Beginning of the end for N-Gage?

We’ve reported previously on Nokia’s intentions to merge each of its services and bring them under the Ovi banner. Now an announcement over on the Nokia website appears to suggest that this process may have begun in earnest.

PocketGamer.biz spotted the announced plans to "focus the strategy of its Services unit" through some serious streamlining. Apparently this will affect some 450 jobs, although that will include cuts in other areas of the company.

More pertinently, the announcement states that "all mobile games will now become available through the Ovi Store, in addition to through their existing channels". This would seem to confirm Nokia’s intentions to continue to offer the N-Gage service as a separate entity for the time being.

However, the announcement also features comments from Niklas Savander, Executive Vice President of Services at Nokia, who mentions "accelerating the development of a common platform for Nokia's different service offerings."

Does this mean that N-Gage’s days are well and truly numbered? Or is it just repeating previous comments with added corporate-speech?

PocketGamer.biz did some further digging around and discovered that a pessimistic view of the announcement may well be the correct one. According to one publisher, "To all intents and purposes, N-Gage is gone," a point that was backed up by a number of others that were asked.

In fact, the consensus seems to be that the N-Gage brand will effectively cease to exist within 6-9 months, with the Ovi Store swallowing it up entirely.

Head on over to the PocketGamer.biz article for an in depth analysis of the story, as well as the reasons why Nokia shouldn't consider leaving the mobile game development business just yet.