Nokia to announce the shutdown of their gaming service Ni-Gage and community at the end of September 2010. Nokia is moving all its users over to the Ovi Store. The community site will be open through the end of 2010 and then all future games will be available through the Ovi Store.
The N-Gage platform debuted in 2003 as a dedicated gaming handset powered by a modified Series 60 and brought many innovations to the mobile gaming space such as Bluetooth multiplayer gaming, online gaming over GPRS data service, leaderboards and other functionality. N-Gage was never able to move beyond a niche community. Its ease of distribution advantages has been overtaken by the rise of App Stores; similarly online service elements are now relatively common. Furthermore the lack of graphic acceleration hardware in recent Nokia S60 phones have left N-Gage games looking lacklustre, in eye-candy terms, when compared to the iPhone and other mobile gaming platforms.
