Game Over - Nokia's nGage Meets the End of the Line

[Mike Temporale]

http://www.laptoplogic.com/news/detail.php?id=177

"Nokia has announced that they will not be developing updated versions of the N-Gage. This funky cell phone/portable gaming machine was released in October 2003 after a massive marketing campaign to promote the N-Gage as the "new" and "extreme" cell phone that is also a gaming machine. Antti Vasara, Nokia’s vice president for corporate strategy admits, " N-Gage is still being sold but it was not a success in the sense of developing a new category. We learned that people want to play games an all devices. As such we are integrating the gaming software into Series 60 phones."



Mobile phone gaming has just taken a turn for the worst, or has it? Did the nGage fail because it was a poorly designed gaming device/phone? Or did it fail because people want their phones to be phones first, and gaming devices second - or third/fourth/fifth? You decide.
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"I have no special talents, I am only passionately curious" - Albert Einstein

[Stinger]

The problem with the N-Gage was that it was a jack of all trades but master of none. It wasn't as good a handheld console as a Gameboy Advance and it wasn't as good a phone as pretty much any high-end phone. In both handheld console and cell phone terms, it's sales were pretty poor.

However, as a smartphone, it was a big success. To put things in perspective - the Nokia N-Gage sold 2 million units. That probably as many units as all Microsoft Smartphone sales for this year put together! According to Nokia, the N-Gage actually made a profit too, no doubt because it was based on existing components, including the software.

For $100 SIM-free, you got a smartphone, with full web-browser, expandable memory, colour screen, bluetooth, etc. It was actually a pretty good deal, especially since you could play homebrew/freeware on it.

However, it will always be compared to other handheld consoles and therefore a flop.

[Jerry Raia]

It's ugly too.
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[3125] [BlackJack] [8525]

[Foxbat121]

It just spent $$$ placing 20+ pages ads in many tech magazines promoting its Mortorola game phone and mobile gaming. From what I see, it's not even a smart phone.

[wshwe]