Nokia failed the N-Gage vision, but is it a portent for Ovi?
The announcement from Finland that the N-Gage service will be canned at the end of September 2010, with no more effort placed into the ecosystem by Nokia, gave some tech blogs an open goal for some humour, but also points out a big problem that Nokia have.
N-Gage, both in it’s hardware iteration and it’s Software and Services iteration have been great ideas. It’s fair to say that the original mobile gaming vision in 2003 was a good four or five years ahead of the pack, with online gaming, connected community and software downloaded over the internet (although perhaps that was more thanks to the pirates than the software demos).
But after the initial vision what was there? A first pass at implementation, some bug fixes, and then Nokia moved on to something else, leaving a half-hearted effort for users to try and get along with. That’s what doomed the N-Gage, and it’s repeated time and again when you look at the platform. I’ve laid this out in details over on All About Symbian. if you’re in a rush, this is the conclusion:
Here’s the worrying question for Nokia. Is it just N-Gage that was plagued by this strategy? If we looked at the Ovi Store, would we find the same initial wonderful idea, an average first pass at implementation, and then see it simply pushed aside because it just about works, while the marketing department focuses on the next big project? Hasn’t that already happened to Ovi Share (and Ovi Files – Ed) (and Ovi Sync – Rafe)? And what about the haphazard way that the one year anniversary and lapsing subscriptions to Comes With Music was handled?
What indeed.
The N-Gage was a brave new world when announced in 2003. The revamp showed that, despite the poor implementation of the hardware solution, lessons had been learned. The question now is if any more lessons have been learned and if the Finnish company can apply those lessons to the rest of their Software and Services – the same services that they are proclaiming to be the future of Nokia.
excellent points, and something most of us have pointed out on more than one occasion. Nokia is awesome at ideas, but their execution, specifically with services, is horrendous. Is it any surprise, though? looking closer, their services execution actually closely resembles that of a phone manufacturer.
You launch a phone, let it simmer for a few months, then release a firmware update or two, adding new features and fixing bugs. after a year or so, if it’s not proven to be a popular model, it’s forgotten, never to receive future updates. More popular models only get an extra 12-18 months of attention before they too are cast aside for shiny shiny.
the only difference for nokia is that one hand is doing this with tangible products while the other hand is following suit with intangible services.