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Portables (Games) Entertainment Games

N-Gage - Success Claimed, Unofficial Price Drop 54

Posted by simoniker from the marvellous-soap-opera dept.
Mirkon writes "After non-specific claims of high sales, Nokia's Ilkka Raiskinen has now stated that the Nokia N-Gage's first two weeks have seen massive success, with sales of over 400,000 units worldwide. Analysts are skeptical, firstly because 400,000 is not an exceptionally great amount, and secondly because the number 'refers to models Nokia has sold to shops and other retail outlets', not the amount sold to consumers." Also, drewqmn writes "I noticed on the GameStop website that they are already selling the N-Gage at $199.99 [GamerFeed has a story on this currently unofficial, store-specific price cut, though there are rumors it may be official soon.] Has any console/platform dropped in price so fast?"
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N-Gage - Success Claimed, Unofficial Price Drop More

N-Gage - Success Claimed, Unofficial Price Drop

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  • I would buy one for $50, with $10 games (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 23, 2003 @09:21PM (#7297053)
    I expect to own one in the next three months.
  • "Sales vs. Shipped"

    Sheesh.

  • Why? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by neostorm ( 462848 ) on Thursday October 23, 2003 @09:36PM (#7297118)
    Why do corporations insist on these kinds of PR lies when the majority of their target audience can see right through them?
    All this does for me is take my opinion from "that's not a good device" to "I'm never going to buy that because the company is totally full of it". What would the reaction be if Nokia played the honesty role, and released a PR statement with an understanding of their poor designs and shortcomings, an announcement of changes to counter the poor decisions, and an open ear to designs and ideas that would benefit a followup device? Would the gaming audience hiss and boo that much? How much would that change the general appearance of the company, and how many people would earn a little more respect for doing what most companies with failed products do?

    This is a good opportunity to focus on the differences between the companies themselves, considering that Nintendo did just that. When their handheld product came short of expectations, they admitted their mistakes, turned right around and made a new version of hardware which was received with a majority of positive reactions.
    This is a harsh contrast to Nokias consistent lying of ficticious successes in retail.

    • Re:Why? (Score:3, Funny)

      by Smidge204 ( 605297 )
      It all depends on how they define success.

      "I really don't expect ANYONE to buy these things..."

      (a few months later)

      "Holy shit, someone actually bought one! Break out the Champagn!"

      ... See?
      =Smidge=

    • Re:Why? (Score:3, Funny)

      by Guppy06 ( 410832 )
      "Why do corporations insist on these kinds of PR lies when the majority of their target audience can see right through them?"

      Because you're misjudging who their target audience is. This is straight out of the P. T. Barnum School of Investment Capital (fool, money, etc.)

    • Why do corporations insist on these kinds of PR lies when the majority of their target audience can see right through them?

      There are three parties; Nokia, Consumers and Developers. Consumers like myself don't care how many were sold. (The wonderful thing about the N-Gage is that even if the big commerical games don't happen, it's my phone so it won't just sit in a drawer.) It's the developers that have to be convinced that there's a large market out there capable of making a big budget game profitable.

  • Wow. (Score:3, Funny)

    by jermyjerm ( 705338 ) on Thursday October 23, 2003 @09:41PM (#7297135) Homepage
    At this rate, they'll all be in a landfill in New Mexico within a month.
  • I agree with the above points on the PR and marketing strategies that Nokia is taking, and frankly, I would prefer several devices that are good at what they do in place of a ball of mediocre tech slapped together. The built in phone is nearly impossible to use without a headset, and you have to remove the battery to change the PS1-esque, but buggier cartridges.

    I'm happier with Snake than a shrunk down THPS.
  • Since the stores have already paid for the units does that mean that it's a good thing for Nokia but a bad thing for the stores who rushed out and stoked up?
    • If they never sell it means that eventually at least some of the cell service providers will be giving away the N-Gage with just about any contract.
    • It depends on the agreement the retailers make. I know that in the past where I've worked, products with skepticism generally had buyback contracts associated with them. Sometimes at the full purchase price, sometimes it was a lesser amount as time went on. I do know that in the instances where console makers drop their price, they tend to rebate the retailers in some fashion for the money they shelled out to purchase their current, more expensive stock.

