How engaging was the Nokia N-Gage? – Odd Phone Mondays

Image source: MrMobile [Michael Fisher]

But on to the games the N-Gage was so heavily focused on. I distinctly remember the one that made me want the N-Gage back when I was a kid – Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. This was an impressive 3D game at the time, that you needed a PlayStation or another TV console in order to play, but now it runs on this little device? Yes please!

Indeed, the N-Gage was quite capable of running 3D games from around the PS1 days. Call of Duty, Colin McRae Rally, FIFA, Tomb Raider, but it also had some great 2D games like SonicN (a Sonic Advance port) and Worms World Party. The library of games available wasn't huge, at about 56, but there were many heavy hitters in there. Enough to attract any type of gamers to the N-Gage.

Problem is, as mentioned earlier, the N-Gage had mushy phone buttons and a portrait display. Playing your games didn't feel particularly great, nor did it look great, as you didn't have much in terms of a horizontal view to work with.

And there was another, perhaps more significant roadblock between willing gamers and the N-Gage – its price. Buying both a cell phone and a Nintendo Game Boy was actually cheaper in 2003 than buying just the N-Gage itself.

A $299 N-Gage or a $99 Game Boy Advance?

Unlike today, back in 2003 gamers were almost exclusively children, and children don't usually have money, nor the linguistic ability to convince their parents why they need a $300 phone.

Parents just had to look at the Game Boy Advance and its $99 price tag, then compare it to the N-Gage and its $299 asking price (equivalent to $441 in 2021). And it's obvious which one little Timmy got for Christmas.

In fact, the Game Boy Advance (GBA) outsold the N-Gage many times over just in its first weeks after release, an unsurprising but still brutal difference. Ultimately, the original N-Gage sold only about 2 million units, while the GBA sold over 81 million.

The N-Gage held on for a while

In 2004 Nokia released the N-Gage QD, which was a slimmer and lighter redesign of the original N-Gage, and with a much cheaper $179 price tag. It made the N-Gage and its game library more accessible, but by that time the Sony PSP was just around the corner and the Game Boy Advance SP was already out.

Despite having the extra phone functionality unlike those two, Nokia's N-Gage couldn't compete with their superior game libraries and in the case of the PSP – its performance and nearly PS2-grade graphics.

People weren't ready to use one device for both gaming and as a phone, and Nokia wasn't quite ready to deliver the ideal experience anyway.

But in any case, the Nokia N-Gage was a fascinating and ambitious product. It turned eyes back in its day, made most of us want it, and showed us that one day, perhaps shortly after, many of us might indeed be able to rely on only one device for most of our needs. The technology just had to get better.