Nokia not best pleased with N-Gage
You have to give Nokia full marks for honesty - the Finnish mobile phone king has finally admitted the N-Gage isn't doing too well. Top execs at the
You have to give Nokia full marks for honesty – the Finnish mobile phone king has finally admitted the N-Gage isn’t doing too well.
Top execs at the company recently admitted that the phone-cum-console had sold a third of what Nokia was aiming for. When it launched back in 2002 – and we remorselessly made fun of the thing because it made you like half a pizza was hanging out of your head when you made a call – Nokia said it’d sell 6 million N-Gages worldwide by this month. The Finns have now revealed they barely shifted 2 million. As one Nokia bigwig puts it, ‘we need to make some changes’.
The news comes despite Nokia’s attempts to inject life into the handheld with a silver edition three months back and several high profile game launches including a new version of the phone’s only real hit, WWII strat-fest Pathway to Glory.
There is hope for the N-Gage yet, not least because Nokia insists its central to its future plans. As we reported from the E3 games show in May, the N-Gage will be metamorphing into a platform for other Nokia smartphones. We can now tell you that the smartphones in question will be the six-strong N-Series which was recently bolstered by the addition of the TV-playing N92 [story here]. There’s no date set for when the software will become available for anyone already packing an N-phone.
In the meantime, put 2nd December in your diary and pick up a copy of January’s Stuff magazine – we’ve been putting the latest N-Gage games through their paces, including big titles such as Catan, High Seize and Mile High Pinball.
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