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The Handheld War

Posted by Zonk on from the screen-to-screen-to-screen dept.

The Escapist has an editorial up talking about the war currently raging in the trenches...and not the console war, for once. The new handhelds are duking it out for position, and he makes some interesting predictions. From the article: "Sony's stumble will clear the way for Nokia's N-Gage powered smartphones to be the #2 platform in handheld gaming. I see it developing into a PC-like platform. Think of it like this: Everybody has a PC. Everybody uses their PC for work and web. Some people also use it for gaming - enough people to make the PC, as a platform, the second biggest; it's the same concept with the smartphone."

1 of 66 comments (clear)

  1. N-Gage, Series 60 and Nokia by LKM · · Score: 2, Informative

    I'm one of the three people who actually own an N-Gage, so I feel qualified to comment on its chance as an opponent of the DS and the PSP.

    It has no chance.

    The N-Gage sucks. The screen is too small and tall instead of wide, which makes it useless for most games (Sonic N actually doesn't use about 30% of the screen, which means it's even smaller than most N-Gage games). The buttons are crap. The directional pad is crap. It sounds worse than the cheapest Radio I've ever heard. It's capable of 3D graphics, but not of usable 3D graphics, so most 3D games are pretty much unplayable, and since people don't seem to want 2D games anymore, most N-Gage games are 3D. Even though you don't have to take the battery out to switch the game, you have to tell the N-Gage that you want to switch the game, wait for it to confirm that, open the N-Gage Game slot thingie, switch the game, wait till the N-Gage acknowledges the game, start the game. Turning the N-Gage on takes at least 30 seconds and took me up to 2 minutes in some cases. It has no shoulder buttons, and the button placement makes it really hard to use more than two or three buttons. The N-Gage actually needs a SIM card, otherwise you can't even turn it on. It is so slow that it can't emulate classic Gameboy games at decent speed. Zelda is playable, but you can forget about action games. The N-Gage is a pretty decent phone, and I like the button placement, but it's too big, and it has no touch screen, which would be useful for the phone interface.

    And these are only some of the problems I've been having.

    Of course, some Series 60 phones can play N-Gage games, but the button placement is even worse than on the N-Gage.

    Nokia might become a serious player in the handheld gaming segment, but not with this hardware.