Apparently, the folks at Nokia’s have not yet understood that their N-Gage systems are not dedicated gaming consoles like the Sony PSP or Nintendo DS. How else can the following policy be explained:
N-gage games are locked to an IMEI forever. People upgrading their phones can NOT move their games to the new device(unlike with a PSP/DS - you can use a purchased Game Pak oin any device, world-wide).
For me, this is a major foot bullet on Nokia’s side - think of the following scenarios:
- Phone stolen
- Device upgrade
- Device breakdown where repair is uneconomical
In each of the cases above, the user is punished by having to repurchase all N-Gage games he has ever owned - embarrassingly, significantly smaller companies(e.g. Resco; Paragon) manage to create much better systems that actually assist their customers.
Basically, it all comes back to the topic of investment security(I already covered this back in 2006). As long as user’s investment is not secure, power users will not buy stuff.
And this is the critical point: like most other Nokia products, N-Gage is not aimed at power users(as hard as this may sound). Instead, it is targeted at the soccer mom/gamer teen audience - and these folks usually do not care much about investment security. For them, instant gratification is what counts…and Nokia definitely has that one sorted!
P.S. All Snake SubSonic fans out there: this policy also applies to that game…
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