Apparently Nokia’s N-Gage gamephone didn’t go over very well at a big press conference they had for the phone just prior to the big E3 video game tradeshow. Actually, that might be an understatement:
Reaction to the company’s announcements from those present at the conference was overwhelmingly negative, with most of those we spoke to drawing attention not only to the price – which is completely out of the league of normal game console pricing, regardless of what other functions the device performs – but also to the dubious quality of the software on show, with the gameplay footage of the titles showing serious issues with frame rates and graphical quality… [W]with senior analysts and executives at game publishers openly describing today’s N-Gage announcements as disastrous and the prevalent belief here at E3 being that Nokia’s ambitions are dead before the console even hits the shelves, it seems unlikely (although still possible) that the company…will surprise the entire industry with a successful platform launch.
Ouch! And to make matters worse, Nokia refused to entertain comparisons between the N-Gage and the new GameBoy Advance, saying that they’re not even in the same category, which on the face of it seems a very stupid and defensive way to deal with the issue.
Read [Via DesignTechnica]
