Nokia has released its much famed n-gage gaming application to public today on Thursday. However, the official announcement would be on Monday, but the blog of the service says that they are up and people can start downloading the N-gage application from their website. Moreover, the website has also started giving trial versions and selling full versions of many popular games. Nokia has roped in many of the high profile game studios for making games for the N-gage application like Electronic Arts Inc, Gameloft and Glu Mobile etc. Nokia is the first handset maker, which is eyeing the lucrative content market. According to research firm Informa, the mobile handheld gaming market was flat in 2007, but is predicted to yield good revenues in 2008 and is expected to reach $7.2 billion by 2012. Nokia is trying to bundle this application to its top end mobile phones like N95, N95-8GB, N81, N81-8GB and N82. Since these phones are quipped with hi-end graphic and audio solutions, which are being used by the games to create a very involving environment. However, Nokia spokesperson says that they are in process of releasing N-gage application for N73, N93 and N93i very soon. The application for the currently supported models can be downloaded directly to the mobile handset through www.n-gage.mobi/d or it can be downloaded to PC from http://www.n-gage.com/ngi/ngage/web/g0/en/get_ngage/download.html and then installed via PC suite.
Currently 25-30 game titles like Asphalt 3, The Sims 2, and Brothers in Arms etc are available as of now, but Nokia says that another similar number of titles would be released in second half of this year. There have been a few speculations that Sony Ericsson is also in line to launch another branding of their mobiles based on its parent company Sony’s popular handheld gaming console Play station Portable (PSP). Nevertheless, distant possibilities of such thing happening are insignificant. Therefore, Nokia is going to maintain lead in the gaming arena for quite some time.