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,
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 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.
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.
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.
I think this comic from Penny Arcade pretty much sums up how much we all care about N-Gage
What's an N-Gage?
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.
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
What about the Atari Lynx, please tell me they didn't drop it from the charts!
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.
The game is Pandemonium!
Of course, once you know how to use the device it isn't that bad.
It just costs too much. They charge more for N-Gage games than for GBA games, and most are of a lesser quality. Now it has to face off against PSP and DS.
They need to relabel it as a cell-phone that plays games, and sell it at the Verizon store, not EB or GameStop. If they insist on marketing it as a console, they have to square off against Sony and Nintendo, and will get their balls handed to them.
I actually do hope they pull it out. Competition in the gaming market is good, we need more than one or two handheld platforms.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I don't know what world you were living in where PSX succeeded early. IIRC, it launched with Ridge Racer and Toshinden. It took two years for it to have 34 titles. There was so much competition back then, people just held on to their SNES and Genesis', not knowing whether to bet on PSX, Saturn, Jaguar, 3DO, CD-I, CD32, or wait for N64..
The PSX dragged along with lackluster titles, terrible loading times, and people were ready to write it off until a little something called Final Fantasy VII saved it.
Luckily for sony, 3DO, Saturn, Jaguar and CDI all sucked worse than it did, and they got a good couple years head start on the N64. If Nintendo had N64 ready when PSX launched, I doubt Sony would be where they are today.
A big kick in the nuts was it's port of Mortal Kombat III, which would be arcade-perfect. It was taking a couple minutes to load each round. The SNES started outselling it.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Doesn't the title falsely indicate that the N-Gage was at one time relevant?
I have a website. It's about Macs.