Another dull chart with no new entries I'm afraid...
Read on in the full article.
N-Gage Sales Chart for 16th to 22nd of February 2009
I can't wait for some of new games to arrive on N-Gage this year. With more and more phones coming with N-Gage pre installed, we should hopefully see some big game releases in the coming months.
Let's be honest guys it's time to hang up our Nokia's and buy an Iphone. 498 million games, multi-touch, established app store, graphics acceleration, accelerometer used, huge following, extensive developers on board with continually innovative ideas and regular releases.. etc etc. It's everything we wanted N-gage to be.
I enjoyed COTD, ONE and Reset Generation.. and I'll keep my N95 just in case but, for now, Adios and be good.
MovingOn wrote:Let's be honest guys it's time to hang up our Nokia's and buy an Iphone.
Let's be honest, you're being a troll.
498 million games
498,000,000 games? I suspect you've made a mistake there somewhere. 😊
multi-touch
Funny how the Nintendo DS seems to have done touchscreen games better than anyone else, and sold in massive numbers, all without multitouch.
established app store
Nokia's just setting up their own app store for pretty much all their phones including N-Gage-compatible ones:
extensive developers on board with continually innovative ideas
It's not quite the rosy picture you're painting, Apple vetoes any software which they consider to be in competition with themselves.
For example someone wrote a podcasting app for iPhone and it was blocked by Apple purely on the grounds that it was in competition with iTunes.
I enjoyed COTD, ONE and Reset Generation.. and I'll keep my N95 just in case but, for now, Adios and be good.
Enjoy your 24 month contract with massive monthly payments, and a highly expensive locked phone that can't use other networks' SIM cards. 😊
Tzer2, i do not even want to dignify ur unprofessional, childish and deluded rantings with a proper response here.
Be honest with ur 9 regular readers.
I feel Tzer is gone crazy, the way he defends the Ngage it seems thst Ngage belongs to him !!!
Tzer you say that the DS sold msny games without touchscreen, but did you ever try to think that the DS is a standalone gaming device, and why should any company stay behind when it has a great technology (thouch screen) stay behind from making use of it ??
I fell ngage is dead looking at the Iphone, it doesnt make use of the any existing technology, just plain simple games and that to they release one every two months ?
Great !!
both movingon and unregistered are right... It seems that ngage belongs to tzer2 and he doesnt face reality at this moment. Nokia at the moment is walking while others are running. Releasing 1 game a month its pretty lame. Dont say that ngage games are better than iphone cause its not true the only let down is the lack of keys...
Lets face it though. If we all had the iphone, then Apple would have the monopoly and if that happened then how often would they release new apps? They could charge whatever they wanted pretty much.
Personally i like Ngage, i think it's a new and improving alternative for people who do not wish to be part of the Apple machine.
Tzer2, i do not even want to dignify ur unprofessional, childish and deluded rantings with a proper response here.
You were the one who said the iPhone had 498 million games...
Tzer you say that the DS sold msny games without touchscreen, but did you ever try to think that the DS is a standalone gaming device,
I said the DS sold many games without multitouch. It definitely has a touchscreen, and N-Gage is about to get a touchscreen with the upcoming N97.
The point was that you don't need multitouch to make good games, which is what the original poster was claiming.
and why should any company stay behind when it has a great technology (thouch screen) stay behind from making use of it ??
You can't make a successful game system purely using the latest technology, it doesn't work, it has never worked.
Java has much worse technology than other phone game platforms, but Java games outsell all other platforms.
Nintendo DS has much worse technology than the PSP, but the DS outsells the PSP.
Nintendo Wii has much worse technology than the PS3 and 360, but the Wii outsells both of them put together.
PS2 had much worse technology than GameCube and Xbox, but it outsold both of them put together.
In fact, every successful gaming platform has "stayed behind" in technology, because it means they can make cheaper gaming devices which are bought by more people. It's the userbase that matters, NOT the technology. Game publishers only care about game sales, they don't care about anything else, and that depends on userbase.
both movingon and unregistered are right... It seems that ngage belongs to tzer2 and he doesnt face reality at this moment.
You think the iPhone DOES have 498 million games? 😊
I feel Tzer is gone crazy, the way he defends the Ngage it seems thst Ngage belongs to him !!!
You obviously don't read All About N-Gage regularly, and you obviously don't read my articles regularly either.
