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

[Mike Temporale]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.laptoplogic.com/news/detail.php?id=177' target='_blank'>http://www.laptoplogic.com/news/detail.php?id=177</a><br /><br /></div><i>"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."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.smartphonethoughts.com/images/Temporale-20051128-nGage.jpg" alt="User submitted image" title="User submitted image"/> <br /><br />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. ;)

[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.

[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]

According to Nokia, the N-Gage actually made a profit too, no doubt because it was based on existing components, including the software.The N-Gage was based on existing components and operating system poorly suited to gaming. It also failed to live up to Nokia's grandiose expectations. There must be hundreds of thousands of N-Gages sitting in a landfill. The N-Gage was never customized for the American market. When the original N-Gage was released the dominant US carriers used CDMA, not GSM. Since then the situation has changed. Jack of All Trades devices seldom succeed in the US.

The N-Gage could never quite live up to my smartphone needs because it runs Symbian, not Palm or Windows Mobile.

[davidcali]

http://www.smartphonethoughts.com/images/Temporale-20051128-nGage.jpg
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I agree its a yuk yuk ugly :x