Slashdot Mirror
N-Gage No Longer Relevant
Spong.com (via Kotaku) has a story discussing a dire portent for the N-Gage. The Entertainment & Leisure Software Publishers Association sales charts will no longer reflect N-Gage sales. From the article: "The N-Gage chart, though still produced, is of little interest to anyone. Sales of the machine and its software have failed to make any impact on the market at all. We still keep sales charted and are available on monthly, quarterly and annual reports, though we have dropped the platform from the ELSPA chart following a lack of interest."
I remember the same fatal pronouncements for Windows CE... four years ago.
Then again, N-Gage really could be a dying platform.
...but "No Longer" suggests they once were.
Trolling is a art,
N-gage not relevant? How is this news?
This is not the greatest sig in the world, no. This is just a tribute.
Shouldn't the title read: N-Gage, Never Relevant
...they took out sidetalking.
I mean, COME ON! That was the best feature!
The N-Gage is not EN-Gaging.
I disagree with the headline, because it implies that it was actually relevant at one point.
WARNING: If accidentally read, induce vomiting.
I couldn't see how a new platform like this would hit anything other than a small, unsustainable, niche market.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
Netcraft confirms it is not relevant. Meanwhile, on Slashdot, its irrelevancy is featured on the front page.
Irrelevant News for News. Stuff that doesn't matter anymore.
Over priced phone that has no must own games is not revevant in the hand held market?
Big surprised there, especially with Sony and Nintendo battling for the same market.
I mean, who cares?! Its a stupid platform that got hyped and then nobody cared about it...
oh wait.
Did I just prove the article, right there?
But seriously: This was an example of convergence that nobody really needed. I'm sure this would go down like gangbusters in Japan (cram as many features into the phone and then cram a few extra)
But this 'game+phone' doesn't tread water in the US. USians just want phones that are phones. There is already a backlash about those who have cameras.
Its like the Nintendo "Game+watch": Yeah, right.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Let's face it, this is the single biggest IT blunder in recent times.
After capturing a large portion of the cellular phone market, Nokia decides to stop developing new phones and build a portable game device - without a 3d chip. Any company trying to break into portable gaming without a 3d chipset, of any kind, is stupid, but a company that would divert resources from its core business, is just plain retarded.
Good job Nokia. You are now a company that makes both phones and games that no one wants.
Gamestop has them on sale for $0, after rebates of course. I was going to pick one up but I don't feal like paying yet another bill. I did like the fact that you only have to agree to use the service for 180 days rather then the 2 year's like most places want you to sign up for.
of what not to do.
they had a great idea but half assed it in every way from the beginning.
underpowered and a crappy phone! then come out with a second generation version and piss off the customers you already have.
nope, n-gage was a prime example of the engineers having to bastardize something so the suits were able to get their "price point" instead of a quality product.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
N-gage really is a bad gaming console. Bad battery life, bad graphics (compared to the GBA), very expensive games (50 euros is way too much for a Tomb Raider port...), and the ergonomy sucks too (try playing an hour with that thing...) What can I say, you make a bad product, people don't buy it and people don't care about it.
Just for reference, if you wanted to get the same effect without straining your eyes, wrists, and fingers, try throwing a few hundred dollar bills into a fire while fornicating yourself with a rusty screwdriver. That's pretty much what happened to anyone who bought an N-Gage anyway.
Was it every relevant? Or of interest to anyone? It's pretty hard to stand up to Nintendo, and now Sony's getting into the handheld game.
It was relevant?
My one biggest problem with the N-Gage was simply they way the oriented the screen, If you want to have any 3d/scroller games you want a horizontal screen. Haveing it be vertical just means that you can play galiga with more stacks of enemies.
