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Not all products are winners; it’s a fact of doing business. And sometimes, companies may think they have a winner on their hands, pumping millions into marketing campaigns for an item the world simply doesn’t want. That seems to be the case for Nokia when they unleashed the N-Gage in 2003, a hybrid mobile phone/portable gaming console/MP3 player.
Now twenty years removed from the launch, having games and music on your mobile device is a standard. The advent of smartphones paved the way for a mobile gaming revolution, the concept was quite novel in 2003. Phones at the time typically included a free game or two, most notably Snake, a take on 1976’s Blockade that was included in Nokia’s most popular phones starting in 1998. The N-Gage set out to provide a more robust mobile gaming experience, attempting to rival the Game Boy Advance, Nintendo’s popular handheld at the time.
It was a massive flop. A high price tag, odd design choices, and suboptimal button tactility kept the N-Gage from gaining mainstream adoption. But this failure was not from a lack of effort by Nokia’s marketing team. As this 2003 news clip illustrates, the company had huge hopes for the device, going as far as hiring banner-waving skydivers and arranging flash-mob style street art installations. Even a number of consumers were stoked about the promise that the N-Gage showed, lining up to be one of the first to purchase the doomed handheld. Watch, and enjoy this bright ray of hope before the inevitable downfall.
