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= N-Gage_(device) =
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Introduction
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The N-Gage is a mobile device combining features of a cellular phone
and a handheld game system developed by Nokia, released on 7 October
2003. Officially nicknamed the 'game deck', the N-Gage's phone works
on the GSM cellular network, and software-wise runs on the Series 60
platform on top of Symbian OS v6.1.
N-Gage attempted to lure gamers away from the Game Boy Advance by
including telephone functionality, including SMS texting, in an
"all-in-one" device. Game software was packaged in a MultiMediaCard to
be inserted into the N-Gage's slot. Nokia also ran an online service
community, N-Gage Arena, which also supported multiplayer on some
titles, using the phone's GPRS data connection. Ultimately over 50
games -- which included titles by major third-party publishers -- were
released for the system in a three year period.
The N-Gage was unsuccessful, partly because the buttons were not
well-suited for gaming, while it was described as resembling a taco,
which led to its mocking nickname "taco phone". Less than a year
later, the QD model was introduced as a redesign of the original
"Classic" N-Gage, fixing widely criticized issues and design problems.
The revised model was unable to make an impact, and with only 2
million units sold in its two years, the N-Gage was a commercial
failure and discontinued in February 2006, with Nokia moving its
gaming capabilities onto selected Series 60 smartphones; this was
announced as the N-Gage platform or "N-Gage 2.0" in 2007, carrying on
the N-Gage name.
History
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Nokia officially introduced the N-Gage at the Mobile Internet
Conference in Munich, on 4 November 2002, a device that integrated the
functionalities of mobile phones and handheld game consoles, which
some people were increasingly carrying side by side. Its original
development codename was 'Starship'.
The N-Gage had a reported development budget of more than $100
million. Games for N-Gage used to cost $600,000 to $1.5 million to
develop. Nokia had attracted a decent amount of large third-party game
companies that signed up to develop titles for the platform, including
Eidos Interactive, Electronic Arts, Sega, Gameloft, Activision and
Taito.
Many of the preloaded ringtones and sounds were composed by former
demoscene musician Markus Castrén, who worked at Nokia during
mid-2002. For both the N-Gage and Nokia 7600, he wrote ringtones in a
variety of popular dance genres, as well as creating a small set of
sounds inspired by 1980s arcade games; he chose to compose those in a
chiptune style as music in video games of the time did not stand out
as sounding distinctively game-related.
Release and lifetime
======================
In February 2004, with the N-Gage failing to make a major impact four
months on, CEO Jorma Ollila claimed that the device would be given
until 2005 to be judged whether it was a success or failure. In 2004,
a revision was released named N-Gage QD and this retailed at a lower
price compared to the original N-Gage device, aided by the fact that
it was usually sold with service contracts and applicable subsidies.
In January 2005, UK sales-tracking firm ChartTrack dropped the N-Gage
from its regular ELSPA chart, commenting that "The N-Gage chart,
though still produced, is of little interest to anyone. Sales of the
machine and its software have failed to make any impact on the market
at all." Although only directly reflective of the UK market, this was
interpreted by some as a serious blow to the N-Gage as a viable gaming
platform. Despite this, Nokia reaffirmed their commitment to the
N-Gage as a platform, to the point where a new version of the hardware
was rumored after GDC 2005.
In November 2005, Nokia admitted that the N-Gage failed, selling only
one-third of the company's expectations. The product was discontinued
from Western markets in February 2006, but would continue to be
marketed in India and parts of Asia; the last game to be released in
the U.S. for the system was 'Civilization' in March 2006, and later
that year the combat racer 'Payload' in other territories. At E3 2006,
Nokia promoted its next-generation N-Gage which would become the
N-Gage service. A travelling exhibition about the N-Gage realised by
the Finnish Museum of Games named "A Fantastic Failure" was opened in
2023.
Design
========
The N-Gage is used in a wide physical form with a 2.1 inch TFT display
in the centre with a D-pad to the left and numerical keys to the
right, among other buttons. This kind of design was roughly used
before by the Nokia 5510 mobile phone.
Instead of using cables, multiplayer gaming was accomplished with
Bluetooth or the Internet (via the N-Gage Arena service). Its main CPU
was an ARM Integrated (ARMI) compatible chip (ARM4T architecture)
running at 104 MHz, the same as the Nokia 7650 and 3650 phones.
The original phone's design was considered awkward: to insert a game,
users had to remove the phone's plastic cover and remove the battery
as the game slot was next to it. Another feature was that the speaker
and microphone were located on the side edge of the phone; this often
resulted in many describing it as talking into a "taco phone" or
"Sidetalking", or simply that they had one very large ear, because the
user held the edge of the phone against the cheek in order to talk
into it. Usual for a phone, but unusually for a game system, it had a
screen taller than it was wide, with a size of 2.1" and resolution of
176 X 208, giving an aspect ratio of 11:13; at the time most
televisions were 4:3.
Accessories
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Accessories for the N-Gage included extra batteries, car chargers,
wireless Bluetooth headsets, and travel cases.
Revision
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Although it uses the same Symbian S60 software, some features
available in the original system, such as MP3 playback, FM radio
reception and USB connectivity, were removed from the new device.
Later in August 2005 Nokia marketed the Silver Edition of N-Gage QD
with a few cosmetic changes, and the replacement of the two specialist
gaming buttons (5 and 7) with standard keys.
