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Nokia Declares N-Gage A Failure
chrisbtoo writes "Nokia's VP of corporate strategy has admitted that the company's ill-fated N-Gage was not the success they'd hoped it would be, and they won't develop the platform further. The device sold 2 million units in 3 years, against projections of 6 million. They'll continue to build the gaming software into their Series 60 phones, but gaming won't be a priority for them until 2007." From the article: "The company launched the N-Gage in 2003 but sales have been disappointing and, according to the company's roadmap, mobile gaming will not be a focus until 2007. Nokia is concentrating on mobile music for the rest of this year, and next year's main push will be on driving mobile television."
ngage sucks anyway. like time!
NGage a failure? What a surprise *rolls eyes*
seriously though. It wouldnt have worked even if they tried. No game system is ever supposed to have a screen taller than it is wide, especially in first person shooters. no one's going to snipe you from the top. theyll all use a chainsaw on you from the side!
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
I think the problem was a combination of bad timing and over-hype. With the PSP lurking, it just couldn't compare.
"You won't eat our meat, but you'll glue with our feet.." --Some cow
if we're experiencing a "mobile bubble" similar to the dot com?
They sold 2 million units more than they really should have;-)
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
You were a little slow on the ball there, good luck next time :D
This is the sig that says NI (again)
...rain is wet.
A cell phone should't try to do a portable console's job.
"Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies." -Thomas Jefferson
The best innovation in human usability
http://www.sidetalkin.com/
i guess it's not completely unrelated to the bad results of this cellphone
-- "If A equals success, then the formula is A=X+Y+Z. X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut." - Einstein
I think it shows a lot that they were able to do that. In a corporate environment mistakes are simply not allowed, and so lots of failures get beat to death repeatedly, costing the company a lot of money in development and a lot of consumer credibility. To be able to admit that their product was a mistake and move on will do them a lot of good in the long term, even if they suffer in the market a little.
Help I'm a rock.
I declared it a failure back in 2003! Why did it take a big company like Nokia so long to figure out what I was able to surmise immediately?
Nokia's problem is that they keep developing stuff in-house without seeming to gather feedback or comments from their market. They really should just host a site where users can post feature requests or comments for their next products. I've seen the N-Gage and while I think it's possible to come up with a gaming platform/cellphone, they didn't do it well.
Not surprising : cell phone games suck. I downloaded packages on P2P with hundreds of Java games for my Nokia 3200, and hardly can find any that's good, they all use tired concepts, they just plainly lack interest. A few years ago it was said that cell phone games would soon be as good GameBoy games, but that's bullshit, none of all the java games I tried is as good as some old arcade gamles from the mid 70's that i play with MAME, you'll have much more fun playing Arkanoid or Space Wars than playing Tomb Raider on your cell phone or Splinter Cell Those cell phone games are a joke
You just got troll'd!
it was not going to be a success, after having seen what I once saw:
A poor devil speaking through one of those.
He had to hold it sideways! (long edge of the phone facing his ear).
The world is round.
Thanks Nokia, for stating what is already obvious to everybody.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
And it looks like they haven't learned from it given the way the product launch for the Linux based Nokia 770 Internet tablet is going.
Supposedly on sale in Early November the date of shipping has now been put back to sometime in January. Nokia are however still taking orders (and not filling any). No official work has come from them apart from the constant date changes on their web site and conflicting stories from the call center staff.
Discussions about this are available here: http://www.internettablettalk.com/
Not only does the quality suck, it uses your call time and its will drain your battery like no other.
Plus I am getting so tired of the commericals for video on the phone that splice High quality video on the screen of the phone so it doesnt look like shit.
Nokia, I could have told you the N-gage would have been a flop the second you released it.
People seem to think if something has good marketing then it will be popular. Not true at all!
keanmarine.com
At the time the NGage came out I was doing mobile development (cell phone music downloads). We begged Nokia to build a decent music phone. All we wanted was 16 bit 44KHz stereo audio and room for an SD/MMC card -- nothing exotic. All of their phones, even the Symbian "open OS" phones, were handicapped with mono 16KHz audio which basically stinks for music. Actually, some had 8KHz mono.
... and to hear high level officials of Nokia pronounce that they "would own the portable gaming space" was beyond funny. Any game machine you have to shut off and take apart to change games was not designed by people with a clue. Anyhow, I couldn't help but notice that *NOW* they are going to concentrate on music phones. Unfortunately for them, that horse has already left the barn. They had a golden opportunity, but blew it.
