Nokia Puts Back N-Gage Launch

Unexpected difficulties delay the roll out of Nokia’s mobile gaming platform.

Nokia has had a grand plan for its N-Gage, reinventing the phone as a mobile gaming platform. The announcement of that, back in March, anticipated a Septemberlaunch for the device. But here it is, December, and it’s still not on the market. What’s happened?   According to a post on the N-Gage blog, reported by Vnunet, it’s down to those pesky unexpected difficulties.   "We have been doing an internal run with more than 1,000 global testers this week anduncovered an issue we feel we need to address. Overall, the games and service are working smoothly, but because of this issue we feel we could not release N-Gage First Access before the holidays asplanned."   That has to be a blow for Nokia, which would have loved holiday sales, but in August the launch date was put back. Now Nokia is looking to get the N-Gage on the market early inthe new year.