A story popped up on Reuters earlier today stating that Nokia won’t be porting N-Gage over to its top-selling Nokia N73 smartphone. Sure, having all the top-flight features on every phone would be great but when does retro-fitting any device actually lead to success?
It seems to have taken Nokia 18 months to decide that gaming would not come to the Nokia E73 but with a host of new devices set for release that nativelly support N-Gage, we have to ask which you'd prefer: N-Gage on the Nokia N97 or the Nokia N73?
The news that Nokia won’t be adding N-Gage support to the Nokia N73 after all has caused something of a stir, with even Reuters picking the story up. All About N-Gage has more on the story, as it seems not only the N73 but also the N93 and N93i won’t be getting N-Gage support, even though Nokia had previously stated it would.
The story on Reuters implies Nokia isn’t about to add gaming services to the Nokia E73 because it’s having trouble getting the mainstream to accept Nokia as a gaming platform. This seems a little of a leap of faith, as the main problem seems to be the actual hardware and the versions of the OS used in those phones simply can’t handle the latest games.
Incidentally, Nokia recently announced that over 1 million profiles had been created on N-Gage, which is clearly something of a success story in the making.
N-Gage is increasingly being touted as a key feature and with Nokia deciding to keep N-Gage as a separate service when Ovi Store launches, shows it has a life of its own. The only problem we can see with the way the news was broken, as AAN mentions in its piece, is that Nokia should have come clean sooner about the situation.
However, this got us thinking about the whole issue of gaming phones. Sure, the N73 has sold over 20 million handsets world wide but given an option of going for one again, even with gaming support inside, or opting for something new like the Nokia E75 or the Nokia 5730 XpressMusic, which would you choose? Sure, they share the same screen size as the N73 but in terms of power and functionality both devices are easily next-gen.
Then there is Nokia’s flagship smartphone, the Nokia N97, which will come with N-Gage support straight from the box. The touchscreen will take this to a whole new level of gaming action that the N73 simply couldn't match.
So, as far as we see it, retro-fitting the service isn’t about to win new fans or customers. Put it this way, when was the last time you bought anything, a phone, a laptop, even a TV and didn’t immediately go for a newer, up-to-date model? We know which we'd choose and it wouldn't be an older device...
Check out these gaming beauties - all support N-Gage from the box:
