Mike Langberg of the San Jose Mercury News offers a critique of Nokia’s N-Gage gamephone, explaining in withering detail why he thinks it’s going to be a spectacular flop. Among his reasons: its retail price of $299, which unlike with other phones, isn’t going to be discounted to $199 or $99 with a new service activation and seems grossly high when compared with that of the Game Boy Advance; the fact that buyers will have to arrange for service entirely on their own (though we actually see this as a plus, since it means it’ll be easier to switch carriers); playing games rapidly depletes the battery, meaning the phone won’t last a full day between charges; and how difficult they made it to switch games, a problem others have raised as well.