When I first saw the NGage I couldn't contain my laughter
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
They'll continue to build the gaming software into their Series 60 phones, but gaming won't be a priority for them until 2007.
So, they plan to fail in 2007 as well?
hello dear sirs my name is jamesh i are india (bihar) can u guide me install red had linux 9?
I have an ngage, and I love it. Granted the games are shocking, but its the cheapest Symbian phone on the market, and a very good one at that. Cheapest colour bluetooth nokia too when I bought mine. Might be a failure for games, but its still a hell of a good and cheap symbian phone!
I wish they had made it easy for casual games developers like us to port or develop titles. Instead they had to behave like they were Sony and have us sign our life away before we even could evaluate the potential. Oh well. At least the xbox 360 is getting that part right.
Best regards,
Emmanuel
--
Fairies: new hit puzzle game from the makers of Atlantis
http://www.funpause.com/
Also probably a couple of years too early, given the non-gaming-specific hardware that mobile phones use. The fun that is playing a game on an old Gameboy, never mind a Gameboy advance or DS, is down to the hardware that makes it possible - the tiled graphics modes on the old Gameboy meant faster games, for example, than the ol' 4MHz Z80 could do on its own.
If the nGage had come with, say, 10-20 games built-in, where each game was an implementation of a classic game - space invaders, arkanoid, asteroids, pacman, tetris/columns, then many more people would have bought them. Even if these games had been £1.99 ($2.99) options to download from Nokia it would have been more tempting.
As it is, I have a gameboy emulator on my Motorola A1000, and whilst it garbles the audio it is still reasonably playable. All I need to do is get some Zelda games on it, and I'm good to go for months. I imagine I can get C64, Spectrum and CPC emulators for it as well - Uridium, Netherworld, New Zealand Story here I come (when I find the emulators anyway!).
I hope this makes people pause and reconsider the cell phone game thingies a bit, and other people who are cramming together widget functionality and saying "oh, by the way, you can play games with this thing too." (I'm looking at you, PSP.) I mean, if Nokia, being a really big company with supposedly smart people in it, couldn't do it right... what really went wrong?
I say there's a lot to be learned from Nokia's success with N-Gage (or lack of thereof).
On se Internetz nobody noes your German.
... no wonder it was a failure (I am talking about the first generation n-gage here). As far as I know, you had to turn the thing off to change the games, and the thing must have come with a 170 page manual just to change it. Plus, you looked like you had been a victim of a frisbee accident. Gee, I love to see a house built by the n-gage engineers. It would probably contain a kitchen and a living room seperated by a two door bathroom or something like that. :)
Dvorak on Doomtech
The Neo Geo puts it's hands up in a pathetic "me too!" gesture.
The Dreamcast was ignoring the whole thing, of course.
Never play chicken with a passive aggressive.
With every not-so-great (in my opinion, anyway) gadget, there is always that sliver lining. That one thing that makes you go "At least they tried...it's not so bad, really".
I never had that moment with the N-Gage. Every single aspect of its design seemed to be engineered to piss off the end user and make them throw it across the room in an unspeakable rage.
The screen's aspect ratio was 180 degrees off, the device had to be disassembled to change games, it tried to be the Swiss Army Knife of phones and failed miserably at it...the brutally awful sidetalking "feature" along with the painfully awkward keypad made it something that not even the overpowering hype could render a somewhat decent product in the minds of potential customers.
Most people I encountered wouldn't even use one if they got it for free. Until the PSP came out, there was nothing for gamers who found that the GBA/DS did not offer the kind of game library they were after. They blew a perfect chance, and no amount of hardware revising could correct the fatally undermined confidence that the public had in the entire platform.
There IS a God!
is when you look at it you are wondering ok is this a phone thats also a game system or a game system thats also a phone? cell phone companies have failed to recognize that consumers don't want multipurpose devices. They want individual devices that do one thing really really well. Thats why the ROKR is crap and the iPod is boss. Thats why the NGage is crap and the PSP(or Nintendo DS) is king.
They were quite shitty gaming consoles but more than adequate series 60 smartphones for the price.
