N Gage
Nokia’s next generation smartphone gaming platform has only just gone fully ‘live’. That should indicate some of the problems that the N-Gage has come across.
The N-Gage name may be familiar to you, as it was used for a couple early s60 gaming focused smartphones by Nokia. The units sold disappointingly, despite innovative hardware ( FM radio, stereo sound, and stereo line recording). Part of the reason was the odd form factor, with a landscape device but small portrait screen, plus oddities like having to remove the battery and reboot to change games (on the original). But the main problem was that people didn’t seem to want phones that looked like game consoles – it seemed they’d rather buy phones and games consoles separately. Witness the success of Nokia’s S60 smartphones generally and that of Nintendo’s Gamboy and DS products.
Fast forward to 2007 and, after years of rumors, Nokia officially relaunches N-Gage as next gen, always-connected games platform that will run on most of its newer smartphones. Thus, rather than having to rely of people wanting to buy specific N-Gage hardware, the many tens of millions of Nseries users out there can simply download the NGage client over the air and start stocking up on exciting multi player games. No distribution costs and a massive installed base of compatible hardware. Thats the vision anyway.
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