N-Gage 2 Announced

Team Rocket Elite writes "According to Gamesindustry.biz Nokia's at it again. They plan to make it more like a normal phone and to fix the issues with changing games and using it as a phone. From the article: 'Nokia is planning a major press event on April 14, which will probably feature the first look at the new device.'"

Comments

A resounding "meh"

[Naffer]

Sure, a phone that plays video games is a nice idea, but it probably doesn't work all that well in practice. I've got a flip phone that I've had for just about a year. I've dropped it, scratched it, and subjected it to all manner of abuse. It sits in my pocket and gets slammed into walls and sat on. I don't carry my GBA everywhere because I don't need it everywhere.
In all honestly if I'm going to carry around an expensive phone with extra features, I'd rather have a phone with a really kick-ass internet browser. I'd love to be able to look stuff up when I'm on the go without having to screw around with mobile sites. WAP doesn't do anything for me.

Re:A resounding "meh"

[obeythefist]

I've got a 3G smartphone, a Motorola A920. The phone is great. I've installed java games, I use Opera to read books in HTML, I keep a few MP3's to listen to, I can take photos and pretty much anything else you might want to do. The only thing missing is a TV tuner.

The reason I got a smartphone instead of a PDA is that I carry my phone around everywhere, always. It makes sense to. It doesn't make sense to try and juggle a PDA and a phone and a gameboy and a camera around. So games might be better/easier on the dedicated hardware of a gameboy, but I guarantee if I owned both, the games on my phone would get much more playtime, because I have it with me, always. This is why eventually Nokia have a good chance of succeeding.

Likewise, in case you think web browsing on a phone is cool, I have to tell you it is. But 3 charges me 1c/kb downloaded. So it's absolutely prohibitive to even bother despite the fact that I'm carrying Opera in my pocket. Maybe in the future web browsing will happen. The technology is there, but there's more greed than need.

Re:A resounding "meh"

[StocDred]

This is why eventually Nokia have a good chance of succeeding.

Until Nokia gets games of the same length, quality and polish, they have no chance of succeeding. Just because you're willing to settle, don't assume everyone else will.

But 3 charges me 1c/kb downloaded.

Hiptop. $20/month for unlimited kb (plus all other data services, IM, email, Terminal), and the web browser actually works and looks like a computer screen.

Giving It A Chance

[BigDork1001]

I felt like washing my hands after trying the first N-Gage, I felt so dirty after touching such a piece of crap. But I am not gonna just curse this one to the rubbish pile because of N-Gage 1. Perhaps Nokia will learn from the long list of mistakes it made with N-Gage and actually produce a quality machine. Lets not judge until we actually see the thing

Re:This soon?

[wibs]

I bet there are many out there who starts thinking "Damn, and I who just bought N-Gage 1..."

Nobody bought an N-Gage.

Shouldn't be too hard to fix

[Sentry21]

The N-gage (version 1) was a neat idea, but there were a few flaws. It was a game machine, a cellphone, and an MP3 player, but the cellphone aspect had some flaws. And the game aspect had some flaws. And you know what, the MP3 player aspect may have had some flaws, because I couldn't figure out how you'd get the damn things on there ('It can play MP3s? Really? How do you download them onto it?' 'I haven't got the foggiest idea.')

The N-Gage 2 needs a few things to wsucceed where its predecessor failed so spectacularly. It needs to change games easier. It needs to be simpler to control where possible (using a numpad to control is less than intuitive, so the manual is a necessity). It needs to not look stupid as a phone. Finally, it doesn't need, but should certainly have, hardware 3D acceleration. Keeping in mind we're dealing with basically PS1 ports, it shouldn't be that hard to make a tiny chip to do this, considering how light-years ahead of the PS2 3D acceleration has leaped.

Here's hoping.

--Dan

If Nokia was smart they'd partner with Tapwave

[Thag]

If Nokia was smart they'd partner with Tapwave, which has a killer platform in the Zodiac but not enough games. Nokia has games but not a good enough platform. They'd have to add cellphone functionality to the Zodiac, but that's a pretty straightforward problem.