And for chrissakes, before you start posting any sidetalking-jokes try to remember that those models havent been made for ages now.
pheel the phailure. dis-n-gage, biatches!!
i declared it a failure before it came out
eat it, nokia
i win
The really depressing part about this headline is that it probably took eight or nine senior market analysts a full quarter's worth of work to figure this out, and all they had to do was Ask Slashdot (tm). Ah well; guess they have to make their Christmas bonuses somehow.
"My heart is in the work." - Andrew Carnegie
Much more pulling power, anyway, and the little fake trees scale better.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
You really do have to admit, when it comes to the portable gaming market, Nintendo is king and will do anything it takes to protect their market space. Now, yes, the PSP has made *some* headway against big N. But, when you look at the sophistication of the PSP's hardware combined with the Sony name, it just shows how strong Nintendo's hand is when Sony only has captured a small portion of the market.
Nokia also made the mistake of not understanding that if people are buying a machine for portable gaming, the games need to be first, and all other functions secondary. Sony has made a similar mistake with their PSP, but to a much lesser extent, still the numbers reflect this gaming first trend.
To be honest, I think the "big convergence" of phones and gaming units is going to come first *from* Nintendo or Sony, perhaps partnered with a mobile phone company, rather than by the phone company itself. With their already existing Wi-Fi features, and the touch screen and mic capabilities of the Nintendo DS, it doesn't take a huge stretch of the imagination to see phone features coming in future generations. Or, at least, VOIP.
You are who you are, let no one tell you different. But, never close your mind to a new point of view.
Before any of you dismiss it with a "who wants to watch TV on their phone", you should give it a try at your local mobile phone reseller, you will be surprised. I purchased a Nokia 6630 and you should've seen the jaws of my co-workers when I showed them the latest TV news being streamed to my phone over a 3G connection. The 6630 can play fullscreen 16:9 video and has 16 bit 44Hz stereo sound. On a related note, the was recently a poll in Finland (which is where I live), asking people if they would be interested in watching TV on their phone. Slightly [b]over 60%[/b] answered YES.
While the "N-Gage" was a hilarious farce unto itself, I find it similarly amusing that Nokia will now be "concentrating on mobile music for the rest of the year."
I have an idea: how about concentrating on making a decent phone? You know, one with practical and ergonomic telephony features?
-b
myselfmusic
I have the original Ngage (Not the QD) It does FM, SD card support, full stereo mp3 playing (hardware playback, not software like the QD) The games are relatively fun, i can monitor people's bluetooth with it, and i could at one time play over my cell phone connection against other people (haven't tried that in a long time). I think what made it fail was the entry price point of 300 dollars. Just way too much for its market..
Maybe it's because i got my Ngage for 100 dollars with 6 games, but i don't think it's that much of a failure, just could have been better.
So why not team with Nintendo and make their phones play Ninento games?
It took them a while, but Nokia finally acknowledges what most of the gaming public already knew. Seriously, when you have good-to-great handheld systems like the DS, the GBA, and the PSP out, what room is there for a mediocre system like the N-Gage? Heck, even if those three weren't out at this point, I don't think Nokia's handheld taco would have survived.
But I love tacos!
hmm, wonder if their new 770 linux based tablet will suffer the same fate?
It was finally released in europe & US last week and there has been a rush. New stock due in next week
When the seagulls follow the trawler, it's because they think sardines will be thrown in to the sea
A shame, though. I was looking forward to the Rifts game. I don't own an N-Gage, but if the Rifts game became popular I might have purchased one. Without continued support for the platform I doubt I will invest, though. Rifts URL: http://www.n-gage.com/rifts-promiseofpower/
To shreds you say...
A full analysis of "what went wrong" with the N-Gage could easily fill a book, and perhaps it will someday. There were certainly design issues aplenty, especially with the original device.
But more than anything, I think Nokia's major mistake was lack of understanding, perhaps not lack of understanding of gaming as a market or a business or a segment or consumer base, but of actual gamers themselves. I'm sure they must have done some sort of market research, but it apparently was focused more on cel-phone fans and mobile-gadgeteers ("What cool features would you like in a phone?") than on gamers ("what makes a good mobile gaming experience?").
They did market to gamers, or at least a merketing-executive's vision of what a gamer might be like, but it seemed woefully misdirected: one early print ad featured a 1993-style gen-x grunge rocker dude, playing his N-Gage in a totally X-treme manner while atop a skateboard.
