N-Gage fails to appear on Ovi

Nokia's latest assault on the gaming market, N-Gage 3: This Time It's Software, won't be debuting during November as originally promised because it still needs a bit more testing.

The N-Gage hardware failed spectacularly because it was, basically, not a very good idea. The N-Gage QD was a bad idea done better, but still fell down on that basic premise. This time the N-Gage is a software platform, including a set of gaming APIs, for content to be sold on Nokia's new Ovi portal.

Nokia started recruiting developers to its N-Gage-as-a-software-platform back in January this year, and has hinted that N-Gage games won't be limited to on-phone environments.

But not in November. According to reports on Reuters, there'll be no games to download until December due to the testing "taking a bit more time than what we had expected".

More bad news for Ovi though, with no N-Gage and no Warner Music it's an inauspicious start for the service that is supposed to be the future of Nokia. ®