Strong N-Gage Launch Claimed, Figures Disagree

Khyl'Dran writes "According to Gamesindustry.biz, "The first official statement from Finnish mobile phone giant Nokia on the launch of its N-Gage game deck has claimed that the device is sold out at many retailers following a 'very positive' consumer response." However, 1UP have posted US sales figures which reveal "...less than 5,000 units of Nokia N-Gage hardware were sold in the United States in the system's first week of release", after reported sales of 500 units in the UK following launch, and 1UP argue a "...rough comparison [point] would be to the Game Boy Advance, which sold 540,000 units in its first week of availability in the United States."

Suprise!

I don't mean to flame or anything, but I really can't find that this is news. Horrible control, bad press, there was no way for Nokia to get this thing to sell.

*shock!*

wow, i'm so confused that the crap hardware, and terrible execution of the idea led to a lack in hardware sales? someone please explain!

Re:*shock!*

it's not totally crap.

granted it's not totally awesome handheld gaming system, but that's not all it is.

but it's a nice 'connectivity device', for staying on irc while you're on move, reading slashdot & etc and the occasional game. i know few people who have bought it, but none who have bought it because of it's games! the reason they have bought it is that it is tha CHEAPEST series60 phone(gb/gbc/c64/spectrumzx emulators, irc, opera & etc make up a lot of it's usability), it's a whole lot cheaper than 3650 and only lacks the camera in utility department(which isn't that vital) has more mem and is more fresh. also it's the cheapest phone that has a mmc slot so it is practical to haul few tens of mbytes of stuff with you(books&etc). anyways, the irc&instant messaging aspect is something of a sleeper still.. once the teens start utilising it instead of sms messages these newer phones will start to fly(granted, these are available on almost any j2me capable phone, but believe me, they're much more usable on series60 phones than on the simpler phones that lack multitasking & etc).

Amazingly Painful

Just to put this in perspective, that's fewer than 100 per US state. Even Abacus Publishing's Atari ST and Commodore Amiga programming books used to sell more units than this during their first week of release!

As the article mentions, the Atari Jaguar did almost exactly as well during its first week, and I think the comparison is apt. :-)

Of course...

Many retailers are out of ngages. They were smart enough not to buy it in the first place anyway!

Maybe it did sell out...

Notice Nokia gave no numbers, so it is possible their initial shipment was very low.

Odds are, the "coolness" of the device might get some sales from people unaware of the problems, just to result in returns days later.

Buy and return

I was in EB today. The guy said they have only sold 1 and it came back after 2 days.

The real reason..

The real reason is this [video-fenky.com].

Poor product launch...

...followed by a devastating failure to attract any attention on Slashdot...

Fastest way to kill the nGage...

You know, since people are really against the nGage-- and with good reason, as it's an unplayable piece of garbage-- the easiest, fastest, and most efficient way to get it off the market would be to code up a Game Boy Color emulator for it and release it into the wild with a "(c) 2003 Nokia" line in there somewhere. Nintendo would be all over that in a heartbeat...

On a completely unrelated note, the phrase "ngage sucks" or some variant has showed up in my page's search string reports more times than I care to count.

The reason why they sold so well

And I'm sure that a significant portion of those NGages were bought by people who work for video game publications because they kinda had to buy one in order to tell the world how shitty they are.

Humm

Perhaps they just have really low expencetions

OK the problem with the ngage

It sucks plain and simple. Its way overpriced for what it does, a cellphone that plays games AND is shaped like the old gameboy advanced., even freaking pda cellphones are cheeper than the 500 dollar pricetag my EB is selling it for, and you still have to pay for the service to use the phone.

Likewise no kids going to buy it too much money, nor is a parent going to buy it, more expensive than all 4 systems combined.

you still have to buy games

and while the graphics are supposedly better (i dont see it) you can just look at Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories for the Gameboy advance to see that developers for that system have yet to even use a tenth of its potential (the game has shown to be just slightly lower in quality than the PS2 original!!!!)

in closing Nokia thought they had a bombshell that would blow away the gameboy but in actuallity it was a little to much in cost, a little too few in features, a little too late.

they will be lucky if they can keep their head above water now.

Reflections on the N-Gage

"...less than 5,000 units of Nokia N-Gage hardware were sold in the United States in the system's first week of release", after reported sales of 500 units in the UK following launch

Flawed though the N-Gage is, these figures don't mean very much. In the UK, cellphones are subsidised by the telecoms companies - it's much cheaper to buy one as part of a monthly contract than to own the hardware outright. People who want an N-Gage will mostly be upgrading from existing contract phones, so damning on the basis of purchase figures is a bit hasty.

Not that I think the N-Gage is going to be successful - sounds like it's doomed by the portrait screen, awkward cartridge changing and lack of usefulness as a phone. But at 49 quid on some contracts, a lot of people will be tempted to get one as a games console and keep their SIM card in an old handset. (Can you play games and use the Bluetooth without a SIM?)

I love the idea of Bluetooth multiplayer. If Nokia have screwed it up this time, it's not going to be long before somebody gets it right.

Obligatory Penny Arcade Link

The P.A. guys sure called this one [penny-arcade.com]...