The launch titles included some of the hottest game licenses... of the original Playstation of the mid 1990s. Tomb Raider, probably the one game most closely associated with the N-Gage, hadn't been a hot property for years before her N-Gage debut. Once again, the N-Gage seemed drastically out of touch.
The result? At launch, the N-Gage was already (among gamers at least) not much more than a punchline. A Penny Arcade strip from around the launch parodied the launch event at a local game store (nobody came except two employees) and online forums were merciless in blasting the device. It's now three years later, the design has been vastly improved and a few decent games have trickled out, but the N-Gage has never really been more than the butt of jokes. Those who do own one tend to get defencive about it, (it's not my fault, my gran bought it by mistake, etc.) as though having N-Gage is like having some horrible disease. It's been struggling since it came out, and the competition has only increased, with the DS and PSP now vying for more of the marketplace.
But the industry rarely seems to learn its own lessons, no matter how hard they come. Tapwave's Zodiac is already dead, and the Gizmondo seems near certain to follow. How many more millions need to be wasted before someone gets it: before you release a gaming device, understand gamers!
Andrew Lenahan http://www.starblind.com/
As an ex Nokia employee, I had the opportunity to purchase one of the first revisions of the Ngage at a low price. While I can say that the screen was awesome for regular cell phone use, it was simply too small for gaming, and an awkward shape. The physical design just plain sucked. The games were OK at best, and the whole Taco talking position was so reviled that when they updated the Ngage to the QD model, they listed "Classic Talking" as a new feature. Unfortunately, the device was just doomed to be a failure from the onset. Too costly, too small a screen, and mediocre games. Thank goodness I was able to recoup the cost entirely by selling on ebay. I'm more than happy with my 6820 all in all.
"/.'ers ask, why is this news?"
Thinking that failure of Nokia outsells whole Windows Smartphone platform offering.
Anyways, mobile-TV is probably going to succeed a fair bit better than N-Gage. This time they have their form factor correct from the beginning with Nokia N92.
I develop and sell mobile applications and games... I looked at this unit when it was released, but it was locked down. They had some aproval process you had to pass before they would certify your game to be sold... That lost my interest immediately and I stuck with Pocket PC which has been a big success.
Locing it down like that kills the hobbiest angle and dooms it from the start... bad call IMO.
So let me get this straight. They're admitting what we've known since before the launch?
Nothing brightens my day more than the failure of others!
N-Gage may have been a failure, but N-Gage QD was the best multimedia phone you could get for a hundred bucks. I still use one, and I'm not a bit disappointed. There are even some killer titles (Pathway to Glory, System Rush, High Seize, Worms World Party etc.) for it, which makes it an excellent choice for a casual gamer. So, I'm a bit disappointed now, but I hope Nokia comes up with something really cool in a year or two.
At least they are honest, I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft still going to try to put out a press release declaring the 360 fiasco 'best launch ever'
Come on Microsoft, I dare you!
At least the N-Gage actually WORKS...
Anyone remember Nokia's top brass insultig the entire gaming community before the launch?
Something about how no adult would dare be seen playing a gameboy advance?
Guess what, no one would dare be seen talking on your sideways phone, or especially, no one could be seen changing the game cartdrige without being ridiculed.
They fixed those issues in the second model, much too late, and with all the bad sentiment they created by insulting their potential custommers, I'm surprised they sold so many.
You can't take the sky from me...
"As if the fact that the Nokia N-Gage is a pile of shit was not enough by itself to keep gamers everywhere from purchasing it, the head of Nokia's entertainment division decided to insult his target audience. In an article over at Gamespot he had this to say regarding their competition.
"Game Boy is for 10-year-olds," said Ilkka Raiskinen, head of Nokia's entertainment and media arm. "If you're 20 or 25 years old, it's probably not a good idea to draw a Game Boy out of your pocket on a Friday night in a public space."
Dear Mr. Nokia, my name is Gabe. You might know me better as a member of the lucrative 18-25 year old male demographic. That's right, I am a 24 year old early adopter with disposable income just burning a hole in my pocket and a thirst for the latest technological gadgets. I also happen to be a gamer which makes me the exact sort of person who might purchase your new cellular phone/portable game system. Unfortunately for you that will never happen.
