Nokia to close gaming service N-Gage

[ubikuberalles]

Nokia to close gaming service N-Gage (http://tech.yahoo.com/news/nm/20091030/tc_nm/us_nokia_gaming_3)

Does this affect anyone here? Or did you all abandon the service long ago?

[diskoboy]

R.I.P. N-Gage.



Again.

(And even more ironic: I just found my old pre-release brochure from 2003, today.... It's hard to imagine there was a time I actually wanted one, too.)

[retroman]

hey i was a big n-gage fan when it came out. There was no ds or psp, and the 3d graphics were impressive for the time. I have both units. The taco phone, and the QD. Still break it out every now and then to play. Had a few impressive titles. Dont hate unless u actully have played one. I hate people who say things like yea it suck, good bye again, and have never played one. You know who u are.

[SegaAges]

Maybe this is a sign that I need to stop using my n-gage as my phone.

[slapdash]

My N-Gage finally began having the rubber strip expand and bulge on the top, so I've been giving the iPhone some thought, but still carrying my N-Gage for the moment!

[Poofta!]

can we finally put this worthless system to rest?

[SegaAges]

can we finally put this worthless system to rest?

http://www3.obamiconme.pastemagazine.com/entries/1044-never-gonna.gif

[slapdash]

No we cannot. I'm still waiting for the homebrews start.

[Snapple]

Wait, does this mean that N-Gage was being actively supported a month ago? I thought that sucker died years ago.

[Steve W]

Nokia, instead of creating a single N-Gage model that would be the successor to the original N-Gage hardware, just plowed the technology into most of their phones and made a download store for games. So there's no longer an N-Gage phone, there are a line of phones with standardized gameplaying hardware, and that gameplaying ability is referred to as N-Gage. None of those games are backwards-compatible with the original N-Gage, from what I understand.

Apple's iPhone has pretty much wiped out Nokia's fortunes as far as gaming phones go. Their N-Gage online game store hasn't really taken off, and now everybody wanting a phone that can play games and do all sorts of stuff are flocking to the iPhone. So they've decided to cancel an unprofitable service. Ah well.

[kedawa]

Speaking as someone who actually did own and ngage qd and about a dozen games, I say good riddance. It's not worth going in to specifics anymore, but despite the relatively powerful and durable hardware, both ngage phones were horribly designed game systems and barely adequate phones.
The ngage brand wasn't worth preserving in the first place, so it's no surprise that they shitcanned the service.

[classicb]

i was big into the N-Gage as people might know but when they went to a download service nobody can come close to the iPhone. At the time the N-Gage was around with cards I was playing it all the time. It really did have some great games in its late years... but they were too late. R.I.P. N-Gage we never really knew you and you really never knew yourself.

[slapdash]

It may be my "ancient-ness", but I don't particularly care about downloaded games, so it was the little SD cards that interested me in the N-Gage in the first place. They're killing "N-Gage" now? They killed it long ago.