Otherwise you'd know I and our other writers have often written stuff criticising N-Gage:
http://www.allaboutngage.com/features/
For example, AAN broke the news about Nokia forcing people to re-buy their games collections, and I personally wrote the article and follow-up all about it, which caused Nokia lots of bad publicity:
It made headlines all around the tech world and even on some non-tech sites such as BBC News:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7414323.stm
I fell ngage is dead looking at the Iphone, it doesnt make use of the any existing technology, just plain simple games and that to they release one every two months Great !!
If you want an iPhone go and get one. But not everyone can afford to buy a 600 euro phone, not everyone wants to sign a 2 year contract, and not everyone wants to use a locked phone. Indeed not everyone wants an iphone at all, as it has a very poor camera and no official camcorder function.
There are 1000 million phones sold a year, the iPhone only sells about 20 million a year. There's plenty of room for all kinds of gaming platforms in the future.
Tzer2 '498 million games' was merely exaggeration for effect, and as an intelligent gentleman surely u must've know that. The point is that there are a LOT more games on the app store than on N-gage. In fact all in the window of about 2 weeks there are exclusive premium games like Sway, Prey, and MGS Touch being released amongst many others of eyebrow-raising calibre and cost, taking full advantage of the hardware and connected features no less.
Yes, iv been a loyal N-gage follower for many years, but as a GAMER with a love of games how can I not be tempted by a platform that offers everything I want RIGHT NOW. Plus the new iphone hardware is expected this summer which could again bring further excitement to the mobile gaming sphere. On an 18month contract everyone's a winner.
Sure the alternative is to buy an n97 four months from now & wait for Ovi to get into its stride, but how long will that be.. 6 further months, a year, never.. Will the games be as exemplary as on Apple's platform? If multi-touch really takes off will I feel left behind on my n97? Will there be a smorgasboard of exciting & exclusive N-gage touch releases making me feel proud of my platform? Nobody knows yet & unfortunately that's the problem. Games are exploding on Apple's platform so what will it look like in a year with an additional hardware update?
N-Gage is potentially a fantastic gaming platform & as I said, ill be keeping my N95 on ice for what im sure will be some fantastic future releases. Its just fallen behind for the moment.
And Tzer2, as others have also commented, can u please just try to be a bit more objective about all of this for the love of gaming.
And Tzer2, as others have also commented, can u please just try to be a bit more objective about all of this for the love of gaming.
Can you give an example of something I said where I haven't been objective? A specific sentence?
If I'm not being objective, it should be easy for you to come up with examples, but you don't, you just brush off any kind of direct reply by saying you won't "dignify" me with one.
You're just casting general insults without actually examining what you're insulting. You keep making nasty remarks about me but you're never specific enough to allow me to defend myself.
You clearly haven't followed AAN for very long. A lot of the articles I write on AAN are criticising N-Gage, yet you choose to ignore them and imply that I do nothing but defend the platform, which is so far from the truth as to be laughable.
At one point we even had a threatening letter from Nokia's legal department because they didn't like a certain article we published about N-Gage, but we still published it and they backed down.
Did you see the BBC headline in my previous reply? That was because of an article I wrote. Did you actually read the list of feature articles on AAN including headlines like "N-Gage shoots itself in the foot"?
Does that sound like a site that does nothing but praise a platform?
The point is that there are a LOT more games on the app store than on N-gage.
If you're going to compare ALL of the iPhone's games to ALL of the N-Gage phones' games then you have to include S60, Java J2ME, Flash Lite and Emulated titles in the N-Gage total.
If you add up all the S60, Java J2ME, Flash Lite and Emulation games that N-Gage phones can run, you get a figure in the many thousands, in fact the Java total alone is probably more than the iPhone store's games section.
N-Gage itself isn't really a separate platform at all, it's basically just a way of selling S60 games. There is nothing to stop an N-Gage game being released on S60 instead, and the games that make it into the N-Gage app are meant to be the cream of the S60 crop. There are lots of S60 games outside N-Gage which are well worth looking at, you'll find a nice selection of them in our "Unofficial Games" section at the top.
If we're going to go purely by numbers, then by far the most successful gaming platform is Java, it is available on practically every phone in the world and Java game sales are greater than for any other mobile platform.
Yes, iv been a loyal N-gage follower for many years
'
N-Gage, in its current form, has only been around for less than a year. No one has been a loyal follower of it for years.
N-Gage now is a totally different beast to what it was, it only really has the brand name and OS in common. The original N-Gage depended on games to get people to buy the hardware, whereas the new N-Gage is on hardware that people are buying anyway for non-gaming reasons.
