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Portables (Games) Entertainment Games

Nokia's N-Gage - Savaged By Online Opinion 68

Posted by simoniker from the lots-of-reaction dept.
Thanks to CNN for their column discussing how the Internet has changed the way 'bad' products are viewed, with reference to Nokia's N-Gage 'mobile game deck'. The columnist argues: "Ten years ago you might have quietly withdrawn [an 'awkward' product] from store shelves", but times have changed: "The Internet provides an instant, widespread referendum on products... And the Net crowd, for obvious reasons, tends to eye high-tech products. But the things that do get interest, usually negative, watch out." He then gives the immensely popular, N-Gage-related Side Talkin' site as an example of this backlash, quoting a Nokia spokesman as saying of the site: "It's better to have some reaction than no reaction at all."
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Nokia's N-Gage - Savaged By Online Opinion More

Nokia's N-Gage - Savaged By Online Opinion

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  • Imagin (Score:5, Funny)

    by OwlofCreamCheese ( 645015 ) on Friday November 07, 2003 @12:20AM (#7414670)
    Imagin a beowulf cluster of Ngages.... it....would.....suck

  • What older gadgets could this have affected? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MBraynard ( 653724 ) on Friday November 07, 2003 @12:27AM (#7414692) Journal
    Before the net, you got 90%+ of your info about a product from the manufacturer's marketing machine. Now the balance has changed.

    Think back a few decades about some of the crap you may have bought. Then think about - had you been able to read instant online opinion about the gadget - you may not have purchased the product.

    Virtual Boy? NeoGeo? Would VHS have lost to Betamax?

  • How long until Nokia unleashes the evil lawyer bots to stop any critism against their product or company. I mean it wouldn't be the first time.

  • Turkish kid? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Foggy1 ( 692248 )
    "In the meantime, corporate chiefs can take heart that the Internet memory is mercifully short. Anyone remember an early Internet celeb called The Turkish Stud? Thought not, but "I Kiss You!!!" anyway." I, err, remember that. And I bet a lot of people here do to. Short memory?
  • In the meantime, corporate chiefs can take heart that the Internet memory is mercifully short.

    Boy, Nokia higher-ups must be glad that the editors decided to post that story here then!

  • Opinion is just as baseless. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Kris_J ( 10111 ) on Friday November 07, 2003 @01:36AM (#7414933) Homepage Journal
    The N-Gage is just everyone's favourite whipping boy. Most of the people "savaging" it on the web have never even touched one.
    Using the phone makes you look like a dork.
    Well, there you go, the informed masses have spoken. How is the current situtation any better than when public opinion is swayed by a big marketing machine? Now cool 12 year olds can just shit all over anything they can't afford and all their Internet friends will follow. The only difference is that journalists haven't yet developed the skills to separate informated opinion from schoolyard gossip on the Internet.
    • The N-Gage is just everyone's favourite whipping boy. Most of the people "savaging" it on the web have never even touched one.

      Do they really need to, though? I mean, it even looks stupid on paper, and just about every gaming magazine that's covered it has passed that on to all of their readers. You don't really need to experience the operation of removing your phone's battery just to switch game cartridges to know that it is a ridiculous process, especially in the public areas where you would use your N-G
    • My friend and I were able to try out the N-Gage at E3 [neonowl.net], as well as several games for it (some of which have been released and some not). Even before the system had launched and they were showing it for the first time to a wealth of gamers and industry people, the representatives were told by many people (us included) that the system just wasn't userfriendly and that the games were sorely under-par.

      Red Faction: Truly awful. There's just no way to port a PS2 game to a hand-held console. While it does look va
    • By that logic, people should have gone for test drives in Corvairs before deciding they were unsafe. Or perhaps I should have played Custer's Revenge before deciding the concept was offensive. I can't believe I didn't go to the theater and spend $9 on Gigli!

      Product reviews exist so that people don't always have to waste time and money on something they find out later is crap. Because of reviews, I didn't have to waste money buying Daikatana when it came out, nor did I run out to buy a Yugo.

      Of course,

    • ... that it does make you look like a dork.

      Because of course to be 12 years old makes you somehow completely "stoopid" and unable to have a valuable opinion about the aesthetics of a gadget.
      • Have you looked at the side-talking site? I'm sorry, but those people need absolutely no high-tech help to look like dorks, they've got it quite well in hand on their own. Just as an iPod doesn't make a dork look cool, neither does an n-Gage do the opposite.

        I've seen a couple of real people using these on the street here in NYC, and it looks just fine, you hold it as you would a regular landline phone receiver.

        Not that I think this will succeed, at least not this generation of hardware. Their undoing will
    • Well, there you go, the informed masses have spoken.

      It can't be ignored that video gaming is essentially part of pop culture for 12-year-olds. A well-formed argument from a gaming scholar is as influential as a knee-jerk opinion from an Entertainment Tonight quack.

      This is one area where Nintendo has historically done well. Regardless of technological aspects of the NES/SNES/N64/GC, they strive to make it really cool and interesting, first, and use all sorts of marketing tools from Nintendo Power to fla
    • I have actually touched one, and using it as a phone DOES make you look like a dork. The game-swapping procedure and the stupid-huge price tag are what will be the ultimate downfall of this hideous pice of garbage, anyways.

      And Playing Tomb Raider on that thing is like trying to do neurosurgery with the Jaws of Life. Ugh.
    • "The N-Gage is just everyone's favourite whipping boy."

      So everybody was just making up the $300 price tag and the need to remove the battery to insert new games?
    • But using the phone DOES make you look like a dork!

  • But it was a bad product. (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The internet sure as hell didn't help, but it didn't single-handedly destroy the N-Gage. All the online presence did was magnify the customer response. It's easy to express yourself in a public forum, and it's easy for Nokia to listen in.

