14 DAY TRIAL // Apparently, Nokia is planning on launching its second version of the N-Gage mobile gaming platform in September this year.
Several rumors have recently surfaced claiming that the N-Gage v2 is being planned and it looks like they were right. This doesn't come as a big surprise though, as Nokia has already announced that they will be launching a new gaming platform this year also stating that the revamped N-gage will not be a standalone console as before, but an embedded gaming platform that will come with several of Nokia's new mobile phones.
The main reason for this is to provide a more affordable 'gaming console' for countries where PS2's ?" not to mention PS3's ?" are quite expensive and a mobile phone would be by far more convenient to use for gaming. ”We expect EA Mobile and Gameloft to bring a number of top-selling, award winning titles to our platform between our launch in September and the end of 2007”, Nokia's official blog states.
“They aren’t the only ones, as throughout the year we will continue to make exciting announcements of other leading publishers adding their titles to our games catalogue.”
According to Nokia, by early 2008 some of the biggest franchises and hottest mobile games will be included in the N-Gage experience. Frankly, this would be a major breakthrough and there will be few things left that you can't do with a mobile phone.
The platform will most probably be available for S60 mobile phones and definitely not limited to the N-gage gaming phone. According to Nokia's head of games, Jaako Kaidesoja, there aren't any plans for the release of an actual new N-gage device.