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23 Nov 2005
Nokia is holding off on mobile gaming for a few years and will not be building new versions of the N-Gage gaming phone.
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.
"N-Gage is still being sold but it was not a success in the sense of developing a new category," said Antti Vasara, Nokia's vice president for corporate strategy.
"We learnt that people want to play games on all devices. As such we are integrating the gaming software into Series 60 phones."
Vasara explained that screen sizes and quality will be much more conducive to mobile gaming systems by 2007.
The N-Gage was developed by a dedicated 'tiger team' at Nokia and was hailed as the future of all games platforms at its launch. But Nokia only sold two million units in three years, against projections of at least six million.
A Nokia spokesman said that the company intends to continue producing N-Gage devices primarily for the Chinese and Indian markets.
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Do you agree?
N gage still rocks
Its true that most people got rid of their n gage, but would u believe that i still have not one, but 7 of them. The n gage was a revolution, it was like playstation pocket nowadays. With its elegant design the original was the best nokia launched. Bluetooth, USB, Music Player. Eveything needed. I'm so into n gage that i have a bout 11 posters in my room. My current phone is a 7700, well, i made a custom cover for it that reads n gage QD SE., lol, but hey ir would be awesome for the n gage to kickback in, and in better screen quality, as the ngage came in 4096 color screens, and currently we are up to 1/2 million colors. I will still HUNT for more n gage(s).
Posted by: N_gage_ur_life 07 Feb 2007
what the peope prefer
what we would perfer is a new look some what in the direction of the sidekick lets face it the n-gage both models looked like a kids toy and some better third party support even if we can work in some first party games and have the retailers get a better reason for sellin the games u could also some mobile tv which plugs into your tv and directly recod shows on at least 1gig of internal memory an expandable sd slot beacuse almost everyone has a sd card hey fm radio couldn't hurt either and the more accesories people can see to buy will really help look at i-pod the only reason their doing so well is beacuse u know when u buy a i-pod there ARE PLENTY OF ACCESORIES out there to chose from and please don't price over 350 without contract or over 250 with new activation gps is doing good now a days I already have a few desings in mind and backward capabilities is perfect and of couse we need to see plenty of adds beacuse plenty of people I know never heard of it before I have more suggestions in case u want to know u can e-mail me beacuse asking a consumer what they want is much beter than thinking u know what they want
Posted by: ICE Online 28 Dec 2006
we want ngage i. n-gage fans its a must read. do not miss this.
you just cant do this to us. we ngage fans have been waiting for the new model desperatly. nokia had to give a new model of ngage which should have a camera with atleast 2.megapix and a bigger screen. i have n-gage QD and a N-GAGE.and will collect every model of ngage nokia will release.
Posted by: Makhija dinesh 24 Apr 2006
what????
I love my n-gage and I think that everybody who has one does the same. I think that the problem was the price of the games and also it was not so divulgated as it shoud be. Everytime I showed my n-gage nd explained to people how great it cn be,people got amazed and wanted to have one as well. But here,in Brazil,they failed.They didn´t work well.I repeat,I love my n-gage!!!!
Posted by: Gabriel 29 Nov 2005
NGAGE ARENA RAWKS!!!
The device might not have a vast library but for those few games that have the NGAGE ARENA feature rules!!! All games should take note of this and follow this footsteps if it wish to use Mobile Gaming to be played how it's supposed to be played, Head to Head. Note that there was no mention on NGage Arena, just the device itself. Hope the Arena Feature will be implemmented on ALL series 60 phones.
Posted by: Phil Ayepeeno 28 Nov 2005
N-GAGE ARENA PLATFORM
The games themselves are great -- the main problem for me was the clumsly feel of the n-gage device as compared to my gameboy sp which is the perfect mobile gaming device for me. Nokia product designers could learn a lot from nintendo's simple controls and well-spaced buttons. Its cool to hear that series 60 phones will support N-GAGE games and hopefully the arena as well. I think they did some great things with the N-GAGE Arena platform which allowed game producers to rapidly develop multi-user games. link: http://arena.n-gage.com/n-gage/web/en/index.html
Posted by: brandon flowers 28 Nov 2005
NOKIA'S FAULT!!!
I have a n-gage system and I can say that it has so few titles that I would had thought twice before I had bought it in 2003! I hate Nokia for this! They only sell programing licences for about 5K EUR and dont give enough care for the developer teams! I hope other companies like Sony/Ericson find theyr way now that Nokia has failed with its costumers!
Posted by: SpazFunBag 26 Nov 2005
No surprise there then
From the start Nokia were questioned by the gaming community about this device and yet they persisted. In true Nokia fashion the whole project was kept closely to their chest and they choose thier normal product development techniques and it seems they didnt look at what the public or more importantly what the gamers wanted.
Posted by: Steve B 25 Nov 2005