As cell phones grew increasingly popular over the past several years, it would grow to become a gaming platform of it's own. In 2003, Nokia decided to create a video game handheld and cell phone hybrid, plus adding other features like an MP3 Player. It sounded like a good idea, but the moment Nokia released their hybrid device, it became one of the most mocked systems of all time and only had a two year lifespan. Find out why as the Nokia N-Gage is inducted into the Hall of Shame.
N-Gage: Like a PSP, only everything sucks.
So what caused the N-Gage to fail? I've broken it down in three categories.
Reason #1: The Pricing
You can have the best video game handheld in the history of history. But if you price it at a number people are not willing to immediately shell out for, then you're going to suffer some issues. The N-Gage was initially priced at a whopping $300. At that time, the Game Boy Advance SP was less then twice the cost of the N-Gage. When the DS arrived a year later it was only half the cost, and the PSP would launch later at $250. At $300, the N-Gage would be the most expensive out of all the handhelds. Hell it was more expensive than the home consoles at that point, and since it was from someone who was new to the gaming industry, consumers were not going to risk spending such money on an N-Gage. GameStop and EB would offer $100 rebates if you traded in your GBA and games, but even then it would be priced at an absurd $200, and why would you want to spend that kind of money on it? Because it also acts like a cell phone and mp3 player? Sorry Nokia, but I have a strong feeling that 99.9% of your marketed audience already had one of those devices. When the N-Gage QD was released, the price was dropped to $200, but it didn't help much because by this time the DS and PSP were announced, and gamers were much more interested in those then the N-Gage.
Reason #2: The screen and games suck
So let's say someone actually decides to buy the N-Gage and games for it. I bet it wouldn't even take a week before they gave it right back to whoever they bought it from because of how bad the handheld is at playing games.
The problem begins with the handheld itself. Like normal cell phones, the N-Gage's screen is vertical. Vertical screens are not normal for handheld gaming however. While it would possibly work for puzzle games and space shooters, any (or even every) other game that suits a horizontal view would be hard to play because your view is too limited. One of the games released for the N-Gage was a port of Sonic Advance. Imagine trying to play that game on the GBA only half of your screen is cut off. Sound like fun? Of course it isn't. As if the size wasn't bad enough, the resolution was horrible. 3D shooters such as Red Steel would look like a mess, and puzzles games, which I just mentioned would possibly work on a vertical screen, were nearly unplayable. Puyo Pop suffered from having two of the colors look nearly the same, making the game more harder then it had to be. Worse was Puzzle Bobble VS, where too many of the colors looked like each other. When a color based puzzle game suffers from color issues, that's an automatic failure.
Nokia also decided to make things more needlessly complicated with the N-Gage by deciding that in order to switch games, you have to take out the battery first. Nokia figured that over in Europe they already have to take the battery out to replace their SIM cards, so what was the big deal? The big deal, Nokia, was that all the other game handhelds that used batteries NEVER made you do that! Not even Gizmondo, the biggest handheld failure of all time, did something that stupid!
But that was nothing compared to the catastrophe that would become an internet meme...
Reason #3: Taco Talking
The moment your video game platform suffers from a major problem or has a ridiculous feature, there's a ruling on the internet that it shall be mocked for all time. Examples include Xbox 360's "Red Ring of Death" and Wii remotes damaging people's property (even Southwest Airlines made fun of that). For the N-Gage, it was talking in a manner that resembled a traditional Mexican dish.
That's right, in order to use the N-Gage as a cell phone, you had to hold the device sideways. You know how some games on the DS and GBA are criticized because of the way they make you look when playing in public? Imagine talking into one of those devices as shown above in public. You would never want to go outside again. This became such a joke that an internet meme was started with people side-talking into various other objects. When your mockery has reached the level of internet meme, you are truly screwed.
It was all downhill from the very beginning. In the first week of sales the N-Gage performed poorly. Nokia claimed it sold 400,000 worldwide, when it actually sold less then 5,000 in the US and about 800 in the UK. It turns out that the 400,000 was actually the number SHIPPED rather then sold. Compared to the GBA's first week of sales, the GBA sold 100 times more then the N-Gage did. After such a dismal launch, gamers continued to ignore the N-Gage. Months after the initial release Nokia would release the N-Gage QD that made significant improvements (such as fixing the convoluted game switching), but the games still weren't worth buying. Even when it did have good games like Pocket Kingdom, they would be overlooked and forgotten very quickly. By the end of 2005, Nokia officially called it quits on the N-Gage handheld. In 2008, the N-Gage returned as a mobile gaming service, where this time, it actually has games people want to play.
But best of all, you don't have to talk into a taco anymore.
