Nokia will try hard to develop the mobile gaming industry this year. A pilot is due immediately and is predicted to be fully functional after this summer.

The market leader Nokia announced that they this year will offer consumers a simplified way to access games. This effort will especially affect the coming N-series smartphones and other devices running S60.

Nokia will collaborate with the Finnish telecoms-company Elisa to deliver a pilot for the new game-community based on their N-Gage-model. The pilot will launch any day now and will be thoroughly tested until midsummer.

Elisa will integrate their now existing game-community with Nokia’s N-Gage Arena. The companies have spoken about their wish to test the system thoroughly and base their evaluations from real network environments.

- The source in Nokia’s gaming strategy is to make it simple for people to find, buy and play good quality games using smartphones. This pilot will help us to further mature the N-Gage-experience for our coming commercial release later this year, says Jaakko Kaidesoja, director at Nokia Multimedia.

Elisa will only use Nokia’s N73 and N95 for the pilot.

- Our goal is to give our customers a new and unique experience which they cannot have anywhere else. People which play computer games are keen to to try new things such as new mobile services, says Mikko Mattinen, director for Elisa’s content-services.

In a joint press release the companies announce that Nokia owners can expect both better games and an improved, “intuitive” way of accessing new games. To make the effort even more attractive, Nokia’s collaborating with game giants such as Electronic Arts and Gameloft.

This new gaming platform will be released around August 2007 as a service on Nokia’s smartphones. The games will work on any device running S60 v. 3.0.
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