Oh yes… Nokia shouldn’t play with fire, especially when it’s in the form of Nintendo’s Game Boy system.
The Nokia “N-Gage sold a meager 5,000 units”:http://ngage.ign.com/articles/455/455699p1.html in it’s first week at retail in the United States. Ouch! Add the lowly “500 sold in United Kingdom”:http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/33405.html, Nokia must be thrilled to have sold 5,500 units in a week.
Who in the hell wants a $299 wanna-be Game Boy/Phone/MP3 player? Anyone? Right… 5,500 people with way too much money or just too dumb to get the good stuff; Nintendo Game Boy, real phone, Apple iPod.
Seriously though, Nokia really thought that the N-Gage was going to be a hit.
bq. “We are targeting selling several million N-Gage units in 2004,” Nokia Mobile Phones spokesman Kari Tuutti told Reuters (source: “Reuters”:http://www.americasnetwork.com/americasnetwork/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=71666)
Poor Nokia. They’ve managed to sell a whopping 5,500 in 30,000 retail locations. That’s just plain sad. Throw in the towel now Nokia, Nintendo won this battle in the mid-80s with the first Game Boy.
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I wouldn’t be quite so quick to say it’s not selling, these are the figures from retail outlets where it is undeniably an expensive bit of kit.
However it’s also available for free (or very close) with a phone contract all over Europe, that’s where I expect the majority of units to be “sold”.
Nintendo are going to have their work cut out fighting against a device that’s effectively free.
Even when they’re free phone fodder here in the States, they won’t come close to beating Nintendo. Nintendo’s installed base is huge (tens of millions) and growing everyday. Nintendo sells more GBAs in a day then Nokia could sell in a week.
Furthermore, the N-Gage is horribly designed, built by phone geeks who think taking off the battery is a sport.
I can’t think of one thing the phone actually excels at and don’t say wireless gaming because well, as you know, it doesn’t exist. Downloading “ghost” files is NOT wireless gaming. Peer-to-peer gaming over the wireless cell network is wireless gaming and that isn’t supported by the phone carriers yet. (“source”:http://news.com.com/2100-1039_3-5087661.html)
Nice try Nokia.
I actually saw one of these at Target the other day. Jeff I figured you be one of the first in line to get it. Then I realized your smarter that that. ….But than I remembered that you had a 3DO. You should post something about what I am about to do. Head off to Best Buy to get me some Indiana Jones!!!! Where’s the directors commetary Mr. Spielberg??!!!!
Ah yes, Indiana Jones. I was thinking about buying that. Yes, I am smarter than that. Frankly, I need a new phone but I’m not paying for a limited wanna-be device. I actually played around with one again today at EB… Lara has pointy boobs. Sweet!
BTW, the 3DO rocked. We played that thing for awhile and I still haven’t played a better Need For Speed game than the original one on 3DO.