In Defense Of The N-Gage

Thanks to IGN Wireless, who, not content with vehemently defending cellphone gaming in general, have decided to step up and tell us why Nokia's N-Gage is worth a second look. As they eruditely put it, "E3 was not exactly kind to Nokia and it's [sic] new N-Gage mobile gaming platform," and they go on to compare Nokia's phone and 'mobile game deck' to another neglected system: "A lot of it depends on whether or not gamers are willing to take chance on an unproven system, or whether they'll let hype from Sony's PSP or an improved GBA prevent them from taking the plunge. Which would be a shame, because that's what happened to the Dreamcast in the face of the PS2, and now everybody sits around and talks about what a great system it really was."

I've used it. Not good.

[SuperRob]

I've had the unfortunate opporunity to use an N-Gage myself at E3. It's not a good game machine by any means. The Game Boy is a SPEED DEMON compared to this thing.

It's not a good cell phone either. I don't know what the hell Nokia was thinking, but they threw everything they knew about cell phones out the window when they designed this thing.

You want an example? OK ... take this. To use the handset (not a HEADSET) to talk on this phone, you hold it to your head like a taco, sideways. The top edge of the phone rests against your face, and you look like a freaking idiot.

The price will probably be a non-issue with subsidies, but they're expecting to have this thing selling in stores like Electronics Boutique and GameStop. This is going to go one of two ways ... either there are kickbacks for selling these things that go right into the salesperson's pocket (and that's all you're going to be able to get them to talk about), or they simply won't care to deal with the hassle, and will pretend it doesn't exist.

I'm betting on the latter.

Regardless, I've already got a Series 60-based cellphone (the Nokia 3650), and rumor has it that it can play the N-Gage games too. Probably not as comfortably, but it'll play.

Re:It's IGN. . .

[Tom Courtenay]

Why is it that since IGN is BIG, people assume it's corrupt and on the take.

"They don't give bad reviews"

Their last 3 scores from the major systems

Gamecube
Charlie's Angels - 4.0
NCAA Football 2004 - 9.0
Shrek Super Party - 3.8
Sonic Adventure DX Director's Cut - 5.0

Xbox
NCAA Football 2004 - 9.0
Star Wars: KOTOR - 9.5
Outlaw Volleyball - 8.0
Tetris Worlds Online - 4.8

PS2
K-1 World Grand Prix - 8.3
NCAA Football 2004 - 9.1
Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb - 6.6
Ape Escape 2 9.0

I think this speaks for itself. Sure, there are some highly rated games there (NCAA Football is a 9 on each system) but as you can plainly see they have NO FEAR of giving a low review score.