It wasn't designed to be a game console, it was designed to be a phone. Thats where it failed. If your going to dual up a machine at least put some design workings into how your going to accomplish both functions. Everyone I talked to said they couldn't see themselves playing on this because there can't be that many decent games out that use such a small screen (save older arcade games and tetris)
I believe it was the n-gage's design that killed it. Not bad for a handheld but terrible design for a phone. Also you had to take it apart to insert the game cartridge. I tried playing one at EB and it seemed like you actually had to RTFM to know how to get the game started. Not a problem for me but for the target audience this would be a pain.
N-Gage is dying!
Lets make a large cell phone that you have to hold sideways to talk to people to.
just because your a schizophrenic doesn't mean people arn't really out to get you
I'm an HO-gage guy, myself...
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
I think this comic from Penny Arcade pretty much sums up how much we all care about N-Gage
What's an N-Gage?
That what N-gage was...
What's an "N-Gage"?
Nokia is in this one for the long haul. Everyone knows that people play games on their mobile phones. Only thing is that n-gage can play much better games.
BTW, the newer games that have recently come out, are bloody excellent games. The phone itself is the cheapest way to get a series 60 phone. Don't write this one off, Nokia is going to pull through on this one.
I was surprised to recently read a few favourable reviews of several N-Gage games, the authors set out biased against them and actually ended up admitting they are quite good. Shame the overall product sucks as the games are very enjoyable seemed to be the summary. Will anyone own up to actually having one comment?
1) Sell it to Apple.
2) They'll rename it to the iGage.
3) ???
4) Profit!
Data has been trying to tell this to Picard for years...
- filtering all but >2 funny -
Note: This sig contains nine S's, nine I's and five O's which... means absolutely nothing.
Their market is entirely different and light years ahead of everyone else. What is strange, is none of it makes it way OUT of Japan. We're still ooing and ahhing over the Raz0r phone, when they had that years and years ago. Old news to them. Nothing special.
I never cared for n-gauge but always was a fan of HO
How does the Slashdot Effect happen given that no slashdotters ever RTFA?
I assume it is some game platform but I'm not sure. Having not remembered ever hearing about it, I can say with certainty that I won't be missing it when it disappears.
6F 9E A9 1E 96 9F 74 27 ED B8 81 6D 0C 4E 1E 78
My other Sig is a 229.
We all knew the N-Gage was an experiment that was doomed to fail.
It did, however, plant the seeds of "convergence" in peoples minds. Why carry a cellphone, gameboy, and PDA, if there was one device that could replace all three.
The fact is though, it's nearly impossible to introduce a new gaming platform. The developer mindshare is so important. Noone buys a platform with no games. It took Sony a long time to get a decent enough library for the PSX to make it a contender. It's similarly taken MSFT a long time to line up some really good titles for the XBox.
Nokia never really had a chance. Looks like they're sticking to their guns, though. If they're smart, they'll start making a whole line of n-gage compatible phones (since we know the games can be played on non n-gages), at a whole range of prices. B/W vs Color displays, etc..
That or, they should really look into something like integrating an existing platform, ie; GBA, DS or PSP, into a cellphone. The games are already there for it.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
The designers of the ngage should be shot at sight, just like that, no trial. Even more, everybody who owns one should be sentenced for life, for being _that_ stupid!
Let me guess... it will be called the "HO-Gage".
Well, then it sounds like it would be perfect for Choo Choo Rocket!
Or perhaps a port of Railroad Tycoon.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
OT - Just curious, but who is 6093389293@vtext.com in your sig, and why spam them?
They lost me when they eliminated the sidetalking feature. Now I look like everyone else, instead of an obtuse fool with a chunk of plastic stuck against his head. (sob)
were you asleep thru the entire dot-bomb??
surely the N-gage is less of a blunder than, say, the TimeWarner-AOL merger???
What about the Atari Lynx, please tell me they didn't drop it from the charts!
N-Gage Dis-N-Gage'd.
Thanks.
I wanted to give this a fair chance, since if you think about it, a cell phone and a game console don't sound like such a bad idea (this is before I realized how stupid you looked when you used it as a phone).
...
