N-gage has been declared a failure.

[Teh Roxor!]

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/21...-mobile-gaming

Nokia is holding off on mobile gaming for a few years and will not be building new versions of the N-Gage gaming phone.

The company launched the N-Gage in 2003 but sales have been disappointing and, according to the company's roadmap, mobile gaming will not be a focus until 2007.

Nokia is concentrating on mobile music for the rest of this year, and next year's main push will be on driving mobile television.

"N-Gage is still being sold but it was not a success in the sense of developing a new category," said Antti Vasara, Nokia's vice president for corporate strategy.

"We learnt that people want to play games on all devices. As such we are integrating the gaming software into Series 60 phones."

Vasara explained that screen sizes and quality will be much more conducive to mobile gaming systems by 2007.

The N-Gage was developed by a dedicated 'tiger team' at Nokia and was hailed as the future of all games platforms at its launch. But Nokia only sold two million units in three years, against projections of at least six million.

A Nokia spokesman said that the company intends to continue producing N-Gage devices primarily for the Chinese and Indian markets.

Most of knew it was a failure when it was released, but I guess it's official now.

[OnBake Platinum]

Phantom and N Gage must unite to create....

V-SMILE, THE ULTIMATE GAMING MACHINE

[Mach]

Add that to Nintendo's list of defeated handheld foes.

[NeoDeity]

Should I change my user title to show some kind of respect?

[kaphwan]

Perhaps you could keep it there to show some kind of spite?

[n1n9tean]

the n-gage 2 concept was actually looking pretty cool (so long as you dont compare it with PSP). It was even supposed to have an improvement of graphics to be closer to or surpass the PSP's graphics.>> http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000650043915/

a video>> http://www.n-gage.com/e3/video/videos.html?ID=22

[Phoenix]

If it takes a big name like Playstation to get a multipurpose handheld to even come as close to one of Nintendo's handhelds as it did, it's pretty clear that no matter how cool something is, it stands no chance.

[Pro A.]

And a solid list of titles. Something no handheld could ever muster. The Game Gear came the closest, but everyone knew that system was dead in a hurry. As for the N-Gage, I wonder why Nokia kept peddling that piece of crap around. The system was walking dead on launch day.

[OnBake Platinum]

It dropped $100 the day it came out.


The N gage 2 looks terrible...

[Jonny Royal]

Are they just now realizing this or is this just making it official?

[Lynk Former]

NOW they declare it a failure? XD

[Viper]

The N-Gage 2 looks much better than the original but it appears to be too small.


I'm actually suprised it sold 2 million units in 3 years. Granted the DS sold that many in it's first 3 months.

[venomv]

Wow, how long did it take for people to figure this out?

[Frow]

I'm rather surprised Nokia didn't keep trying - portable gaming clearly is money, and I doubt the N-Gage cost much to the company as a whole.

Of course, if they're going to boost cell phone games maybe they don't need an entirely different platform