In October 2021, photos and information about a prototype for a
cancelled hardware revision called the "N-Gage IC" were posted to the
AtariAge and ObsureGamers forums by two independent collectors: Timo
Weirich (Germany) and Leo Ashomko (Russia). The prototype is
cosmetically similar to the base N-Gage QD but came with an integrated
camera, a 123 MHz processor, Symbian OS 7.0 with Series 60 2nd Edition
and USB mass storage as well as hardware MP3 decoding from the
original model.
Software and features
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Besides its gaming capabilities, the N-Gage is a 2.5G GPRS data
supporting Series 60 smartphone, running Symbian OS 6.1, with features
similar to those of the Nokia 3650 (it does not have an integrated
camera, however). It is able to run all Series 60 software (other than
those that require a camera) and comes with the standard features such
as an email client, WAP, and XHTML browser; it also supports Java MIDP
(J2ME) applications. The N-Gage Classic is tri-band GSM on frequencies
900, 1800 and 1900; the N-Gage QD revision on the other hand was
released in two dual-band variants for the American region and another
for Eurasian markets. Furthermore, the QD runs the same software
version despite Series 60 2nd Edition having already come out by the
time this revision was developed. The original N-Gage includes MP3 and
RealAudio/RealVideo playback, an FM radio tuner, and also supports MMS
picture messaging. However the QD version removes MP3 and FM support.
Exclusive to the device was N-Gage Arena, an online service run
in-house by Nokia which consisted of an online community where users
could play against each other online on certain titles, chat and post
on message boards, view and upload high scores on a global scoreboard,
and receive game tips news.
Game library
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Before the launch of Nokia's first in-house N-Gage title, 'Pathway to
Glory', a one-level demo was released to journalists to allow them to
sample the game and understand the concepts behind the turn-based
wargame. This demo was subsequently placed on the N-Gage.com website
as a free download. Undaunted by the 16 MB download size, fans jumped
on the 'Pathway to Glory' demo. The success of the download paved the
route for future titles. On 6 June 2006 Nokia announced that people
also could buy the games digitally.
There are 58 full titles available for N-Gage. Two of the titles were
not released in North America: 'Flo-Boarding' (Germany and UK only)
and 'Sega Rally' (Australia and Brazil only). All but three titles
('Payload', 'Snakes', 'Virtua Cop') were available for retail
purchase. One more game was bundled with the N-Gage (on the Support
CD): an exclusive version of 'Space Impact Evolution X', that was
later made available to Symbian S60v2 phones. Other than N-Gage
titles, the device supports native Series 60 games and Java ME applets
written specifically for Series 60.
Reception and legacy
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'Pocket Kingdom: Own the World' received a handful of glowing reviews
when it was released, and 'Pathway to Glory' was Nokia's first
self-published success. These games came perhaps too late to have much
effect in improving the perception of the N-Gage hardware itself in
the eyes of consumers or press. Nokia had projections of at least 6
million sold decks in three years instead of only 3 million.
It was also noted that although Nokia touted the device as a handheld
game console, it was in reality a standard Nokia Symbian Series 60 1st
Edition smartphone in a different form factor and without any enhanced
hardware chips for gaming capability. Pirated games released on the
platform could be run as normal on devices of the period such as Nokia
3650.
The "N-Gage" brand name still had a poor reputation within the gaming
media and among the few consumers who recognized the N-Gage brand, due
to the weakness of the system's first games and the original model's
limitations. Despite this, Nokia attempted another shot at N-Gage in
2007, which itself would last only two years.
Sales
=======
In 2004, Nokia claimed in a press release that it had shipped its
millionth deck, represented as a company milestone despite falling
short of the company's initial projection of six million decks by the
end of 2004. However, this number shipped does not give a reliable
picture of the actual sales of the deck. Nokia ultimately shipped over
2 million N-Gage decks by 2007.
There is some disagreement in sources about the actual number of
N-Gage decks sold. Nokia initially claimed 400,000 sales in the first
two weeks the deck was available. However, independent market research
firms Chart-Track and Arcadia Research claimed that the N-Gage had
sold only 5,000 decks in the United States in that time, and 800 decks
in the UK. German magazine 'GamePro' talked about 15.000 sold units by
mid 2004 in Germany. Critics suggested Nokia was counting the number
of decks shipped to retailers, not the number actually purchased by
consumers. Nokia later admitted this was the truth.
N-Gage 2.0
============
The new N-Gage, also referred to as 'N-Gage Next Gen' or 'N-Gage 2.0',
saw a change in concept as Nokia explained to the world during E3 2005
that they were planning on putting N-Gage inside several of their
smartphone devices, rather than releasing a specific device. In August
2007, the new N-Gage platform was finalised and was released in April
2008. It was compatible on many Symbian S60 smartphones with hardware
acceleration capability. The service was discontinued in October 2009.
See also
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*Nokia 3300, 2003 model with a similar design to N-Gage.
*Nokia N81, Nokia N96, and Nokia N79/N85, later Nokia smartphones
supporting N-Gage 2.0 platform.
*Scalable Network Application Package (SNAP), N-Gage Arena-like
service designed by Nokia and Sega for Java-based games.
*Xperia Play, a similar product that combined mobile telephony with
gaming.
External links
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* [
https://web.archive.org/web/20050831013829/http://www.n-gage.com/
Nokia's official N-Gage site]
License
=========
All content on Gopherpedia comes from Wikipedia, and is licensed under CC-BY-SA
License URL:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Original Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-Gage_(device)
