GameStop Drops N-Gage from 450 Stores
- February 05, 2004 00:00 AM PST
Major U.S. retailer drops Nokia's handheld from a third of its stores.
Retailer GameStop has announced that it will stop selling Nokia's N-Gage at 450 of its stores, representing almost a third of its retail outlets. Remaining inventory will be moved to the other stores. While not a complete forsaking of the console, it nevertheless serves another painful blow to Nokia and their courageous venture into the handheld console market.However, Nokia shows not signs of giving up, and will likely introduce either a more aesthetically and ergonomically sound N-Gage, or a successor at this year's E3. Speaking to UK newsletter MCV last week, Ilkka Raiskinen, Senior Vice-President of Entertainment and Media Business Unit said, "We're learning fast...our hardware cycles are different to what the games business is used to and our strategy is clearly to have more devices."
