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N-Gage on Death Row?

1 replies · 4,270 views · Started 09 October 2008

Just received an e-mail from Nokia about N-Gage:

Nokia Software and Services Research

As a registered user of N-Gage, Nokia would like to invite you to complete a short survey to help them understand your opinions on N-Gage. Your feedback is valuable to Nokia to aid the continual improvement and development of the services that they offer.

The research is being conducted by GfK NOP, on behalf of Nokia. If you do not wish to complete this survey, please just ignore this email and you will not be contacted by GfK again. Responses from this survey will be provided back to Nokia in an anonymous format

I completed it and have to say, it was one of the most in-depth questionnaires I've done. And also one that imparted a sense that N-Gage really isn't working for Nokia in its current form.

e.g. 'How much would you miss N-Gage if it wasn't available any more?'
'Please list any problems you have installing games'
'Why haven't you purchased any games'
'Has N-Gage affected your opinion of Nokia?'

Don't get me wrong, it's a great thing that Nokia are actually asking these questions and seem to be aware of what the issues are. But it all imparted a sense of 'N-Gage is on death row... press 1 to pardon, press 2 to turn the current on.'

Well, it's difficult to tell from questionnaires what their intentions are, there have been some pretty weird and inexplicable user surveys when it comes to N-Gage.

One very long online survey I took in about 2004/2005 asked which cartoon characters I would most like to have featured on the official N-Gage site, and displayed various characters with their profiles - I am not joking. It had some really old man who was meant to be some kind of gaming expert, and asked what I thought of him... and I think there was a cat character and various others... things like that. It was very odd and we never heard anything about it again. Makes me wonder if some of the N-Gage people are smoking something funny...

Another survey asked about charging for online games and arena membership, more stuff that never really happened or got mentioned again.

BUT... what I would say is that Nokia would be crackers to drop N-Gage now that it's just getting started.

The one thing that N-Gage has going for it is that it could be embedded on S60 handsets as standard, just like Nokia Music Store (or indeed just like Apple's iPhone store). When it's embedded on all S60 handsets that will give it a huge userbase, tens of millions, and that's the secret of all successful gaming platforms. Until they have it embedded on lots of handsets there's no way to judge how successful it will be.

If they embed it on all or most S60s and it STILL doesn't do well, that's when they should reconsider matters (maybe open the platform to lower budget S60 and Java games? maybe rebrand it? maybe integrate it with a more general on-phone app store?).

But until N-Gage has been given a proper chance to shine, any kind of cancellation would be premature.

On the other hand, there may be someone at the top of Nokia who doesn't want N-Gage to succeed because they don't approve of the project. Slanted surveys are notoriously used by factions within businesses (and governments) to justify decisions because the results can be interpreted in so many different ways, and the questions can be framed in a rather leading way to produce the results that the company wants to hear. If someone inside the company wanted to kill the platform off, a survey like this might be a first step. This clip shows a very good example of how this can be done:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yhN1IDLQjo

Or it could just be another weird survey never to be heard of again.

Whatever the truth, I wish Nokia would settle on a policy and see it through to the end instead of running around like headless chickens.