      What Nokia's arrangements are with the current retai
    • stoked? why would they be stoked about such a horrible product?
  • Its gui was a pain in the butt to use. I sat there for 2 minutes trying to get the game to use bluetooth.. I got fruistraited and walk away.. It appears That I wasn't the only one that didn't like it There was another guy that didn't seem to play with it very long...

    Nokia is like microsoft They try too much and thus products that are excepted but arn't up to snuff alot of the time.

    So all and all I gave it a try.. I am looking forward to Tapwave's Zodiac. From the screenshots of it, I can tell its gui is n

    • Re:I tried one out. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Friday October 24, 2003 @04:52AM (#7298575) Homepage Journal
      series60 user interface is the best one i've tried on a 'smartphone' kind of device(which ngage is).

      everyone who has used it for more than 2 minutes has liked it(running multiple apps, calendar and dialer for example and tasking between them is easy and tolerable as well). it's much more important in long run that a phones ui is handy than that it is usable from the first second you use it(it's not that hard to navigate).

      and nokia has money to burn, they're trying to find business fields for them to dump some of their extra cash they'd like to be in use rather than have it just as cash. they have at least 4 000 000 000$+ they are looking to use on something worthwhile, so using 200 000 000 on a marketing attempt for their not too expensively developed cheapo smartphone isn't that bad. ngage couldn't have cost them too much to develop(it's just an another series60 phone with some added fluff). compared to other series60 phones it's DIRT CHEAP(6600 costs 600$+, ngage 299$, 3650/3660 350$+ and 7650 doesn't have a mmc card slot, so compared to the other phones it's useless).

      and let's face it, while the nokias marketing doesn't imply that it is something else than a neat toy, which might be due to them handling too much marketing decision power to americans, it is still so much more than a mere gameboy. gameboy doesn't let you a) read email b) write email c) hang on irc/im d) run custom apps you developed yourself(without extra programmer) e) download other peoples programs and run them. f) browse slashdot g) comment on slashdot.

      if you have a pda(with bluetooth) then you might not want it though, if you enjoy buying a piece of crap bt phone for that pda's companion.
      • Nokia has been marketing the N-Gage as a gaming machine and not as a smartphone. Even if it is a good phone, it's not a good gaming device, and so people shy away from it.

        My primary concern about the N-Gage's capacity as a handheld game machine is that the battery life is so short you probably wouldn't want to leave it on while you drive and play at stoplights [penny-arcade.com].
        • Please, no more linking to Penny Arcade. We've all read that one. We've all read any one that you were thinking about linking too as well. We've read Penny Arcade. The links should be modded down as redundant anytime they are posted. Enough already.
          • Please, no more linking to Penny Arcade. We've all read that one. We've all read any one that you were thinking about linking too as well. We've read Penny Arcade. The links should be modded down as redundant anytime they are posted. Enough already.

            You must be new here.

            Don't you know that there always has to be a reference to Penny Aracde in stories like this? It's like an unwritten law or something.

            • You must not be able to read.

              The Penny Arcade links are overdone. Everytime there is a story on the N-Gage, some Slashbot links to the one where they're having the release party and no one comes or the one from E3 where PA picks the N-Gage as the worst piece of hardware. It's tired and old. They're not really relevant to the stories and everyone has already seen them - yet they still get modded up. It's the Penny Arcade link karma whore trick and I'm tired of it.

