nokia's n-gage handheld

[123456]

Picture this:

TV Commercial 1
Some teenager standing at a busstop happily playing with his n-gage a game of ... let's say Tomraider. Suddenly somebody from behind says :'Hey I know that gal. That's Lara Croft! Guys, take look at this.' Our teen looks around and to find [insert popular rock group or rap crew] oogling his mobile-gaming machine

Air that thing before Chirstmas this year and the N-Gage sells like hell.

TV Commercial 2
The same teen on a party standing alone in the corner. All the other guests are either making out or using some other brand of mobile to take pictures, make videos or sending messages to one another while they are enjoying their lifes quite liberaly. Our teen flips out of his pocket an N-Gage and starts typing too. A quaterback (full uniform, two girls in each arm) turns to the misspend youth saying: 'Still playing games, little man. Get a life, looser.' Then everyone at the party comments with wild hillarious laughter while our teen in tears runs to the next toilet to cut his wrist with his own Nokia mobile-wannabe.

Show that thing twice. Once in a Sex and the City commercial, once during a Simpsons break. I'll promise most smaller toy stores won't even stock the N-Gage.

This is the gaming buisness. It never was about what the gamers like or want. It's about what sells for the highest profit. And that is determined by a product's but mostly by a company's image. And image is about 60% marketing with 35% value and about 5% quality.

For the vast majority of gamers who matter (those who actually buy software instead of copying and those who buy a game more than once a year) Sega's image now is better than it has been for more than 10 years. The last time there was such in interest in Sega as a developer of console games, was in 1991, shortly before the launch of the SNES.
If any company can make the N-Gage a success, it's Sega.

 

[synergy]

With the way the Ngage game swapping method works I doubt it will sell many initial units until they come out with rev 2.
In the current form you have to turn off the unit, remove the battery case, remove the battery and then swap the game SD card. Not very easy process.
Another interesting handheld gaming unit that doubles as a PDA is at http://www.tapwave.com/
That looks cool. They need to come out with mac compatability though. Since it is PalmOS based I don't see why they can't do that. The sooner the better though.

 

[mmmbop]

Originally posted by synergy
With the way the Ngage game swapping method works I doubt it will sell many initial units until they come out with rev 2.
In the current form you have to turn off the unit, remove the battery case, remove the battery and then swap the game SD card. Not very easy process.

This will kill the product. I can't believe Nokia designed it this way.

N-Gage just won't cut it in this revision. Operators are more interested in selling camera phones this period - so if the game swapping design doesn't kill the product, the operators will.

 

[technocoy]

dude

i own all three systems and have played splinter cell on both PS2 and Gamecube. You can not tell a noticeable difference. If xBox is so much better, why is it that most games that are made for both platforms recieve a higher rating on Gamecube? i will find proof for you if you require. Marketing fellas.... who has money for marketing? Microsucks... They lose so much money on that system it's not even funny. If they were any other company they would have fallen by now. The only two games that i rave about are Halo and my friends mech game, and they don't make me feel as though the money was well spent for this system. Now playing Metroid or fzero on my gamecube... silent hill on my playstation, or wipeout... thats fun. Hell even WarioWorld is bad-ass... You are reaching for something that's not there.

Technocoy

 

[Schiffi]

I can't believe we're discussing this. Nintendo will woop N-Gage's ass. If the original gameboy in it's four shades of gray greatness can crush the Gamegear and Sega NOMAD, the N-Gage will be no problem. Nintendo's biggest selling point is it's library of billions of games. The GBA is also, how many years old? 3-4? That's a long time.

And on the consol discussion, spec wise the NGC is the fastest. The only reason DOA probably didn't have the "power" is because the company probably developed the game using a feature only the geforce 3 can provide. I can't say what feature, but the PS2 and XboX both have better blurring techniques so it's probably that.