    Nokia should have *ASKED THEIR TARGET AUDIENCE* about it and taken their opinions seriously. Besides the game loading problem and the sideways talking: it uses an anti-widescreen format and has useless features (3D hardware is useless on a portable - games can't really be
  • I think the Internet has only changed the time it takes for bad products to be viewed as 'bad.'

    "Back in the day" people might have bought lousy products initially, but after The Word eventually got out, people didn't continue buying them. Staying with the topic of videogames, the Sega Saturn didn't need the Internet to die. Nor did Virtual Boy (dear god, it didn't need help to die...)

    There have been topics in the past about how text messaging and cellphones are killing opening weekends for movies because the 'bad word' gets around faster. It's causing bad movies to be known for their badness earlier but, eventually, people will learn products aren't good.

    Even in the days before the 'net.

    -Trillian
    • > Sega Saturn didn't need
      > the Internet to die.

      It was not lack of quality on the hardware. It was not lack of quality on the software. It was not Sega's rivals. No, it was Sega of America, led by that Bernie Stolar moron, that killed the Saturn!

      They did not release in USA many awesome games (Radiant Silvergun, Grandia, Thunder Force V, Castlevania, the Sakura Taisen series, and a lot of shoot-em-ups), or the RAM expansion that allowed Capcom to make pixel-perfect ports of their arcade fighting games
  • Ok, speaking of sidetalkin', am I the only guy fascinated by the one hot [sidetalkin.com] chick [sidetalkin.com] in the whole lineup? Guys?
  • I don't know what everyone's bitching about. EVERYONE'S going to own a N-gage in like a year...

    ...when the price drops to like twenty dollars.
    • It's already free (or very very close) with a pay monthly phone contract in Europe anyway.

      It's an interesting device even if you're not interested in playing games, it's the cheapest Series 60 Symbian phone on the market although the lack of a camera does diminish its appeal.

      As a pocket sized permanently networked computer it's certainly an interesting proposition.

  • Wow, I was wrong... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by WoTG ( 610710 ) on Friday November 07, 2003 @04:08AM (#7415273) Homepage Journal
    Before seeing the pictures of "Side Talking" on one of the sites in the article, I thought the N-gage concept was OK. I didn't realize how stupid the phone portion of the device was! I stand thoroughly corrected... it's hard to describe how shocked I am that a product like that could come to market - someone please tell me there is a standard hands free headset at least!

    • Re:Wow, I was wrong... (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      A stereo headset with hands free capability comes with the device. Nobody has to see you side talking even if you bought it for Tomb Raider and Tony Hawk.
    • Well, the taco-phone concept is not a good idea, but the people on these pictures are going out of their way to look as stupid as possible... :)

  • This is good, is it not? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by image ( 13487 ) on Friday November 07, 2003 @08:43AM (#7415893) Homepage
    In fact, we're witnessing a defining moment in history that is indeed changing, and will continue to change, corporate markets forever.

    Never before has this been possible. An individual, at virtually zero cost, can now express their opinion about the acts of a corporation or their products. Prior to the explosion of the internet, the only "people" with a voice loud enough to be heard by the buying public were those that had enough financial backing to fund such a publication. That included a very short list of a) corporations, such as the one that is selling the product in question, and b) large media organizations, which are also corporations. The problem is that "a" is clearly and understandably biased -- as their only responsibility is to profit off of their own product. Unfortunately, so is "b", as the very economic viability of traditional media is co-dependent on the health of a commercial marketplace, and the advertizing dollars that support it, thus implying an inherent and unavoidable conflict of interest. While there remained the possibility that a subscriber-based review publication could remain bias-free, that only acts in the interest of those that are able and willing to pay for the unbiased report -- i.e., a small enough minority that it does not protect the general population.

    But here we have an environment in which a very minimially funded voice (i.e., a private individual) can easily make themselves heard to those who want to listen. Thus the tens of millions of advertising dollars invested by the product manufacturer can be trumped by pennies invested by the masses.

    In the end, what does this mean? It means that the corporation will be forced to adjust to a new market. Period. Sure, there will be court battles regarding free speach vs. trademarks and ip claims, etc., etc. But ultimately, the corporations that adjust fastest, rather than those fighting the customer, will sell more products and thus grow healthier and stronger than those that do not adjust. And those healthier corporations will be marketing products that are driven directly by consumer desires. This is a good thing for the consumer, is it not? Can you think of a counterexample, where the ultimate needs of the masses were better known by the corporation than the masses themselves?

    Note that I am not saying that there are not situations in which small, informed bodies can actually make better decisions for the majority than the majority itself. However, should those decisions not be relegated to a democratically elected body -- i.e., government?

    Of course, the trend of free, instantanious information dissemination across a broad spectrum of the internet tends to democracize corporations over time, thus further blurring the lines between the corporation and the government itself. A parallel, of course, being drawn with the advent of inexpensive publishing via the printing presses that drove the governments themselves toward democracy.

    And, like the risk of the democracy, the needs of the few can be lost in the desires of the many. So as corporations function more like a democratic government in the age of self-publishing, we can learn from the problems inherent in such governance when looking to the future problems we will face with corporations.

  • 'Using the phone makes you look like a dork.'

    Weren't people about twenty/thirty years ago saying that only nerds used computers, later followed by social outcasts on the internet? Weren't video games 'just for kids' less than twenty years ago?

    Twenty years from now, talking to all-in-one-watch-sized-PDA-GPS-positioner cell phones hybrids will be considered "dorky", using anything slower than a 1 GB/s to connect to the internet will be considered "old school", and kids who play play with Gi-Joe toys will be

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