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N-Gage QD - Worth It At $99?
Thanks to GameSpot for its article discussing the possible pricing for Nokia's enhanced N-Gage QD mobile phone/game deck combo, which "will arrive in the Western Hemisphere on June 29, where units will sell for a list price of $199." Although "Reports from Europe and Asia--by way of CNN--indicate that foreign mobile phone networks are heavily subsidizing the QD in exchange for extended service contracts", the U.S. price is not yet known - the article points out: "When the QD was initially unveiled, Nokia publicly stated that it expected a carrier-subsidized $99 price point to be common." What price would you consider picking up an N-Gage QD for?
I still won't consider an N-Gage. I don't have or feel a need to have a PDA or cell phone, and all my on-the-move gaming needs are quite well handled with my (non-SP) GBA.
I want Nokia to go back to a design like this
nokia 8290.
It is a no frills phone. Doesn't have a camera, doesnt have a gamepad.
It's small and I love it.
-Grump
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
You are joking right? Alright lets try a different consumer article since I doubt you ever play games. Imagine that to change the video cassete you had to first remove the power suppy from your vcr. Imagine that to change channels on your tv you first had to unplug it. Imagine that to install a piece of software you had to reboot.
Getting the picture? It is not so much a mistake as a sign that the designers just didn't have a clue.
It is not like it is simple to remove the battery, it involves removing several very easy to loose components before you can play a different game. Not something you would want to do while in a moving train.
So if this very simple thing was so totally and completly mishandled why would they have done anything else right?
Why people hate them for this blunder? Because they insulted the gamers. They thought we were stupid enough to buy this piece of crap. I consider that reason enough for a very deep hatred and never ever to consider buying a game console from nokia.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Here's the deal. I actually considered getting one when they were first announced. Not for gaming, but because they were making a cell phone that would go international.
Then I found out it didn't work in Japan, or most of Asia, so it became useless to me as a cell phone.
On the gaming end of things, when you insult the owners of 99% of the portables by saying their handheld of choice is "for 13 year olds" and "embarassing to pull out in public" you go from "upstart with potential", to "pointy haired boss with no clue" rather quickly.
The controls on the thing suck, and the fact that they're trying to keep it a tiny cell phone, without making it a flip phone means that they don't a good game from a hole in the ground. Currently, there isn't a way to play a video game that is as uncomfortable as playing one on an NGage. The QD tried to rectify this but still failed.
That's why people hate this thing.
Netjak.com independent reviews of domestic & import video ga
I'm not sure a lack of experience is an excuse for a design flaw that severe. If Nokia lacked experience, why didn't they have an R&D team study the design of competing handhelds to get a feel for what gamers would expect? It smacks of a rushed product, and most consumers will feel insulted if offered an obviously rushed product. Why shouldn't gamers feel contempt and distrust for Nokia at this point?
The intensity of the gamer-culture backlash is unwarranted, of course, but gamer-culture has never really had a reputation for being rational or mature.
This is hardly surprising; Nokia have said all along that they don't intend to go with the "put out a new product every couple of years" cycle that has characterised the handheld market in the past.
It's going to be very interesting. In the past, there's been an almost complete Nintendo monopoly on the handheld market. The competitors have sufferered either from hideous design flaws (Sega Game Gear) or a complete lack of worthwhile games (Atari Lynx). Now, however, we have two major competitors moving into the area.
At first glance, Nokia appear to havw succumbed to both of the mistakes that have sunk handhelds in the past; the original N-Gage was an appallingly bad design and, while some of the games are pretty good, there just aren't enough of them. However, if the design is continually updated and refined over the next year or so, then the first of these problems can be overcome. Moreover, Nokia's future games-lineup looks pretty exciting in places and the technical capabilities of the handset are decent. The initial launch of the N-Gage has been poor, but in a bizarre way, their failure to make much of an impact on the public consciousness counts in their favour; I doubt that most of the non-hardcore-games out there really know much about the N-Gage and they're not going to decide not to buy a later version of it on "moral" grounds because the initial version sucked. Incidentally, I've noted this argument coming up already in the comments - it's quite possibly the most imbecilic statement I could imagine in this context.
Nokia aren't a gaming company; as people have already remarked, they don't really understand the market at the moment. However, they also aren't a stupid company and I strongly suspect that the intial N-Gage was always intended as a learning experience. Last time a major non-gaming electronics company tried to move into the games market, it worked pretty well. Just look at what the Playstation went on to achieve.
The PSP is perhaps coming into the market from the other direction. Sony are now very much a gaming company; their Playstation brand has incredible mainstream recognition. Their major strength in the "normal" console market has been their ability to get the best developers on board and to get the best range of games out at the most attractive prices. Their machines can be a little more expensive than their competitors (witness the PS2 price compared to the technically-superior Gamecube and X-Box), but a serious gamer knows that he will quickly make back the price difference if he buys a good number of games, as (in the UK at least), there's a clear price difference between big-name PS2 games and those for the X-Box and, to an even greater extent, the Gamecube.
So where does this leave Nintendo? They've got a vital struggle ahead to maintain their monopoly. Whatever you think of their "normal" consoles, the simple economic reality is that they're on course to be forced out of this market as serious competitors after the next cycle. They're approaching the end of this cycle roughly level-pegging with newcomers Microsoft, but MS just have more resources to throw into the arena and the tide will undoubtedly continue to turn. I suspect the Nintendo DS is a (rather belated) recognition that Nintendo haven't driven the handheld arena forwards as far as it could have. The GBA is a nice enough machine, but the apparent ease with which Nokia and Sony have unveiled handhelds which, in the technical respect, trounce it is quite scary. It's not all doom and gloom for Nintendo; they still have a powerful brand-name in the handheld market and their preferred style of games (quick, simple, shallow) is generally better suited to the handheld market, where players tend to play games for shorter sessions, in situations where they don't have access to other facilities. However, I suspect they're going to need to drastically refocus their business practices and get onto a faster technological cycle if they want to stay competative.