AlanBarber.Org

« Are PDAs dead? | Main | Intel says California is anti-business »

Tuesday, October 21, 2003

Nokia N-Gage = N-Flop?

IGN.com is reporting the first week sales figures for Nokia's new Cellphone/Portable Game system the N-Gage.

According to them the first week sales numbers look like this:
United States - 5000 units
United Kingdom - 500 units

Bwaaahaaaaa! HAaa! Haa! Ha! Ha! Ha!

Shesh! Those numbers are just horrible. I applaud Nokia for trying but I can't help but laugh. I don't have any numbers but I'm pretty sure the GBA SP had a first week unit sales in the range of 500,000 worldwide (if someone can find the numbers I'll post a link).

It's just said really. Nokia was trying to pimp and hype up the N-Gage for weeks. They did all sorts of silly stuff. They even held midnight release parties all over the place. If they sold just 5000 in the first week that parties must have been a major flop!

They must have used in-house designers because the usability of the thing just plain sucks rotten eggs. I may not be a product design specialist but even I know something isn't designed right when you have take off the back cover and remove the battery to put games into the system!

The fact of the mater is the N-Gage is a crappy looking phone with an even worse game system tacked on with an outrageous price tag.

Not to say N-Gage couldn't succeed. It just needs a complete redesign to look more like a normal cellphone and function more like a real game system. That and knock a hundred bucks off the price.

The Gameboy is the only real system in town right now. Sony's handheld the PSP might success but with the specs they're claiming I just don't know. Dual 333mhz cpus, two graphics chips, a mini dvd type disc, usb 2.0 ports, 802.11 wifi network, infrared port, etc, etc. A system like that would cost a fortune to build and sell. PDAs with half the features they're claiming cost $400-$500. No way they can charge that much for a game system. Plus the battery requirements for that much hardware has got to be a problem. Oh well we'll just see.
Posted by abarber on 10/21/2003 at 07:44 PM
Video Games • (1) Comments • Permalink

<a href="http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2003-10-08&res=l">http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2003-10-08&res=l</a>

^_^

Posted by Hecatomb  on  10/22/2003  at  12:12 PM

 

Post Comment:

Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.
« Are PDAs dead? | Main | Intel says California is anti-business »