News
Elisa kicks off N-Gage trial
Stuart O'Brien Feb 27 2007, 12:45pm
Nokia is conducting a trial of its next-gen N-Gage games platform with Finnish operator Elisa.
The pilot will run until the expected global commercial launch of the new N-Gage platform across a range of Series 60 smartphones this summer.
Elisa has also confirmed that it will support N-Gage with a full service offering through its own portals, in addition to the N-Gage application that will be installed on Nokia devices.
This is good news for Nokia, which experienced operator resistance to the original N-Gage device due to its MMC card-based game distribution model.
Nokia has been steadily ramping N-Gage activity following series of closed door developer and publisher workshops last month.
The company is also expected to unveil more details of its strategy at the Game Developers Conference next week.
Jaakko Kaidesoja, Nokia's director of games, said: "The core of the Nokia games strategy is to make it easy for people to find, buy and play great quality mobile games and we're excited to expand our relationship with Elisa to help make this possible. This pilot will help us further refine the N-Gage experience for our commercial launch later this year."
Mikko Mattinen, head of content services at Elisa, said: "Our goal is to give our customers a new and unique experience they cannot get anywhere else. People who enjoy mobile games are often the same customers who enjoy experimenting with new mobile services and content."