I'm a little surprised...

.. that Nokia's R&D department didn't notice the glaring flaws that make this an undesirable machine while it was in development.

They can either scrap it at this point, release a new model that plays the same games, or make their later phones so they can accept the games.

Frankly, I'd try a version 2 of the phone. It's not an entirely bad idea, but man they should have known better in a lot of places.

Well now we know...

...just what Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf is up to. Looks like the ex-iraqi information minister is working for the nokia PR departemnt.

haven't sold one yet . . .

I work at a Target store in WA state. We sell the Nokia N-Gage. Well actually, "sell" isn't the right word. We have them available for sale. Since it's debut, we haven't sold a single one. Only two people have even inquired about them: a 10-year-old kid who was only interested in it for it's .mp3 playback ability, and another kid whose mother didn't want to spend $300 on something that small.

$99 N-Gages coming soon

I think that everyone here knows the downward trajectory that this item is about to take.

They'll cut the price in the next few weeks to $199, or offer a rebate to get it to that price. It'll still fail to sell, but they'll wait for the Xmas rush to find that out.

Since so many gamers spend the Xmas dollars in January, they'll cut it to $99. You'll get it for free with a 1 year contract from Voicestream and Cingular, too.

By next summer, it'll be $49 from compgeeks.com and other liquidators, and sell out immediately :) Several websites praising this great product that the sweaty masses didn't appreciate will appear, as will several hacks and hardware mods.

Jonathan

My only question is

Will it do better or worse than the Virtual Boy?

So I played the N-Gage and to my surprise...

...it was worse than I orgininally planned it to be. Sonic-N or whatever it's called is just a Sonic Advance ripoff, maybe some differences but not many for the ten minutes I played it. The thing has the worst controls ever, and if you aren't watching where you're playing your hand you're going to start hitting buttons that don't control the game. It's poorly designed, /probably/ hogs batteries although I can't confirm that, and just...ugh.

surprise surprise

Company claims strong consumer acceptance of new product, regardless of what the numbers say. Film at 11.

I would comment on this...

but my chest hurts from my inability to stop laughing at the sheer incompitence of corporate America/Finland when it comes to making a 'cool' product. I think penny arcade got it perfectly right here [penny-arcade.com].

Gameboy this, Gameboy that...

The Gameboy has been around longer than most gamers, I can't see why people are always comparing the N-Gage with the Gameboy (Advance SP). All these comparisons seem weak in light of the fact that most retailers simply shun the N-Gage. (Two posters and a binder with a couple pages of infomation is weak comparing to a wall of Gameboy displays, posters, and prop-up displays)

Well ofcourse they're sold out

When you only have one for sale, you tend to sell out. Atleast the could be honest about its failure like Sega was or they can take the Nintendo route and forget they ever made it.

Not a Good Comparison...

ok ok ok.

5,000 units vs 540,000 units. not a fair comparison for a few reasons... 1)Price - not only is the unit itself more expensive, but to get it's full functionality (remember, it is a phone) you have to have add service to a cellular carrier. How many 13 year olds out there have cell phones and/or are going to be able to convince their parents to get them one they can play the latest greatest games on? Few. It's going to take longer for the older, cell toting gamers to catch on. The kids always want it here, now, this weekend, "I've been saving my allowance" whereas the older buyers are wondering if in three months there's going to be a price break.

2)Nintendo had a loyal following already, riding the sucess of Gameboy (and Gamegirl) and Gameboy Color. The Gameboy idea had already struck home, years ago. It was practially a household name before it sold 540,000 units in its first week. Whereas the Ngauge or whatever its called (see, i don't even remember how to spell the thing)is a completely new idea. Care to pull up figures on how well the Original Game Boy sold during it's debut week? Not 540,000 units. I don't think this is going to replace the Gameboy as favorite handheld ever, but don't write it off just yet.

Played with N-Gage demo

I saw an N-Gage display at my local Gamestop store today and couldn't help playing with it. It had two N-Gage devices, which I was able to link together via the built-in Bluetooth (either they didn't come connected, or someone fudged it up).

There was only a single game installed - some racing game (I guess - I never actually got it past the main menu) called Pandemonium. It had a multiplayer mode, but when I tried to host a multiplayer game on either N-Gage, the game would exit back to the games list.

I guess it's got some bugs that need to be worked out. I was never interested in it anyways - I'd rather have a cell and a GBA SP.

Nokia Claims massive success

Nokia yesterday claimed to have sold 400 000 units to date. If so then it blows away the doubters.

Re:Give my my hiptop any day

Where is this SSH client you speak of? Oh, wait-- it's in the update they keep promising but haven't delivered for over a year, and have delayed repeatedly over the last two months. And games? Didn't they delete everybody's games (except for the Asteroids clone) on the CSK a while back because of a licensing issue? So the sidekick has ONE game. And NO SSH client. And no way to add 3rd party games.

But seriously-- it's a well-integrated device. Just don't expect the PDA apps to sync or to get a signal anywhere but outside. And the update really will have the ability to load 3rd-party apps and an SSH client, honest... whenever it gets here.

I finally gave up waiting and got a Treo 600.