R.I.P N-Gage

Nokia calls it quits for the N-Gage

Back when the N-Gage was announced to us game developers, we all felt that the N-Gage was going to be a horrible failure. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy in a way — without the developer support, the platform languished — but the N-Gage phone was a game platform first, which made the phone portion mostly unusable — for one thing, using the N-Gage as a phone made you look like a techno-neanderthal because of the particular way you had to hold the phone (the mic and earpiece were on the side of the phone, rather than the face or back of the phone).

I’m trying to think of other devices I’d like to disappear, but natural selection has already rendered most of them extinct.