Your first mistake was creating a dual purpose product that fails miserably at both of its purposes. Your phone is awkward and uncomely. Your game system is undesirable and insipid.
Your second mistake was in allowing Mr. Raiskinen to ever open his fucking mouth in public. His statement is so absurd that it borders on the humorous. In fact if I were not quite certain that he was serious I would think it was a joke. Not a good idea to take out a game boy in a public place? Does this man even live on this planet? Did he make these comments from inside some kind of protective bubble orbiting the earth, insulated from the day to day happenings of it's inhabitants? If I am out with my buddies on a Friday night and we are waiting in line for a movie or some other event I can guarantee that Game Boys will come out. Not one of my friends is without a GBA. They are practically a necessity at this point. Like bread or water. It is the poor young man still playing snake on his cell phone in the airport that gets the pitting look from our group.
We even strung our link cables across the seats in the airplane on our way to E3 in order to partake in some four player Puyo Pop. Whereas airline regulations will not even allow me to turn on your masterfully designed game system while anywhere near a fucking airplane much less play a game to pass the time. Oh and speaking of great design, having to remove the battery in order to change games...brilliant.
Between your insulting advertising, shitty fucking product and infuriating public comments it's almost like you are TRYING to get gamers to hate you. I honestly cannot understand how a single company could make so many mistakes. I await your next move with absolute fear because at this rate there is no telling what you might do. Perhaps Nokia agents will scour the globe seeking out gamers and then kicking them firmly in the yam sack. Or maybe letters! Mailed out to gamers worldwide that upon opening release deadly nanomachines into the air that once inhaled by the gamer begin to devour him from the inside out. God only knows what horrors await us gamers at the hands of these Finnish devils. Stay vigilant my friends! "
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
The DS just has it right
To bad Nokia didn't do it "right"
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
The gameboy's screen was wider than it was tall.
With all that dark fiber they own + WiFiMax I could see a Google branded mobile phone. VoIP. Streaming video, and goodness know what else.
Why? Location based ads. Google Local for you cell is already available but just imagine the ad dollars. What someplace to eat? Click and call baby.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
The fact that it sold 2,000,000 is simply astounding.
The screen's aspect ratio was 180 degrees off
That does absolutely nothing to the aspect ratio. Perhaps you mean 90 degrees?
I'm sure this has something to do with the manufacturer's tendency to use substandard spiders in the construction of n-Gages.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/11/26
~Ben
The handheld market is still owned by Nintendo.
I'm amazed why is everyone talking about the DS and the PSP, havent you guys heard of the GP32 and GP2X? They're both excellent products capable of some nifty emulation, which is precisely reasonable if you seek to play true classics on the road. Heck, the new GP2X can playback video at almost HDTV resolutions full speed and hooks to a TV straight out of the box! Now if only they'd incorporate some sort of cellphone into the GP line of handhelds that'd be ultra kewl! :)
Because Nintendo doesn't want to. Would you want to team up with someone who's just publicly admitted "I know nothing about gaming"?
And no, Nintendo also has no interest in their mobile telephony know-how.
My other account has mod points.
Well there's the N91 they're working on. My friend works at Nokia and has a prototype of it, which looks pretty cool. It's a little bulky, and I think by the time they release it a 4GB hard drive will be a bad idea compared to 4 GB of flash, but I was pretty impressed with the music interface and quality when I tried it. Of course the $700 + price tag (without a plan) is pretty damn prohibitive.
NGage games were behind the times. If they were HW accelerated then there could have been some slick graphics. Compare to the handhelds like gameboy. It's not even close. Java while decent for graphics is not good enough. There is a hurdle still for that language. Mistake by Nokia to use java .
N-gage wasn't a success because it was a bad as a phone, and not as good as a dedicated game machine. However, N-gage *games* were a success, becuase you can play them on all symbian S60 phones and because Nokia pushed game development so much, now all S60 phones have a access to a huge library of games.
Another failure of the N-Gage stategy was to restrict access to the built in 3D library. N-gage had a special 3D library and development library that only large mobile game companies had access to. But there are many small developers too that can make good games, given the right tools, to cut them out of the picture just makes your platform less attractive.
"...mobile gaming will not be a focus until 2007..."
...when they announce their tie-in with "projected-to-be-successful" Gizmondo.
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
It wasn't really a good phone, and it wasn't a good gaming system. I'd rather carry a gameboy micro and my cell phone.