So I go to the local EB games/gamestop, where I don't buy the consoles but I can at least see a demo. OMG! I'm a very technical person, and I'm not allergic to complicated interfaces, but I couldn't even get the game started. This thing had some weird game selection demos and once I got into the demo startup screen I couldn't even start the game. I tried this at several stores, so I don't think it was a defect!
I forget the name of the game, it was some game that I've seen before, with a character that looked like a clown or a court jester
Anyways, if you have a product that even the demo is hard to use, you have no chance. Compare this with the Nintendo demos they have at Best Buy, etc. It's intuitive and fun. N-Gage was cumbersome, ugly and it makes you wonder who in the world came up with it's design.
- sigs are for wimps.
Was I the only one that thought they were going to stop making n-guage trains? I realize that HO scale was always more popular, but this headline really scared me.
Yeesh.
I thought they meant something like this or like this when they said N-gauge.
See what I've been reading.
of course they don't count, they can't measure them... but cheapo, sms or online bought, games are probably the biggest sellers on it.
do free games count? nah.. didn't think so.
s60 is pretty diverse as far as software goes.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
My brother was telling me about a friend of his that works for GameStop (in the Cleveland, OH area).
Apparently, they were the leading store of N-Gages sold, with 1. It caught some guy's eye as he was walking out of the store, so he decided he'd buy it on a whim. That guy returned it a week later.
So, with one returned unit, that store still had the most N-Gage sales in the Cleveland area.
What is the N-Gage?
--LWM
"What can I say, you make a bad product, people don't buy it and people don't care about it."
Well I guess common sense prevailed this time. However, this is not always the case. Usually if someone has a crappy product they stick a phone in it.
Or if that crappy product happens to BE a phone, well, sticking a camera in it or in this case a gaming console usually does the jedi-mind-trick on at least part of the population.
I guess karma can only be stretched so far.
I hope Nokia's marketing people will be up to the task of fielding all those calls from panicked hobbyists worried that the n-gauge model trains are waning in popularity.
The Next Generation finished in 1994. "N-Gage" hasn't been relevent for 11 years!
only problem with the subject is.... there are no die hard ngage fans to keep it alive ;-)
Dis-ngage N-gage Q.uits D.evelopment N(o)-gage New advert: "This is where I throw my N-gage out of the window" Are you talking with a Taco-bell in your hand? You mean the newer version of N-gage has no FM Radio? No mp3 player out of the box? Are we in ancient history or what?
That thing is basically analogous to a gamer buying a motherboard with everything integrated like a bid'ness PC. Your phone, PDA, and gaming system are all lumped into one...that means so are all the features and upgrade paths. No thank you. I'll stick to separate components if I want a portable game system. Or wait for a palm PC with a nice graphics chipset/card.
#
..Hello?
...
...Oh, ..Well, our security guy says, that that word has been blocked too...
The phone goes off in CellTimes' ad department:
-CTAD-receptionist:
--Caller: Hi, this is Joe from 'Nokia PubRel'. I was wondering what happened to the last three "n-gage" ads that we submitted for display in your paper?
-CTAD-rec: Well, we never reciev.. oh, hold on; a quick search found those msg's in our spam-bin.. We get so much _irrelevant_ mail these days; and it seems our spam filter has been set to block mail containing, -amongst others-, the word "n-gage" in the subject line, you know how it is..
--Caller: Those msg's said "from Nokia" in the subject!
-CTAD-rec:
*CLICK*
#
A horse can't be sick, you know, even if he wants to.
I found step three.
3) Make it not suck
Jisho - A Japanese English German Russian French Dictionary for the rest of us.
Neither of you fucktards have any, and watching you argue is like watching synchro swimming in the Special Olympics. It's funny at first, but gets boring and sad really fast.
PA is fucking retarded. Hey lets copy and paste popular whines from gaming forums and draw little cartoon gay guys saying them!
...some kind of model train size. Seeing as how I'd never heard of this device/platform, seems to point to poor marketing. On the other hand, I'm not a subscriber to Cell Phone Monthly so wtf do I know?
