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Nokia's N-Gage Service To End After 2010
negRo_slim writes "Who knew the N-Gage was still kicking? Well apparently it still is — however, it looks like 2010 will be the end. From the announcement: 'While the N-Gage.com site together with the N-Gage Arena and other community features will remain in operation throughout 2010, the Ovi Store will be the new central place for all the mobile games that Nokia and other publishers offer from this point forward. We will no longer publish new games for the N-Gage platform.'"
No, it's not N-Gage the device, it's N-Gage the platform.
A while back - 2 years, maybe - Nokia decided that they wanted to seriously push gaming on S60 phones. I think this was even before the iPhone opened the app development floodgates, but I'm not sure.
For some reason, they decided that the best name for this brand new gaming delivery platform would be... well, would be the same name as one of their most famous hardware failures of yesteryear. It would be akin to Apple calling the iPhone's browser "Cyberdog" or something equally ludicrous.
At any rate, Nokia "soft launched" the new N-Gage throughout various markets, finally making it to the US only late last year (Nokia's really ignored the US market in recent years). Of course, by the time this project was starting to ramp up, the iPhone had already proven itself a capable gaming platform and... well, you can guess how well it went over.
Don't worry, though, if you're a hardcore Nokia gamer. Everything that "N-Gage" the "platform" does will continue to exist, presumably, in "Ovi," which is their new unified branding for app delivery / social networking / whatever else. This is really more of a branding change than anything.
Yes, worldwide Nokia sells four times the number of smart-phones than Apple does. It still has an immense war chest of cash on-hand. And for every iPhone sold, Nokia gets a cut of it anyway. So it's not like Nokia is going away anytime soon.