Dear Nokia,
I'm sure that you thought having something that looked like a bedroom tileset from a blind and senile ol' lady was a good thing. I think it was a great joke, but 2 years is a bit slow off the mark to call, April Fools. Please consider making your phones, phones. I mean realy, I like my toys. But I just want a solid phone with decent reception. If you want to waste your money going into hand held games, who am I to say, but please consider next time the hot secritary without brains going down on a head R 'n D man does a good phone not make.
Signed,
Upset Nokia User
First question they should've thought about was: Why would/should consumers choose us?
1. Are our games fun?
2. Is our technology up to speed for today's standards?
3. Are our games logically affordable?
4. Is the unit innovative, easy for someone to use as a gaming system and cell phone while keeping in mind portability?
Answer to all of those is a resounding no. The system was horrible. Compared to what already existed, the graphics sucked and the games sucked. It was like taking a giant step backwards in the gaming industry. So who within the company honestly thought such a thing would be a good idea?
Granted game development and being "fun" is left up to the 3rd party developers, but even in taking on a project, "Hey, Nokia wants us to create a game for their new system"... one should think, "We better make this game damn good or we're screwed."
Releasing something less than amazing on a non-popular system is suicide.
I realize that sometimes success is based off of taking risks, but that also assumes the heads in charge know how to use logic. You can't just take a stab in the dark and expect to hit gold.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
All Your Base Are Belong to Us!
What he says.
In Europe and USA, many cities already started DVB-H transmissions of TV channels, it's a digital terrestrial broadcast similar to ATSC, it infact uses some of the frequence of a DVB-T channel.
This technology doesn't use your calling minutes, it's a tuner integrated in the phone picking up the free signal.
Nokia, Samsung and other companies already have some prototype phones, and they all have QVGA screens (320x240) with a 2.5" diagonal. It seems to me a very good start and I bet it will take off as soon as the phones and the channels are available.
Let me give some perspective from a game developer who strictly develops mobile games for cell phones. Basically, developers have to make each game playable on as many cell phone models as possible if we want to reach the broadest market. That means usually we make a few versions of a single game (high-end, mid-range, and low-end) versions of the game, and those get ported to dozens (hundreds if you count language localization) versions. The games we make that get developed for Nokia Series 60 (high-end) can run on the N-Gage, but they could also probably run on a Nokia 6600, Nokia 6680, maybe Nokia 3650, etc. Thus, it's not utilizing N-Gage's advanced hardware. If we did, however, make a game that specifically utilized N-Gage's hardware, the game wouldn't run on any other devices and would be very unportable. N-Gage's market base is simply not large enough for that incentive. So, in a sense, it's circular: N-Gage has a small user-base, developers don't want to make games for it, there aren't attractive games for N-Gage, no one buys it. It will be much more likely to see Sony PSP eventually have phone features in conjunction with Sony Ericsson than to see a Nokia device adopt high-level gaming capabilities successfully. On a related note, while Nokia and other phone manufacturers are trying to push the limits by introducing 3D hardware to their "normal" consumer phones, publishers are also pushing developers to come out with awesome break-through titles that rival PSP quality but still fail to realize the MOST BASIC CONCEPT of cell phone gaming. This is: Cell phone gamers like to play games that can be launched within seconds, played for minutes, repeated for months. Just as you develop the games for a lowest common denominator phone model, you also have to develop for the lowest common denominator user.
I worked at a Maryland-area Gamestop when the N-Gage came out. About 3 weeks after the release, we had our first visit from an N-Gage rep. He seemed to have quite a bit of energy, and spewed the typical "we rule, Game Boy sucks" speech, with little acctual details. Within another month, he was gone, replaced by this woman who reminded me of Hyacinth from "Keeping Up Appearances". By the end of the year, she was replaced by this thin redheaded guy of near-40, who was very timid. He straight asked us what *we* would do, if we were Nokia, to improve the system's image. The specs on the system didn't kill it in my mind. The unimpressive games didn't do it. It was the fact that the Nokia representatives, who had an abnormally high turnover rate, seemed to rapidly grow more desperate. It was a pathetic sight that officially killed the system for us. (Addendum: I kinda feel sorry for the 12-year old kid who traded in his Xbox and PS2 to pre-order an N-Gage, but he seemed to have no regrets...)
