How long will the NGage last? Place your bets here.
 

I spent a while in the NGage Booth at e3- Trying to earn enough stamps for a t-shirt (to go with my NeoGeo Pocket, and XFL shirts). I played all the games and asked all the questions. I can't come up with any other conclusion- GBA domination or not- this system will not last.
Here's the goods and the bads it has going for it:

Goods
Powerful portable system with smooth 3d graphics
Decent lithium battery
Slick looking color and shape
Nokia Name
Decent financial backing
Some decent titles
Wireless/bluetooth

Bads
Bluetooth, wireless chugs battery power.
Proprietary battery.
Wireless does not and will not support simultaneus multiplayer.
Bluetooth does, but must be relatively close.
The button configuation is the worst I have seen- I had trouble not hitting more than one button at once because of the keypad configuration- directional pad is nice though.
The screen defies the standard aspect ratio and gives the illusion the display is small and view is tight.
The backlighting is odd and desaturates the colors.
As a cell phone the unit is bulky and unconfortable.
Games are tedius to change.
$300, wtf were they thinking?
Subscription to cell phone service (which may be mandatory- they haven't decided yet).
No strong exclusive titles.
Games between $30.00 and $40.00


I'm thinking this will lasta year at best. What do you think?

It will bomb almost immediately.

$300 and no strong exclusive titles=straight down the toilet.

Hell the $300 tag is enough to send it down the drain, I don't think you'll find many people willing to pay more than $100 for a portable gaming systems.

Kids are a big chunk of the market, and parents are going to balk at much more than $100 after years of buying Gameboys for that or less. Older gamers generally buy them to comlement their console with different games or to simply be able to play games on the go, and are likely not going to pay more than $100 when they can buy a console for $199-299 at launch ($149-199 a year or two later).

I have no clue what you are talking about, but I do know that bluetooth is very easy on the power consumption compared to other wireless formats.

It wont pick up. to expensive and to bulky. it's too big for any modern cell phoner and the screen size is to small and crappy for any gamer.

wont pick up at all.

I'm not gonna carry around that brick. It's got some features that I'd like to see in future GBAs, but not for $300 bucks.

My guess: 1 year.

:lol:

Wait, was that a serious question?

NFL - not for long

worst.. system... ever

6 months til its canned.

I'm surprised they're still launching it after the mixed reviews and harsh criticism it's gotten. Honestly, who designs a system with a portrait/lengthwise screen???

[Austin Powers accent/]
Honestly, who throws their shoe?
[/Austin Powers accent]

That's what one of the sales reps mentioned to me. I'm not sure about the exact numbers, but he gave me battery times for offline, wireless and bluetooth. Bluetooth was surprisingly low, but not as low as wireless.

If you go to Japan or Korea or some other Asian countries, you'll see a lot of people in public spending lots of time on their cell phones. People do more walking and use public transportation in those countries compared to the US, and there are more opportunities to use other features on a cell phone besides the phone call.

It's completely different in the US. In the US people use their cell phones for phone calls, and that's about it.

There is a chance that the N-Gage will catch on in countries where cell phones caught on quickly (like in some Asian countries). But in the US it will completely bomb. There is no market in the US for cell phone/camera/game multi-function devices. The American consumer would rather have separate devices dedicated to each task.

but in those countries, you also see a stronger public presence of the GameBoy as well.

I'm not sure about Nokia's overseas plans though. This unit just may do well there, but looking at how size is helping to turn people away from the xbox, the NGage is gigantic in size for the Asian market.

In North America, there is no way this thing will last 6 months.

Not to mention that the idea behind those cell phone carriers is size matters. the push is always for smaller phones that flip, switch, bend and do anything to make themselves smaller to carry. This huge brick size game/phone will not be successful because of that in itself. it's to big for what it does.. worthless in many different ways.

My big problem is they try to run pc games on that thing... I saw Red Faction and Tomb Raider. Those types of games don't look good on a 1.5 inch screen and also, they are crappy so get some real games!

Insta-failure.

It doesn't sound like it'll do anything right.

It will be gone faster in 6 months. Maybe ill pick one up when it goes down to $100...thats about it. The size is awquard, and the games arnt that great. You could buy a GBA SP and 7 or 8 brand new GBA games for the same price.

I was really hopping this would bring some competition to the portable market.

ooofa talk about being stillborn, super sized price tag along with Nintendo's little guy smackin ppl around and sony about to enter the portable market.....things don't look too bright.....even if it dropped to less than 100 bux coupled with the novelty factor I'd be hard pressed to pick this thing up. That and no way in hell are parents going to spend 300 bux on a portable for junior. All in all i'd say 6 months to a year tops.

WTf its going to be $300. friken cost more than consoles. I thought it was going to be around the ballpark price of the GBA SP to compete with it. I give it less than 1 yr and i expect nokias stock dropping is decent amount.

The PSP will do that.

This was a dumb marketing move and should have been caught in the analysis phase. Instead, they'll spend millions and figure it out 6-9 months out.

1 month

I'll guess 3-4 months... Within a year the company will be bought by Samsung.

Gabe said it best:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2003/20030519l.jpg

Should last as long as the super cool linux-based do everything, open sourced , gaming console ... Indrema. oh wait. nevermind.

This idea has got to be a tax-write off for Nokia. Come on! Three hundred dollars??? There aren't that many people left that purchased the NeoGeo Gold System. Jeez.