I've often said they should have changed the name to reflect the fact it's totally different, but they didn't, so we're stuck with the same name referring to two totally different things.
Sure the alternative is to buy an n97 four months from now & wait for Ovi to get into its stride, but how long will that be.. 6 further months, a year, never..
The iPhone, when it launched, had absolutely NO applications or games at all. Zero. Zilch.
It wasn't until a year later that ANY third party software started being available for it.
These things take time, and N-Gage in its current form has only been around for a few months. The Ovi Store hasn't even launched yet.
If you're going to condemn things before they even launch, then you're the one who has problems being objective.
Look, the basic flaw in saying "give up your N-gage phones because N-Gage is crap" is that people haven't bought them for N-Gage, they've bought them for other reasons which have nothing to do with gaming. N-Gage is a bonus feature, not a main selling point.
Most of the comments above are assuming that N-Gage-compatible devices are being bought for gaming, and that the quality of N-Gage gaming will somehow affect the phone sales, but this just isn't the case. There are no N-Gage gaming devices any more, N-Gage is just one feature among many on ordinary phones, and gaming isn't really a make-or-break feature for most phone users.
The whole "everyone's going to buy an iphone" idea is just ridiculous. For example:
-If someone wants to buy an N86 for its 8 megapixel autofocus camera (which is the N86's main selling point), there is no way they would buy an iPhone instead because it has a much worse camera that doesn't do autofocus and doesn't even do video recording.
-If someone wants to buy an E75 for its physical QWERTY keyboard (which is the E75's main selling point), they wouldn't buy an iPhone because it has no physical keyboard at all.
-If someone wants to buy a 5630 for its low price (which is the 5630's main selling point), there is no way they would buy an iPhone because it costs three times as much.
The iPhone has a market share of 2%. That means 98% of all mobile phones bought over the past year were NOT made by Apple. Does anyone really think mobile game publishers are going to simply ignore 98% of the phone world and concentrate on just 2% of handsets?
The average sale price for a phone is about 80 euros, with subsidies and taxes removed. With subsidies and taxes removed the iPhone's price is about 600 euros. There is absolutely no way that it will ever capture a significant share at that price. The iPhone is an expensive niche phone aimed at people in rich countries, but most people who buy phones are actually in poor countries (Nokia's two biggest markets are China and India for example).
That's why N-Gage has a reasonable chance of success, because it is on mass market phones that would probably sell well anyway, or were already selling well before N-Gage even launched. N-Gage is like teletext on television sets, or RDS on radios, it's enhancing the device rather than being centre stage.
You can say I'm talking a load of rubbish if you like, and maybe it will all turn out wrong, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Let's just all go and buy whatever phones we want to right now, then come back and see where N-Gage is a year from now in March 2010.
MovingOn, if you really do want to move on go ahead, but we'll find out what happens to the new N-Gage platform after it has had a proper chance to shine.
Tzer2 I apologise for upsetting you. And no-one can deny the great work you have done for AAN.
When I say I've been following N-gage for years surely you realised I wasn't just referring to the current gen.
All I'm saying is that, for me, so far, N-gage hasn't evolved into the massively multiplayer online community that I was expecting. As you say maybe it will happen in time, but how much time.. The App store has evolved into a gamers playground in just 6 months and is, in my opinion, the most exciting place in gaming right now. We could all sit around twiddling our thumbs waiting for Ovi to expand or merge with N-gage, which would demonstrate remarkable loyalty to Nokia, but what about those of us who are impulsive, want the best games right here right now? Yes we can moan about Nasty Mr Apple and the Apple machine, but if we want to play handheld, eye-popping, innovative, well costed, multi-touch mutiplayer games RIGHT NOW then where else can we go. I don't want to wait a year to see if Ovi might or might not be any good I'm sorry.
You say there are already many more non-Ngage games (Symbian, Jave etc..) than on the app store, but they are not in one unified place with a community. That was why N-gage was conceived in the first place and the only time I've felt part of a community is when everyone was playing online System Rush at the start, and for a time when Reset Generation was a popular download. I hope and I'm sure the community will grow again when the right games are released, because there's been an awful lot of negativity in Nokia forums lately with regard to N-gage.
