Comments on: Nokia N-Gage 2.0 Is Fail 2.0

By: Ovi Maps Racing Looks Freakin Cool | Symbian-Guru.com

Ovi Maps Racing Looks Freakin Cool | Symbian-Guru.com — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 22:20:46 +0000

[...] Nokia announced it was killing off N-Gage, I assumed that also meant the game development department inside Nokia was being killed off. On [...]

By: Wampyre

Wampyre — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:16:58 +0000

It’s really a mix of all the above mentioned facts.
1. Little support for Nokia phones in general
2. Lack of good graphics.

Some of the games in overall are quite fun to play, which was the main reason I bought the games in the first place. Seeing the end is therefore a bit painful as I wanted to do things the “right way”. It’s also quite decent when it comes to the graphics at least when playing the games on handsets like the N95 and N82.

It’s not a secret that some with some googling you’ll be able to easily find “modified version” of the games, but I did my best to support them and that they’ll close down the service is like letting their legal customers down.

Anyway, you catch my opinion.

By: adam@iunlock

adam@iunlock — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:48:40 +0000

Sloan, I couldn’t agree with you more. After trying a couple N-Gage games many months ago on my N95, I simply wasn’t impressed with the graphics on anything available. There was just no “WOW” factor for me. Even with dozens of titles released so far, not a single game was built to take advantage of the PowerVR MBX GPU in the N95 series or the N82. In terms of hardware potential, both of these phones are capable of smoothly running 99% of the more impressive games built for the iphone. There really is very little difference between the processor in the iphone 2g/3g, and that in the N95/N82. But unfortunately, had any N-Gage game used the OpenGL ES API’s for the N95/N82, it would not have been compatible with any other N-Gage phone. N-Gage games were built to be compatible with not just average phones like the N81 or N85, but also the least common denominator, the N96. I wish at least a couple of N-Gage games had been written with my N95 in mind. They may not have sold as many copies, but it certainly would have kept me from abandoning the platform so quickly. Anyway, I have to leave it at that. I get too frustrated whenever Nokia’s recent choices in the hardware department come up in discussion :)

By: ming387

ming387 — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:13:16 +0000

I think N-Gage failed because it was released pre-maturely. What Nokia needed was a huge list of phones that supported N-Gage 2.0 including S40 phones and then launch N-Gage.

That guys at the gaming dept were confused themselves. This is what they needed for N-Gage to succeed…

1) Mass line-up of “existing” phones with support to N-Gage at least over 50 phone models, rather than limited to mostly N-Series phones. They failed here because only new phones supported N-Gage and their new phones weren’t selling very well.

2)Charge lower rates for their games. The iphone was successful for their games because they were dirt cheap. Even if the game sucked on the iphone and many of them do, paying a buck for a game is not going to upset the customer and make them not give other games a try. N-Gage games should not cost anymore than 5$ at most. Nokia was charging like $15 a game when N-Gage was released.

3) Game library is too small, a lot of bad games and not organized. Too few games – period. And games are not organized into catagorized so user can easliy find say a action game versus a chess like board game. A loft of the games are already out over half a year before the N-Gage version, people who really want the game already got it. So why wait half a year and paid more especially when some of the games have no added value.

Those 3 items are the cause of the sh*t fall…

I’m going to post this on Nokia Conversation as well.

By: Fab

Fab — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 22:53:02 +0000

I’ve got 20 of those games on my phone and they’re all cracked. So I don’t worry much in reactivating those games should I format my phone. But I’ll miss Ngage. I’ve really had fun with it.

By: Sloan Bowman

Sloan Bowman — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:46:22 +0000

All I will say is this is no surprise to me. N-Gage started out as a really great concept but it was never followed through. The games that came out where, well lets just say not impressive. Nokia stopped putting GPU’s in their N-Series devices which caused the game-play to be lackluster at best.

In my opinion Nokia set this service up for failure by 1) not releasing phones that were capable of advanced gameplay and 2) by pushing horrible games and a not so good experience with the N-Gage platform.

Bottom line is I won’t miss a thing.

By: Nick

Nick — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:21:21 +0000

Well, the only thing I can say about the demise of the N-Gage is: Good riddance – and this time, STAY dead.

I used to be a Nokia fanboy, but I wised up and moved on. You’ll do the same.