Nokia N-Gage - Videogame History #46 - Retro Review
After the appearance of the Game Boy in the videogame market, many companies wanted to join this business in order to acquire a small piece of cake, the profits that Nintendo achieved with this portable console were very striking figures for many, in the year 2001 Nintendo The Game Boy Advance would take its third portable console with a rather peculiar design, this console was the inspiration for a company that was focused on the world of phones, the great Nokia, which at that time was launching very striking mobile devices in the market. which could play small games, but it was never thought that Nokia would have in mind to join mobile devices with portable consoles.
Under this concept Nokia developed a hybrid portable console, which had all the functions of a cell phone with multimedia options and video games, with a rather peculiar design very similar to the Game Boy Advance, was launched on the market in October 2003 with the name Nokia N-Gage, with the main objective of competing with the Nintendo handheld console, a task that would be quite difficult, however its functions were quite attention, so it was considered a fairly advanced product for the time.
The N-Gage offered different functions, it was compatible with the MMC memory which is considered the SD mother memory, there you could store documents, videos, songs in MP3 formats, this could be reproduced without problems by their respective applications, they worked under the operating system Symbian OS 6.1 that at that time was considered one of the most complete systems entering what we know today as Smartphone.
In the central part we had a vertical color screen where we could perform the various tasks, and on the sides of this were different buttons which had their respective functions, it could clearly be seen that on the left was a D-pad that served both to select different menus on the screen to play video games, on the sides of the console were the microphone, hands-free connectors, speakers and on/off button.
Third Party companies were very interested in this device, because Nokia was a company with a lot of experience in the world of cell phones, its new device offered the necessary power to reproduce 3D and 2D graphics, games like Call of Duty, Tomb Raider, Sega Rally, Sonic N, King of Extreme Fighters, Rayman 3 and many more appeared on this portable console, causing the attention of the gamer public.
Everything pointed to a resounding success, a hybrid portable console with good power, a multi-tasking device, a good level of graphic processing, a very striking catalog of games, why it was not successful, there are many reasons why the N-Gage it did not have commercial success, but we will only remember the most relevant ones, the main one was its screen, being vertical not all the games were seen in an appropriate way, for that time the panoramic format was being adapted, the users that observed this did not they liked the idea, video games like Sonic N were very small by two bands that cut the image of the game to maintain the aspect ratio, the screen was placed in this way because its operating system was not compatible with widescreen, this way They sacrificed this great functionality.
The distribution of buttons was somewhat confusing for many people, so it was a bit complicated to send a simple text message and play any videogame, in addition to speaking in your phone function you should place the device in a slightly strange position. uncomfortable, but one of the reasons that rejected the N-Gage video game market was the way the cartridges were changed, usually the portable consoles had an opening anywhere that would allow the user to change the game, in the N-Gage said opening did not exist, we had to turn off the device, remove the back cover, remove the battery and finally remove the MMC cartridge from the device, to then perform the same process but in reverse, you really do not know what Nokia thought By making this process so cumbersome, the truth is that he turned a good idea into a great disaster.
The N-Gage only came to sell 1.3 million units worldwide, it is not a bad number, but if we compare it with its main competitor the Game Boy Advance that sold more than 81 million, we can see the great defeat it had in the market, despite the great defects that this portable console had was a great innovation at the time, in 2003 there was no device capable of performing all these functions, one of the companies that took advantage of all this was Sony with the legendary PSP, but undoubtedly Nokia will take the credits for being the pioneer in trying to give a complete entertainment through this small device, leaving a mark in the shadows in the history of video games.
Source
See You!!!
N-Gage is modified gaming
I loved Nokia when I was younger, it was my favorite mobile company. I didn't know they made (primary) gaming devices too.
From your post I think N-Gage had some design flaws, but I can see it was strong for its time too. At least it tried something new. How many companies are doing that now?
Good job on this post, I included it in my Gaming Daily, I'll be glad if you check it out.
When the N-Gage first came out, Nokia send out female models to GameStop stores with N-Gages strapped to the waists. Imagine playing an N-Gage 6 inches away from a beautiful woman's waist. lol. In 2005 Nokia came out with the N-Gage QD which fixed alot of the the design issues, but it was too little too late. I never thought of N-Gage as a game system, but rather a phone that played games. So I liken it more to an Iphone than a PSP. Regardless it was ahead of its time.