N-Gage
Nokia's taco phone: a Symbian handset that was also a games console, sold sideways, then a games service that closed in 2010
The N-Gage was Nokia's combined phone and handheld console, launched on 7 October 2003 at $299 and known for its taco shape and side-talking. It sold about three million units, was replaced by the N-Gage QD in May 2004 and discontinued in 2005; Nokia relaunched N-Gage in April 2008 as a games platform for its Symbian smartphones. Nokia announced the end of the service on 30 October 2009 and closed it on 30 September 2010.
Timeline [edit]
- 2002
-
4 November 2002
other
N-Gage announced
A Symbian phone that is also a games console.
- 2003
-
7 October 2003
Launch
Worldwide launch
$299; side-talking begins.
- 2004
-
23 February 2004
Decline
Nokia admits disappointing sales
About 400,000 sold in the first months.
-
14 May 2004
Version
N-Gage QD
Normal earpiece, hot-swap cards, lower price.
- 2005
-
2005
Shutdown
Hardware discontinued
About three million sold across both models.
- 2008
-
3 April 2008
Revival
N-Gage 2.0 platform launches
Games for S60 phones such as the N95.
- 2009
-
30 October 2009
Shutdown announced
Nokia to close the N-Gage service
No new games; content until September 2010.
- 2010
-
30 September 2010
Shutdown
N-Gage service closes
Mobile games move to the Ovi Store.
How it looked [edit]
The site through time
Browse n-gage.com as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:
Ownership [edit]
Key figures [edit]
| Metric | Value | As of | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Downloads ▲ | 3 million | 27 August 2007 | Reported Combined sales of the N-Gage and N-Gage QD handsets as reported by Nokia |
Confirmed official figures · Reported media, cites a source · Estimated analyst or our estimate
Why it shut down [edit]
Official line: Nokia announced on 30 October 2009 that it would stop publishing N-Gage games and close the N-Gage service at the end of September 2010, folding mobile games into the Ovi Store. The original N-Gage handset of 2003 had sold about three million units against a target of six to nine million, was mocked for its shape and for making users remove the battery to change games, and was replaced by the N-Gage QD in 2004 and discontinued in 2005; the 2008 N-Gage 2.0 software platform on ordinary Nokia phones never found an audience either.
Our analysis: The N-Gage was right about the destination, games on the phone in your pocket, and wrong about everything on the way. The 2003 handset was a phone held sideways to talk, with a small vertical screen for games, cartridges under the battery and a $299 price against a $99 Game Boy Advance SP; the games were ports that fitted badly. Nokia fixed the hardware with the QD, but by then the joke had stuck. The 2008 relaunch as software was sensible and a year early: the iPhone App Store opened the same summer and did the same job with no publisher, no certification and no Nokia.
History [edit]
The taco
Nokia announced the N-Gage on 4 November 2002 and launched it worldwide on 7 October 2003 at $299 with a party in London: a Symbian Series 60 smartphone with a d-pad, a 176 by 208 portrait screen, MP3 player, FM radio and Bluetooth, and games on MMC cards. It also had a microphone and earpiece on the edge of the device, so you talked into it side-on, and changing a game meant taking off the back and removing the battery. Photographs of people "side-talking" became a meme before memes had a name, and Nokia sold about 400,000 in the first two months, then admitted in early 2004 that sales were disappointing. The games, Tomb Raider, Sonic N, Tony Hawk, Pandemonium, were competent ports of things that played better elsewhere, though the N-Gage Arena online service was genuinely ahead of its time.
The N-Gage QD, released in May 2004, fixed the obvious faults: a normal earpiece, a hot-swappable card slot, a smaller body and a lower price. It sold better without ever selling well; Nokia put lifetime sales of both models at about three million by 2007, against an original target of six to nine million, and stopped making the hardware in 2005.
N-Gage 2.0
Nokia kept the name and relaunched it on 3 April 2008 as N-Gage 2.0: a downloadable games application and store for its S60 smartphones such as the N81, N95 and N96, with try-before-you-buy demos and an online Arena. Games came from EA, Gameloft, Glu and Capcom, but the catalogue stayed small, certification was slow and the store was another silo on phones that were about to lose to the iPhone. On 30 October 2009 Nokia said it would stop publishing N-Gage titles and close the service, with content available until the end of September 2010; games and Arena went dark on 30 September 2010 and mobile games moved to the Ovi Store.
The domain today
n-gage.com now hosts an unrelated messaging product with no connection to Nokia.
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Sources [edit]
- Game on for Nokia IGN 4 November 2002 [archived]
- The ultimate N-Gage FAQ IGN 12 September 2003 [archived]
- N-Gage launch IGN 8 October 2003 [archived]
- Nokia admits to disappointing N-Gage sales GamesIndustry.biz 23 February 2004 [archived]
- Nokia interview The Register 14 April 2004 [archived]
- N-Gage QD impressions IGN 29 April 2004 [archived]
- N-Gage QD Eurogamer 14 May 2004 [archived]
- E3 2006: N-Gage still kickin' Gizmodo 11 May 2006 [archived]
- Nokia announces the end of its N-Gage gaming service Engadget 30 October 2009 [archived]
- Shed no tears for N-Gage games, they're not long for this world TechCrunch 3 November 2009 [archived]
Last verified: 16 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).