really any reason for this article to be written. All of these things have been said too many times before. At this point, the N-Gage is effectively irrelevent and no one really needs to bother writing anything about it unless the situation changes. The same can be said of the PSP.
Perhaps they should give people a chance to find out more about the Tapwave Zodiac by writing more articles about it. They might even find a flaw in its design that can be made into another tired joke!
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
No, seriously. Do they have articles that aren't divided up into lists? Seven Deadly Sins Of The N-Gage, Ten Portables That Aren't The Game Boy, 50 Games That We're Really Sorry We Gave Huge-Ass Review Scores To... Do their advertisers force them to do this or something?
The arthor really had to strech to come up with seven complaints about the N-Gage. 1. Second-Hand library - a fair wrap
2. Bad screen orientation - a fair wrap
3. Game change chaos - fair, but it will be fixed in the next N-Gage model this year
4. Talking Taco - now this is a strech - does this really bother people?
5. Pricey - It's pricey compared to a GBA, but about right for a a Symbian phone. Remember, it does more than play games.
6. Not A Pretty (Inter)face - Another bad argument. If you are not used to any kind of UI, you are not going to like it at first. The UI is consistent with other Series 60 phones from Nokia and other vendors
7. N-Gage vs. Goliath - It's fair to compare the N-Gage to the GBA, except the comparision is just a rehash of argument #1. But the PSP is vaporware. And the Zodiac? Please.
Overpriced? For a super featured phone, it's cheap. Getting a carrier unlocked triband GSM phone with the Nokia series 60 platform, full-on GPRS support, bluetooth, and expandable memory is going to cost a whole lot more than the current $259 CDN retail on the N-Gage. We're talking around the $1,000CDN for an unlocked P900.
:p
No phone I can get for 220$ CDN does MP3, AAC, MIDI, WAV, etc, playback that also does movies. It also has an FM radio which I can record from. It's also got support for all the whizzy ringers (the aforementioned MP3, MIDI, etc support) and a big, colour screen.
The NES, NeoGeoPocket Color, and GameBoy emulators for it are the icing on the cake. I own a lot of NES and GB/GBC games, and a lot of them fit on a 128mb MMC card. I don't have to change those games all the time
Let's review. The N-Gage is not a gaming deck, but it is a great phone which does a whole bunch of whiz-bang over the 200$ 6310i my provider was offering me for another 2 year renewal (which has bluetooth, but is not colour, no MMC support, etc, etc, etc). And I can use my N-Gage in Japan and Europe on their GSM networks with local SIM cards.
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The fact that most of the Ngage's library were ported PS1 games is something of a weakness. Why? Many gamers have PS1s, and have played the most popular games on that platform. Why would they want to replay those games on their portable system? While there is a decent market for ports of older games (look at Nintendo's success with the ports of the NES and SNES Mario games on the GBA), it is a Bad Idea to offer nothing but old games on your new system.
As for the price argument, it's a lot harder for most people to justify a $300 purchase to themselves (or their SO) than it is to justify two $150 purchases (which would get you a GBA SP and a couple games, and a nice mobile phone). Stupid, maybe, but it was also stupid for Nokia to not take note of this. If I were in charge of selling the Ngage, I would either bring the price point down, or market it exclusively as a gaming device and remove the phone capabilities entirely. The gaming community still hasn't gotten over the "$300, OMG that's so expensive!" attitude about the Ngage. I doubt they will for a long time to come.
The sidetalking/bizarre Frisbee accident thing? BAD IDEA when you're trying to sell this as the phone/game system of choice for the "hip" kids. Nobody wants to feel like an idiot after they spent a lot of money on a new phone or game system. I would think that a design like the 6800 model would have been more attractive (and would have gotten rid of the weird vertical-letterbox screen as well). Even if that's too expensive, there are plenty of other options, too. It wouldn't be too hard to simply put the mic and speaker on the top of the phone, like pretty much every other phone since Alexander Grahm Bell invented the damned thing.
Finally, requiring people to remove the battery to change games was another really bad idea. Even if the system does need to be off (unlike most devices using the SD/MMC card format), it could use a physical interlock like the old Game Boy (just a little plastic tab connected to the power switch that holds the game in).
The Ngage ultimatly seems like a system designed by Marketing and sold by Engineering - while there are a few good features, they're encumbered by weird and pointless design decisions.
That's it. I'm no longer part of Team Sanity.
I have been following N-Gage development and marketing very closely. I am living in Oulu, Finland, which is one of the fortresses of Nokia. Here Nokia employs around 4000 people. Nokia has 80% cellular market share in Finland. The Finns have similiar relationship with Nokia like Czech people have with their Skodas. They take it almost personally.
Nokia's way to handle N-Gage has been a big disappointment for me. Here are my opinions why Nokia failed in the points listed by Gamespy and some additional views for the case.
Sin #1: Second-Hand Library
Nokia marketing team has pushed hard to make N-Gage attractive platform. However, the game companies haven't accepted N-Gage. I have made some N-Gage programming myself and I have heard various stories about N-Gage development. Developing for N-Gage is painful because of technical problems. For example, the sound server is descripted as a "hack" over Series 60 user interface. The sound server cannot play sounds seamlessly and simultaneously. Game companies don't believe to the success of N-Gage and have doomed it because of its technical problems. Thus game companies avoid N-Gage projects.
There is no special hardware in N-Gage (same hw as in 3650, etc.). Direct hardware manipulation like in GBA is not possible due to Symbian OS layer. OS and mobile phone fuctions gulp some of the precious CPU cycles. The 100 MHz of N-Gage is not effective 100 MHz for a game engine.
Sin #2: Screen Scream
As a cellular phone N-Gage uses the Series 60 user interface which is designed for a 176 x 200 screen. Nokia didn't want to make a new user interface layout for N-Gage and chose the same traditional cellular screen as in other Nokia phones (3650, 7650). Maybe they thought saving some developing time taking this shortcut. This greatly decreases gaming experience, although N-Gage is marketed as a "game deck". Techical design and product strategy don't meet.
Sin #3: Game-Change Chaos
Symbian and Series 60 wasn't designed for hot pluggable MMC cards. Nokia made it impossible to hot swap MMC to avoid accidental data loss and OS redesign. This was a shortcut in the development. Again, this is against enjoyable playing on the "game deck" marketing strategy.
Sin #4: Talking Taco
Yes, it looks a very funny. I am personally a N-Gage owner. I have heard a lot of comments about side talking from my friends. In my opinion, this isn't a such big deal. Mobile phones creep toward PDAs and screens begin to cover the whole flat side of phone. There is no more a traditional place for a microphone. More and more phones will have a microphone placed as in N-Gage. I believe Nokia "multimedia terminal" (7700?) has this layout too. Side talking loses its weirdness like talking into a mobile phone in public did in the first place.
Sin #5: Pricey Platform
It's a expensive gaming deck, but a cheap modern cellular phone. A mobile phone has naturally more technology packed into it than a plain game boy, making it more expensive. Nokia could have directed its marketing more to "cellular/gaming deck" from pure "gaming deck". Customers should understand the additional value of mobile phone features.
Sin #6: Not A Pretty (Inter)face
Nokia has been famous for its easy menu driven user interfaces originally introduced by 3110. This is one of the major success keys of Nokia. Pity, but when Nokia kept adding more stuff into their phones they lost clue on this matter. When phones have more features they need more menus and icons. Nokia didn't found a good solution manage all this in Series 60 phones. Series 40 (6550, 8xxx & co) have succeeded better, because they have monolithic software. Series 40 has less flexibility making it easier to make "obvious" user interfaces.
Sin #7: N-Gage vs. Goliath
I just read the SNK history article of GameSpot. In Neo Geo Pocket section GameSpot stated that no one has succeeded against Game Boy. Nintendo has very famous licences (Mario) and knows how to make good games