More hints regarding N-Gage future

The people at Gamasutra had the chance to chat with Jani Karlsson, Senior Manager for N-Gage at Nokia recently, and although he didn’t exactly spill the beans, Karlsson did give some indication as to how the future of the N-Gage will unfold in the months to come.

By his own admission, the history of the N-Gage has been quite the challenge, just as any game developer or publisher would face when they first enter into the game, so to speak. That said, Karlsson is enthusiastic about moving forward with the N-Gage platform, with the upcoming releases of Warhammer and Civilization. Perhaps more interesting is the forthcoming plans of bringing the N-Gage platform to some new smartphones, along with partnerships with EA, Konami, and Microsoft.

Although he didn’t explicitly say anything of the matter, Karlsson did hint that the current N-Gage may be in need of a graphical upgrade to compete in the mobile gaming market. In this way, we just might an N-Gage 2 on the way. The real news, according to Karlsson, won’t be revealed until next month’s Game Developers Conference, so we’ll have to wait until then to know anything for sure.