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."

Comments

Premature post-mortem?

[Lindsay Lohan]

Sales of the machine and its software have failed to make any impact on the market at all.

I'd heard that a new version of the N-Gage hardware will be introduced before Nov. 2005 - possibly as early as September - although the platform will remain backwards compatible throughout. Although they will admit to slow sales, sounds like Nokia is not quite ready to judge the N-Gage as a success or failure.

I remember the same fatal pronouncements for Windows CE... four years ago.

Then again, N-Gage really could be a dying platform.

Re:Premature post-mortem?

[mgs1000]

Actually, Nokia just eliminated a bunch of the people working on N-Gage stuff.

They are about to pull the plug on the whole damn thing.

The truth hurts I guess...

[grub]

...but "No Longer" suggests they once were.

Correction

[checkitout]

Shouldn't the title read: N-Gage, Never Relevant

This is all because...

[aznxk3vi17]

...they took out sidetalking.

I mean, COME ON! That was the best feature!

To Sum:

[holzp]

The N-Gage is not EN-Gaging.

Well duh.

[AltGrendel]

What they probably should have done is license something that was alreay in the market, like a GBA or something.

I couldn't see how a new platform like this would hit anything other than a small, unsustainable, niche market.

Re:Well duh.

[gl4ss]

they sort of did it. they 'licensed' their own platform, series 60 - and built the system over it. n-gage is a strong machine, not because of games(which have just gotten to good level of playability, actually - even reporters who have always hated ngage before have had to admit that), but because of all the series60 software available for it.

from irc to web browsers to aim to rss readers to python support(can you script your gba with python? DIDN'T THINK SO!).

does nintendo offer a sdk for download for free? no.
does sony offer sdk for psp for normal people? no.

nokia does, symbian may be a bitch of a platform to get into but it's open for everyone to get into, to port emulators, to code games for. you want to write a rss reader in python with c++ components? fine, do it, you're free to do just that.

plus, some of the best games available for it are not 'n-gage' games, they're series60 games.

(..and I doubt it being very expensive for them to produce, as hardware wise it is almost identical to the 3650, with the difference that n-gage has more ram)

Netcraft confirms!

[krbvroc1]

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.

N-Gage?

[Fr05t]

What's an N-Gage?

Oh my god!?!

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

What about the Atari Lynx, please tell me they didn't drop it from the charts!

An interesting story

[The_Whole_Fn_Show]

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.

N-Gage No Longer Relevant

[Refrag]

Doesn't the title falsely indicate that the N-Gage was at one time relevant?