I've also got issues with the fact that N-gage games have to be adjusted to work on all N-gage compatible models. If I bought an N97 in June would all N-gage games be altered to accommodate the single-touch touchscreen, or would the games be tailor made for it? If they were altered to work on the touchscreen would the quality be any good? If they were tailor-made for the 5800/N97 etc how would the same game (if actually available) stand up against their superior multi-touch cousin the iphone? Would these N-gage games definitely use graphics acceleration? Even if all these questions had definite, positive answers, Apple are releasing new mobile hardware this summer which some believe is likely to be significantly more powerful. Again, what this will do for gaming is anyone's guess, but it's bound to be positive.
Let's hope Nokia make N-gage into more of a priority this year, make the right games at the right cost, and enable it to become the fantastic community everyone of us has always hoped it would be.
MovingOn, I have absolutely nothing against iPhone users. There's nothing wrong with iPhones either, and if someone bought me one (or an iPod Touch!) I'd be very happy. 😊
If you want to say the iPhone is a good gaming device, I'd agree with you totally.
What upset me was your very first post was basically just telling people to give up their N-Gage phones, that there was no hope for N-Gage, that everyone should use the iPhone etc etc.
I think there is quite a lot of hope for N-Gage, but it will take time for N-Gage to spread across Nokia's range of phones. So far only three models have launched with it pre-installed, and Nokia has dozens of new models a year. It's very VERY early days.
There are 1000 million phones sold every year, which is more than enough users to sustain several software platforms at once. It's like computers, there are enough users to support Windows, Macintosh and Linux.
It doesn't have to be an either/or situation, there doesn't have to be any "winner".
I've also got issues with the fact that N-gage games have to be adjusted to work on all N-gage compatible models.
This isn't an N-Gage-specific problem, it's true of pretty much all phone game platforms.
Almost all phone games have to be adjusted to work on many different hardware types and operating systems. It's very very rare for a commercial third party phone game to only be released on one phone platform. I can't think of any phone publishers who only release on one platform, even Nokia publishes games on Java and Flash as well as S60/N-Gage.
Even on the iPhone games need to be adjusted to work with different generations of hardware, that's not really a unified platform either.
In fact gaming in general is mostly multi-platform. Third party console games are almost always developed for many different kinds of target hardware at once, then ported to the different consoles by various development tools.
I agree this leads to a lower technical quality, but that's the reality of modern game development, and to be honest gaming has always been multi-platform in this way. As long as no single platform dominates, game publishers will release on many platforms.
If they were tailor-made for the 5800/N97 etc how would the same game (if actually available) stand up against their superior multi-touch cousin the iphone?
...but that still assumes that you're buying the phone FOR the games. You're implying that your choice of phone is determined by what the games are like.
Some people do buy phones for gaming, but most people don't (which is part of the reason the original N-gage did so badly). Most phone gamers chose their phone for reasons that have nothing to do with games, so the quality of games is unlikely to affect their purchase.
If you really want the best possible games without any compromise, you shouldn't really be using a phone at all, you should be using a games console. Consoles have by far the best graphics, best online, best communities, depth of gameplay etc.
Even if all these questions had definite, positive answers, Apple are releasing new mobile hardware this summer which some believe is likely to be significantly more powerful. Again, what this will do for gaming is anyone's guess, but it's bound to be positive.
You're assuming more powerful hardware = better games. If you look at the history of gaming, this has been proven wrong time and time again. (I gave a lot of examples in a previous reply, such as Java vs smartphones, DS vs PSP, PS2 vs Xbox, Wii vs PS3, Atari 2600 vs Intellivision/Colecovision etc.) Hardware that is a generation behind its rivals has usually come out on top in the end.
If hardware is a lot more powerful, it also means it's a lot more expensive, which means that most mobile phone users will not be able to buy it even if they wanted to. That is not good for gaming, because it severely restricts the size of the userbase.
If N-Gage was put on a phone that cost 50 to 100 euros SIM-free, that would do a lot more for mobile gaming than any number of hardware improvements, because it would be a phone that most people in the world could afford.
Something like 85% of phone sales are cheap non-smart devices, which means the only software platform they support is Java. Whoever replaces Java, whoever makes the first really cheap smartphones, stands a chance of completely dominating the mobile software world. That's where the really important stuff is going to happen. Of all the current phone gaming platforms, N-Gage is the one that could most plausibly enter this cheap end first.
Tzer2, you make some very relevant points & many of us applaud the work you to on AAN.
If the iPhone is mobile gaming platform that you prefer,go for it! If you are into & looking forward to N-Gage platform go for it as well!
Just lets try not to voice our opinion so loud & say that one platform is doomed & one is excelling, its still early days for both!
Just my 2cents...😎