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Finally, Nokia has officially announced the much talked about N-series mobile phone, N96. To be out sometime in Q4 2008, the N96, just like all the other models in the N-Series, will feature a 5-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss Optics, integrated Wi-Fi support and aGPS. Nokia has also tied up the N96 with its own Ovi services which would allow users to enjoy mobile content such as images and videos available online. In addition, the N96 also packs in some preinstalled N-Gage games which would pretty much tease users into partaking of Nokia’s paid N-Gage gaming service. In fact, the N96 will come with vouchers to purchase the full version of the N-Gage games such as Asphalt 3: Street Rules as well as trial version of four other popular N-Gage titles.

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Nokia has officially launched its N-Gage mobile games service. The N-Gage allows gamers to try and buy mobile games directly from their Nokia handsets. As we reported last Friday, the N-Gage service supports Nokia handsets that belong to Nokia’s new generation of mobile phones. These handsets include N81, N81 8GB, N82, N95 and N95 8GB.

For its initial offerings, N-Gage is making available various mobile games such as EA Sports’ FIFA08, Brain Challenge and Asphalt 3: Street Rules by Gameloft; World Series of Poker Pro Challenge by Glu Mobile and Hooked on: Creatures of the Deep and System Rush: Evolution by Nokia’s own mobile game publishing arm. Nokia also promised to release more games in the coming days.

Aside from trying and buying games from N-Gage, users can also create Friend List, send and receive private messages and participate in N-Gage’s IM style chat. Prices of games to be featured in N-Gage will range from $9 to $15, but remember you can always try the games first before paying for them.

Read [Nokia]

N-Gage First Access, the testing ground for the pre-release version of the N-Gage application where users can try and buy N-Gage games and provide feedback about them is ending its beta on March 27, 2008. Although there was no word yet on the exact date of the official launch of the final version of N-Gage application, the N-Gage site mentions it will be happening in the next few weeks.

Related to this announcement, the official N-Gage blog has issued some reminders for those who participated in the N-Gage First Access run.

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Let’s face it, most cellphones are now marketed with strange and wonderful features (making calls is barely even mentioned anymore), and the Fly MC100 is no exception. While you may have thought the games on cellphones have not advanced recently, this handset will prove you wrong. It is like no other because it can emulate the old-school consoles to run NES, SNES, Game Boy, and Game Boy Color games. Now Mario, Sonic, Streetfighter, Tetris and Pokemon can be loaded onto the same device that offers you a QVGA display, Yamaha audio chipset, multimedia player, email, 2-megapixel camera, microSD expansion and an FM radio.

Okay I’m not 100% sure whether the emulation of Nintendo games is exactly legal or going to cause copyright infringements but there’s no doubting that the phone looks very charming. It retails for around $270.

Product [Fly-Phone] Via [Mobile Mag]

Nokia’s new N-Gage service has been marred by several delays and, in December 2007, the company formally pushed the launch of the service to the first half of 2008. Now with a pre-launch version, N-Gage First Access, being made available to N81 users through the official N-Gage website, the full version can’t be far off. And just before the launch of the service, the ongoing Game Developers Conference proved to be a great platform for the cellphone maker to shed more light on N-Gage’s new avatar as a standard gaming service for Nokia cellphone which will allow users to download and play quality games on their cellphones.

Read [Gamertell]

Nokia has, after a long delay launched their N-Gage service. The release, being called N-Gage First Access sounds to us a lot like a glorified beta testing group, but if you are one of the lucky few, you can still get excited. The service is currently available just to those with an N81. Once you have the First Access installed you will be able to download and test games as well as buy them and continue to play. In addition to the games Nokia also hopes you will take part in the development, so when something goes wrong you can provide them with feedback. Honestly we have no reason to think you will have issues, but with all the initial delays in getting the service launched, they just seem inevitable. Of course like anything else, someone has found a ‘work around’ to the N81 only limitation, if you have another recent N Series device and are feeling lucky you can check out Symbian-Guru for some more details.

Read [N-Gage] Via [Boy Genius Report]

I figured the li’l system was pretty much dead, but it looks like Nokia has not completely abandoned the N-Gage, or at least the idea of it.

Nokia has launched a new web site to help promote the new age of the N-Gage, though they haven’t quite made it clear whether there will be a new N-Gage product you can hold in your grubby li’l gamer hands or simply a revised network of software and tweaked online services. When the official site liberally uses the somewhat vague terms “offering” and “experience” when referring to their product, you have to be a bit skeptical. (You’ll also need to be a bit forgiving since some of the Flash elements on the site are still a bit buggy.)

I suspect Nokia will release a redesigned gaming phone to improve on the N-Gage’s battery life and look a bit more like everything else out there but give it a distinctly non-N-Gage-y name and push a lot harder to sell software (read: games) and online services.

Here’s hoping for more concrete details at CES.

Site [N-Gage]