Now that you know all about the N-Gage, we're going to tell you what we really think of it. Several of our senior editors have put the system through its paces, both to preview its launch lineup and also to check out some of the N-Gage's other features. The impressions and opinions expressed below are unique to each respective editor and should be taken as such.
Ricardo Torres
Senior Associate Editor
I didn't really know what to make of the N-Gage when it was first announced. If you've been around for a while then you've seen or own any number of platforms that attempted to carve out a place for themselves against far more established competition. The handheld market has been an especially tough nut to crack because of Nintendo's supreme reign. Still, if there's one thing the past few years in the gaming industry have shown me it's that anything can happen. So these days I try to keep an open mind when something new pops up on the radar. Even so when the N-Gage appeared I wasn't too sure of it, especially with the hefty price tag. After all, it's one thing to make a solid piece of portable gaming hardware and another to take the N-Gage's Swiss army knife approach. Nokia's taking a pretty ambitious approach and aims to do a lot with the fledgling system.
"If there's one thing the past few years in the gaming industry have shown me, it's that anything can happen."
After spending some time with it I have to say I'm not quite sold yet. There's a lot to appreciate to be sure--combining a phone, MP3 player, PIM functionality, and game system is certainly a cool thing to try, but it's lacking some feng shui to make everything work in harmony. I think using the phone with the headset is cool, especially since it's a world phone and I tend to travel a lot. I'm less sold on holding the unit sideways to my ear. The MP3 is neat in theory but a little clunky in practice, as is the radio; although, for some reason I ended up digging the radio more than the MP3 player, probably because I'm a commuter. The PIM stuff is neat, but I'm pretty sold on my Pocket PC for that sort of thing.
"The fact that you have to take off the backing and pull out the battery makes me a little nervous."
As far as the game component goes, I can't quite make a judgment call at this time, mainly because the N-Gage is going through what any untested platform goes through at launch--no one has really committed a significant chunk of development resources to it because it's not proven. As a result, we're not seeing the exclusive content and unique games that could really be a showcase for it. There's certainly some cool potential there. The Bluetooth stuff we've tried is interesting and could certainly lead to some cool possibilities. It's just hard to see how it's going to end up. If developers take to it, there could be some really cool stuff; if they choose to make it a GBA port dumping ground, it won't be as cool. The one thing I can definitely say is that I'm not a huge fan of changing games in it. The fact that you have to take off the backing and pull out the battery makes me a little nervous. Speaking of the battery, I'm hoping that a higher-capacity one hits soon. The system definitely has some cool features, but you will simply fly through charges if you really start to get into everything it offers. So overall I'd say I'm intrigued but not quite sold on it yet. There's a lot to like, but there's a lot that needs to bake a bit longer.
