Nokia plans to stop producing mobile videogames for its N-Gage platform next year, it said Friday.
Bloomberg News
An N-Gage demo at videogame retailer GameStop in 2003
In a blog post, the cellphone maker said it will continue selling games through its Ovi app store. Customers can download games through N-Gage until September 2010, it added, though new games will not be published there. Previously purchased games will also continue to work on handsets, though the community features will be disabled in September as well.
Nokia, which faces cellphone rivals such as Apple and Samsung, once saw N-Gage as a way to help tap into consumers’ appetite for mobile games, but the service got off to a rocky start, including several launch delays. It had previously developed a gaming handset, also called N-Gage, that sold poorly and was pulled in 2006.
The company has since turned its attention to Ovi, which competes with Apple’s larger App Store, as well as other devices like netbooks, which it expects to begin selling next month.
While Nokia’s post elicited condolences — “Next year will be a sad day when Ngage closes its doors,” one wrote — commenters on gadget blog Engadget, which said it wasn’t an unexpected move, were less supportive. “I thought it ended before it began,” one wrote.
