The New N-Gage: Don’t Shoot Yourself in the Foot Nokia!
Tzer2 is already making a splash on All About Symbian's new brother blog, All About N-Gage. Specifically, he calls out Nokia for limiting the presence of the new N-Gage to a few number of smartphones, even if many Nokia models are "technically good enough to run the Next Gen N-Gage games." And makes a very convincing case with this statement: "The biggest mistake that Nokia's marketing department could make with N-Gage is if they think restricting availability of the Next Gen N-Gage platform is going to help them. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the games market."
Which is quite true. The fact is that gamers, mobile or not, are customers who are looking for the most accessible experience. They usually ignore products or services that aren't within easy reach. You can limit the availability of certain phones and certain high-end features to build demand, but this formula simply doesn't work for games.
The original N-Gage experience didn't find many users because it was limited to only two product models. Let's hope that Nokia doesn't repeat history by limiting the reach of the new N-Gage, which can be adapted for a variety of models. There's a reason why most Mobile Games run on Java after all.