I drank what? -- Socrates
Yes lets get it out of the way. The NGage was a dire product.
The Ngage QD on the other hand is a brillant product.
- It is cheaper then other phones (in Ireland on pay as you go that is).
- Sim Free.
- Supported Memory cards which meant tons of software to download/create.
- You didn't have to remove the battery and do a hard reset to remove the memory card.
- You didn't have to look like a plonker talking on the phone anymore.
- Multiplayer on the phone is quite nice.
- Supports J2ME (Nokia Game API) = 100's of apps.
- Supports Symbian OS based applications. = 100's of apps.
Downsides
- NGage Arena never got to work (in Ireland, various sims).
- Battery life is 2 days if playing the phone a lot. Otherwise anywhere from 4-7 days.
As game phones go it is a pretty cool phone. It is just a shame that its being dumped on due to its original release.
I have two of the phones (got them for practising the bluetooth connectivity).
Lets hope that Sega has the brains to salvage Pocket Kingdoms somehow... that game was actually a good game.
I think the biggest problem with N-Gage is that they excpect users to use cell phone style buttons to control the games. The buttons are small and feel cheap. It makes the system feel like it was designed to be a cell phone with video games as an after thought which is what all other cell phones do to begin with. They didn't do enough to differentiate themselves from cell phones.
The N-Gage was never relevant... ...but the GNAA is always relevant!
I've been a fan of HO gage since I was about thirteen (I'm now 47). N-gage was always too small and the trucks seemed too big on most of the rolling stock that I looked at. So, I'm really glad to hear of it's demise. Oh... I just read a bit of the other comments. I found that some of the consoles that some of the other model railroaders used were not very good either. Anyway, keep up the good work in reporting all the latest. It's a real help to be tapped in and know what's going on.
*** Don't be dull.***
Everything I've heard suggests that owners are pretty happy with the phones, despite their varied flaws, and that well over a million have been sold. Looks like people are buying it as a cheap phone instead of a gaming platform, much to Nokia's chagrin (although they'd never say anything like that).
~Someday, I hope to be an aspiring author.
I'm not surprised by this - the N-Gage sucked as a phone that could play games. I got one free, and absolutely hated it. Once of the main problems was that it's hardware and software were identical to a normal Nokia smartphone (e.g Nokia 3650). So once the games got hacked and you could play them on a standard Nokia phone (or even a Siemens phone!), why would anyone use an N-Gage. If it had an extra 3D processor, the idea might have worked...
Personally, I think the best way out the mess is to keep the N-Gage brand as a software only thing, and publish excellent multi-player games for the top range of Nokia phones, to get people to buy a Nokia instead of the competition.
N-gagajAJAJAJAJA
I'm glad that piece of crap is finally getting even -less- recognition. Someone said over a million have been sold... more like over a million were sent to distributors ("sold"). Ick, horrid piece of hardware.
Ha ha! That's a good one. When was it ever 'relevant' to begin with? The entire project has been a giant goat-f*ck since day one.
The device is a piece of crap. It was obviously designed and marketed by people who had never played a hand-held game or used a cell phone before. Not to mention the fact the few games they had weren't terribly fun nor were they terribly compelling. And the phone part sucked, to boot!
The subsequent redesign was a colossal amount of money wasted on what essentially was the last gasp of a dying, pitiful product. Consumers had already decided it sucked, and no one cared when they did fix some of the problems. Not even remotely a surprise to anyone in the industry.
Shame, too. Nokia makes great cell phones. Now maybe they'll stick to what they know.
...not that I'm a pirate.. Hell I've never even fired a cannon. - oldwolf13
Let this be a lesson to the "convergence"-crazy companies who are putting blurry cameras, pitiful games, tiny amounts of MP3 storage, and other features into cell phones that don't even make calls well. Give me a GameBoy Advance and a solid cell phone in separate casing any day.
It's shaped like a taco.
I got an N-Gage QD when I needed a new phone because after rebates it was $0 with a bluetooth headset. I love it.
:( but I have an iPod.
I have a great NES Emulator it, great gameboy, AgileChat for IM, PuTTY that actually is workable enough to connect and run some specially made bash scripts, Opera, and some really fun games. I'm addicted to Tony Hawk it's so much like the original on PS1. The only thing that doesn't exist in the QD is Stereo sound
All in all I think had they not released the original Ngage they would have done much better. That's what you get when you rush product without QA and test groups.
-- taking over the world, we are.
You mean is *was* relevant at one time?
Could have fooled me!
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuurn!
Oh snap!
I'm running HO.
OH GOD NO IT'S HAPPENING AGAIN!
Handheld gaming platform with gimmicky advanced features (Intarweb connectivity vs. cell phone integration)? check.
Relatively diminuitive cult following? check.
Games of questionable quality? check.
Management who really doesn't fucking know what they're selling and repeatedly screws over the relatively diminuitive cult following? check.
Oh well, at least the N-Gage has color.
Doesn't the title falsely indicate that the N-Gage was at one time relevant?
I have a website. It's about Macs.
A handheld console and cellphone hyrbid? That's as useless as putting a CD player in your toaster. It was a horrible idea before the thing was even released and I'm glad they're finally sinking. Wanna talk? Buy a cell phone. Wanna play games? Buy a GBA, DS, or PSP. Don't mix the two because the thing becomes a bulky nuisance that doesn't appeal to most people. I don't know one single person who owns one, let alone shows even slight interest in it. If you're gonna release a product, release something worthwhile that's truly innovative and has something to offer to a bigger audience.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
My advice to anyone looking for a new phone is to buy an N-Gage. It is the cheapest way to get a Series60 phone, and Series60 is the shit.
Did ANYONE ever care about that stupid thing? It's like the lamest features of a handheld gaming device combined with the world's worst cell phone design. Why did it even get on the list in the first place?
The Farewell Tour II
The QD is not the "Is that a game gear in your pocket or our you just happy to see me?" phone that the original was. It is pretty small and I've got a gig stick of MMC in mine! The Symbian software is excellent. Trying playing NES games on your cell phone and life will never be the same. It has a D-pad for christ sakes! www.vampent.com -- best nes emulator for S60
Just come out with the N-Gage QD?
So, is this data they are talking about both models, or just the old one?
I know, I know, RTFA...
September 2004:
Speaking at EGN today, Nokia has been waxing lyrical about the success of the N-Gage, announcing that over a million units (N-Gage and N-Gage QD) have been sold so far. Indeed, many were sceptical of Nokia's foray into the games industry, and this is proof of a surprising level of success. With over 100,000 subscribers to N-Gage Arena, plenty of gamers have clearly put their faith (and their funds) into the machine.
Nokia will be pleased to have established a fairly solid user-base ahead of the DS's and PSP's respective launches, as competition in the handheld market will be reaching new levels of intensity by the beginning of next year. Fortunately, the N-Gage already has a reasonable level of support from publishers, most notably Electronic Arts, whose US Vice-President, Nancy Smith, made the following comment, "In reaching the one million milestone, we see that the N-Gage is establishing itself as a serious player in the portable gaming business."
WTF? Every single thread in this story says the n-gage sucks. Yet this lone Anonymous Coward was modded Flamebait. Why? I guess maybe you need to be more subtle.
I have to say that N-gage contributed much to the development of mobile gaming.
Before N-gage, Symbian-OS based phones only had mostly 2D games(i.e. Snakes, Solitare and Minesweeper etc). With the advent of the N-gage, we saw more interactive games like Tomb Raider, Sonic N and The Sims.
Nokia did prove something with the N-gage and that is mobile gaming on handphones isn't just limited to "Snakes"!
Even NES/Gameboy Color/Sega Genesis Emulators are now available on the Symbian OS! All thanks to the N-gage for the gaming interest on the platform.
Also technically impressive(at it's time) is the 104MHz Arm9 processor on the N-gage. Mind you, the GBA only had a 16MHz ARM7TDMI, even the Nintendo DS has only a 67MHz ARM9(although overall a better console).
Right now, we have Symbian-OS phones that have >200Mhz processors and now Symbian-OS phones are getting so popular that virus writers are targeting the platform! There are like at least one new virus per month now.
Most people don't care if an SDK is available on a gaming platform, probably less than 0.1% actually care. If I want to play series60 games, I could get a regular phone rather than the cumbersome N-Gage.
Sales of the machine and its software have failed to make any impact on the market at all.
Next year you'll see the same sentence, but it will be discussing the Sony PSP.
Everyone of you is dissing the N-Gage because everyone else does so. How many of you have ever used one?
My QD has:
- eBooks (and they're actually readable)
- Java games
- Symbian games
- a fully-featured web browser (not just WAP)
- an email client which supports POP3 and SMTP, with SSL
- PuTTY (SSH client)
- Bluetooth
- a good D-pad
- N-Gage games (yes, they have got better than the first ones from 2 years ago! Pathway to Glory would rule on any platform - it's X-Com or Laser Squad, only better, including the graphics and sound, and with multi-player)
- fits in my pocket
and it was cheap, too.
I guess it's fashionable to talk shit about stuff you don't know jack about, these days...
The Tlog - a technology blog
Now that it'll probably get cheaper, it might be the time to pick this up for use as a cell phone. Does anybody know what the pricing plan for the nGage is?
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
AAAaaaaaah. *tears streaking from eyes*
Well that's a BIG surprise !
LMAO
Engage Anal Reaming !!!
:))
All Nokia customers please pull down pants
and say thank you !
LMAO
just noticed : has bluetooth ohohohoh stop please
java games : oh no please no ahahahah !!!
Wow! 5 comments modded +5 making the same obvious joke about how the N-Gage never was relevant, 2 making it indirectly.
:D
Not a "redundent" in sight!
I'm so glad we all agree
You can't take the sky from me...
Like when theit boss made a statement that no self-respecting 26y/o would been seen in public playing GBA.
How could they not suceed after calling their entire target demographic loosers and dorks?
Oh wait, this isn't bizarro world. Good. I hope they lost a bundle.
You can't take the sky from me...
Actually came out on this thing?
Okay, sorry, I just figured out it's probably just a typo.
While I'm posting, I might as well lament the apparent demise of model railroading (no pun intended) as a hobby, whether HO, N-Gauge, or those big Lionel things with the three-rail track. Only 25 years ago K-Mart had a bunch of cheap HO-gauge stuff - track, cars, engines, parts, and whole train sets - on the racks for sale. Now apparently only the specialty hobby stores have model trains.
Tag lost or not installed.
The N-Gage might be better at pulling off 3D games (not due to any 3D hardware mind you, but simply good software rendering on its ARM9 CPU) than a GBA, but 3D really isn't the be-all and end-all of gaming. The GBA is a success despite the lack of decent 3D capabilities because there are just so many awesome games available for it. In the 120 hours or so I've spent playing Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and Pokemon Sapphire, I can't say I ever though "gee, what this really needs is some 3D".
By the same logic, the N-Gage has so far been a flop as a console despite its 3D capabilities because of the lack of quality game titles. I'm sure the actual units themselves must do alright though -- if you can get over the awkward shape, they're remarkable value for a Series 60 device with Bluetooth and other goodies.
So does this mean I won't get to play Duke Nukem Forever on it now?
The stars were wrong, all wrong! If only they had been in proper alignment so as to have Star Trek: The Next Generation airing new eps at the same time as the N-Gage... ...so that you could have had Saturday Night Live parody Picard saying to Geordi... "Mister LaForge... Engage!" only to have Geordi turn around with said phone to his ear...
SPOnG get the official ELSPA charts directly from ChartTrack, who compile them. When you see UK chart analysis on SPOnG, it's done by them, directly on the raw data.
-- I like the cut of your thinking, young man. - me.