              Honestly, I've posted quite a few more commen

              • Honestly, I've posted quite a few more comments than you

                He has a lower user number than you. Does that make him more important/right than you with your plethora of comments?
                • No, they balance out AND since my argument has a much greater level of correctness - I win. The only reason I brought up number of comments posted was to negate his argument that I didn't know how things were done around here. In fact, I do understand how the operation proceeds and I am tired of the same old Penny Arcade links being modded up as +3 Funny. Look at every article concerning the NGage and you'll probably find the same one or two Penny Arcade links. It's just silly. Do you see my point buddy?
  • Nokia now giving away bags of cash with each N-Gage - public still skeptical. Nintendo and Ericsson still laughing their asses off.

  • Not *that* bad at $200... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Guppy06 ( 410832 ) on Thursday October 23, 2003 @10:31PM (#7297366)
    Ignoring its efforts to pretend it's a game console, it does have some nice features (decent screen as far as cell phones go, MP3 player, etc.), and since I'm currently pricing new cell phones I could see myself getting one for $200 if it weren't for one small detail: I'm happy with Sprint and don't see any reason to change providers (especially since it would mean another "6-8 weeks" for a new provider to process my opt-out request). Unless they broaden their provider support or release some damn good games for it, I don't think I could justify spending more than $100 for it.

  • In other news... (Score:3, Funny)

    by hiroshi912681 ( 589840 ) on Thursday October 23, 2003 @10:35PM (#7297382)
    there are 5,500 people out there enjoying their taco phone
  • 'Has any console/platform dropped in price so fast?"'

    Officially? No. Unofficially, yes. Online retailers generally sell their products at a slightly lower price than their offline counterparts as an incentive to buy online rather than offline. Course, shipping and handling usually and waiting for it to arrive usually ends up wasting that little you saved.

    • Online retailers generally sell their products at a slightly lower price than their offline counterparts as an incentive to buy online rather than offline.

      "Slightly" is the key word there. I don't recall any of the current three home consoles selling for two-thirds of their MSRP from any merchants, online or B&M, even after a year of availability (ignoring used/refurbs and changes in the MSRP itself). I don't think there's any question that, as a game console, the N-Gage is failing spectacularly...

    • Somehow I remember that one hitting shelves at a clearance price, because its death was already a foregone conclusion.

  • This is somewhat reminiscant of Sony's E3 2001 press conference. They spent 2 hours talking about how there weren't shortages in initial shipments, how demand was easily being met, and how the dev kit was a piece of cake to use.

    Immediately followed by every developer saying "Yeah, this was a real pain in the butt to do with their dev kit."

    Ignore your senses and reasoning skills. Trust the corp-speak. The corp-speak would not lie.
  • Has any console/platform dropped in price so fast?

    In the UK the Gamecube dropped in price before launch. It was originally announced at 179 GBP, but a few weeks before launch they dropped it to 129 GBP so as to undercut Sony and Microsoft.
    • The N64 did this over here too, dropping from a $250 launch price to a $200 launch price, but this was a 'matching-the-competitors-price' drop as opposed to a 'we-can't-sell-any-more-at-this-price' drop. The GC in the UK was probably the same way.

      When you drop prices to match the competitor, that's smart business. When you drop the price like Nokia's doing now (and the Dreamcast was doing back in 2000, though not nearly as fast,) that's a big sign that you're desparate. On the other hand, it appears that

  • Since its release in the UK, many mobile operators have been giving it away if you sign up for a contract, but even this doesn't seem to have persuaded people to get one. The way I see it, for people who want a phone it's too big and unwieldy, and for people who want a portable gaming device the GBA is a much better bet. I think Nokia may have produced a bit of a lemon here...
  • For the record, I'd like to state that the above story bears little resemblance to what I actually submitted. For one, I also linked to a Gamespot article [gamespot.com] which I found to be at least as informative as the Reuters story.

    And the submission is listed as "rejected" under my records.
  • "It's not a surprise to us that the U.S. market needs a lot more work," she said. "[We've] still got a lot of work to do from an educational standpoint," Usina added... Yeah, but the ones who need educating aren't your consumers. I finally tried one at a kiosk in a Gamestop the other day, and to quote a character from a recent Nintendo game: "Sloooooooow."

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