Nokia has announced that it will be dissolving the N-Gage platform in 2010 in favor of the Ovi Store. While the company is positioning the move as simply making Ovi a one-stop destination, it’s really the final nail in the coffin for Nokia’s ambitious but horribly flawed venture into gaming. The N-Gage blog stated:
N-Gage games can be purchased until the end of September 2010. While the N-Gage.com site together with the N-Gage Arena and other community features will remain in operation throughout 2010, the Ovi Store will be the new central place for all the mobile games that Nokia and other publishers offer from this point forward. We will no longer publish new games for the N-Gage platform.
I was really high on the potential of N-Gage leading up to its launch. The idea of a quality gaming platform with social features integrated into a mobile phone sounded awesome. Nokia was huge at the time and seemed like the perfect company to pull it off. Talking to various execs had me psyched for the device…
…but then I went to a launch event in London and was disappointed in the realization of N-Gage. From the vertical screen to the side-talkin’ taco to the clunky interface, Nokia had failed on too many levels. It never recovered from its initial failures either. It’s a shame, because the company had some really great ideas, but somewhere between the idea stage and the product stage, so much was lost.
Did any of you ever play around with N-Gage? Or was it always a joke to you?
This thing was ALWAYS a joke to me. Just by looking at it, I could predict the fail on a massive scale.
Yes, it had potential. Yes, Nokia had the funding and the knowledge to make a great product that would have been years ahead of it's time, but unfortunately, quality control drank the Kool-Aid before the product went on the market, killing not only the entire quality control process, but the N-Gage as well.
-M
@Iceman I don't think it was quality control. Nokia just made several poor design choices on both the hardware and software sides.