Nokia sends N-Gage to glue factory

By Ellie Gibson Published 2 November, 2009

It's all Ovi, says mobile company.

Nokia is dumping the N-Gage platform in favour of selling mobile games through the new Ovi Store.

As reported on the company's blog, N-Gage games will be available until October 2010. From then on you'll still be able to play any games you've downloaded, but no new ones will be released and community features will cease to function.

Nokia phones with the N-Gage application pre-installed will still be available to buy "for some time". However, Nokia will no longer ship new devices with the app.

Instead users will be able to get mobile games from the Ovi Store, which bears no similarities to the App Store or anything. The Ovi Store will be pre-installed on most new Nokia phones by the end of the year.

There are already more than a thousand Ovi games available including Pac-Man, The Sims 3 and Guitar Hero World Tour Mobile.

Bye-bye, N-Gage.

Picture of Ellie.

About Ellie Gibson

Since joining Eurogamer in the mid 2000s, Ellie has written about subjects as diverse as the fall of Gizmondo, the rise of Hollyoaks actresses in Red Alert games and the noise a bear makes under NSFW circumstances.

Read more articles from Ellie by visiting the Ellie Gibson archive page.

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Comments (11) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • grayfox09 #1 2 years ago

    Shabba.

  • DFawkes #2 2 years ago

    That's a shame, I used N-Gage all the time. At least until recently when they broke it by putting so many games on it went past some kind of limit and stopped you downloading any more games. As long as I can still play my old ones though, I suppose it'll be all good.

  • Ryze #3 2 years ago

    Why don't they just sell everything through the 'Nokia Store', and leave the stupid names behind?

    Average joe doesn't know 'Ovi' or 'N-gage', but everyone who's used a mobile phone has likely encountered 'Nokia'.

    I don't know...

  • penhalion #4 2 years ago

    @Ryze

    That would be common sense mate so it's unlikely that anyone in the comapny actually suggested something so useful.

  • Canyarion #5 2 years ago

    We're gonna miss side-talkin'.

  • T4RG4 #6 2 years ago

    Nokia havent a clue about games or what they are doing, never have - shame - they could put some real weight behind their efforts.

  • ChrisOTR #7 2 years ago

    For those out there who do buy a Nokia phone soon which still comes with N-Gage and get a free game activation voucher, use it to get Hooked On: Creatures of the Deep... It may sound crap but it's actually pretty good fun, and commonly accepted to be the best thing available on N-Gage. :)
    Edited by 1 at 02/11/09 @ 13:25

  • CaptainScarlet #8 2 years ago

    Iphone

  • Bander #9 2 years ago

    "Instead users will be able to get mobile games from the Ovi Store, which bears no similarities to the App Store or anything."

    And of course the App Store bears no similarities to the N-Gage 2.0 service that came before it, or indeed the download service that was added onto the original N-Gage and QD, or any other application downloading service, ever.

    It's a bit of a shame though. The N-Gage service is the only one I'm aware of that offered free demos and low-cost full game rentals of absolutely every title.

  • riz23 #10 2 years ago

    Hooked: Creatures of the Deep is ok, but I think 'One' and 'Reset Generation' were highlights of the platform.

  • Quak #11 2 years ago

    which bears no similarities to the App Store or anything.

    The sad thing is that this isn't even sarcasm or irony. The Ovi Store really is nothing like the Apple store and is a load of crap. The offerings are crap and the search returns the same 5 applications no matter what the criteria - which as I said are all crap anyway apart from an experimental "recognition" calculator which is kinda cool for 2 minutes.

    I uninstalled the Ovi software after 5 minutes.