"...mobile gaming will not be a focus until 2007. Nokia is concentrating on mobile music for the rest of this year, and next year's main push will be on driving mobile television."
When are they going to focus on mobile calling?
Sticking N-Gage to ur ears while receive or making calls = wierd.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-Gage
Symbian and arm processor.
It stunk, plain and simple.
Who wants a boomerang controller?
how can 2 million in 2 years not be a success? I'd give anything for my business to have a product to sell that many with a profit.
I own an N-gage QD, and I couldn't be happier.
You haters clearly don't understand the capabilities of what is essentially a gamepad-enabled Symbian Series-60 Phone!
With Emulation (via Symbian Series 60 Emulation software), My Ngage-QD plays (with full sound and graphics):
C-64
Sega Master System
NES
GBC
MSX
Spectrum
MAME (Simpler arcade games, like Pengo, Mr. Do, Pacman, Q*Bert, etc.)
DOOM
Super NES (Slow, but playable!)
Genesis (Sound ain't too hot)
Console Games! Not even PSP and DS can boast of that many systems yet!
In addition to that, it also can act as a MP3/Ogg/MOD/XM/IT/S3M Player, a Video Player (tilt 90 degrees!), An e-reader, an Internet Browser, a Bible, etc... and a select few licensed games have been outstanding (LIVE Multiplayer for Worms World Party, for example.)
The emulators are actually useful because you have an actual gamepad, a regular Symbian cellphone system makes this crap impossible to play, but it's bliss to play with the N-Gage QD due to a dedicated gamepad!
Of course, Nokia intended the Ngage-Line for its MMC-based Ngage Games mostly.... But there's so much Symbian Series 60 software out there! The emulators are top notch, and ghastly sidetalking is not an issue with a bluetooth headset! With a 1GB MMC card, I can load the baby up with movies, MP3s, ROMS, Pictures, you name it!
Let me know when the PSP or DS can emulate the above systems, plus play Audio and Video easily, plus have internet and email access via GPRS without jumping through hundreds of back-doors, cracks, and hacks, let me know!
Hell, I've even played Nintendo games cooperatively using Bluetooth! (Thru VNES!) Take that, DS!
So to all you Ngage haters, take a walk... because you literally DO NOT understand the latent capabilities of this device!
Well, according to the ADAC-Test Portuguese are the third best drivers in europe. I hope that (but I'm not sure if) you're one of them. :-)
http://motorcenter-content.sueddeutsche.de/automob il/artikel/207/63144/
I got a camera. I got a PDA. I got a game boy. I don't want all that crap on my phone. What I want is a phone that I can make and receive calls anywhere I'm at. The rest is just bullshit.
I wonder how many of these "insightful" posters have had a N-Gage QD in their hands. Because I'm greatly pleased with it. No side talking, cheap with everything I want and telco-free. There are a lot of nice games (nothing to do with the crapfest you can get for java) plus you can "preview" them for free; the unmount-to-change card is solved; you can plug 1GB MMC which is more than enough; you can read e-books, even see some anime while in a trip. There are also lots of utilities for symbian: metronome, guitar tuner come very handy for a musician.
All in all I think is quite a good deal. Maybe the first ngage had too bad a reputation for the QD to overcome it.
Come on, there are several QUALITY phones that can handle games, but yours just plain sucked. That has to take some sort of skill. I would have expected Nokia to just rip off other companies like every other phone company seems to do. I personally have never used an N-Gage, but just seeing the commercials and seeing the size of it, i have a few things to point out. - When you look at the phone/video game/thing, the buttons are the size of ladybugs, you would have to be phenomenally precise to be able to hit those things without hitting three others at the same time. - Not that I'm saying games with bad graphics are necessarily BAD, but when looking at it, it looks like Doom quality. I would expect higher from new games - The games were commonly based on an expectation that others would have the n-gage and therefore you would be albe to play multi-player, nice job on that one, Nokia. - Lastly, the thing looks like it weighs quite a bit for a phone. I say nay, Nokia, I say nay...
I did a focus group for this wretched device. They asked questions like "Which word do you feel most acurately describes the N-gage: innovative, or revolutionary". They made made no attempt to investigate any negative feelings we had towards it. Any spontaneous negative comments were not recorded by the test person. They deserved to fail...
For the time being, ask the Brits -- http://www.rok.tv/