Nokia Basically Shutters The N-Gage
The N-Gage never took-off like Nokia had hoped, or like later devices such as the Nintendo DS. The reasons for N-Gage's failure are an amalgam of bad pricing decisions, poor market channels, a weak developer community, and possibly a device that few wanted. Despite this, I still must offer kudos to Nokia for extending the effort. It's just this kind of innovation that occasionally produces tomorrows winner products. But after two years, Nokia has finally admitted defeat, and is de-emphasizing its efforts in the dedicated gaming device sector to re-focus in the "hotter" mobile music and mobile video sectors. Nokia plans to roll additional gaming functionality into the platform that drives the majority of its phones, targeting casual gamers instead of dedicated players, leaving that market to Sony and Nintendo, who own it anyway.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
