I suspect the delays in release dates are down to testing, it's actually incredibly hard to test a phone game because the sheer variety of hardware is incredible. Even a single phone model can have dozens of variations for all the phone networks, and there are already about half a dozen phones to test these games on.
I remember one of the developers of Worms for the original N-Gage told us in a webchat that one of their testers had run up $2000 in phone bills testing the game, because they had to allow for every possible state of the phone while the game was running. That was just one tester doing one game! 😊
Console game testing is far easier because there's usually just one hardware version, or maybe two or three major overhauls in the console's lifetime, and a console doesn't really do much else while it's running a game.
So I'm a bit confused too as to why the N93 hasn't been N-gage'd yet.. Yes the N73 has limited RAM so delays are (relatively) understandable. The N93 has similar hardware and screen resolution to the n95 and its sisters, so what could the hold up be for?
The N93 doesn't have as much RAM as the N95, the N93 has about 20MB free but the N95 has about 30MB free. The N95 also has a newer version of S60v3, S60v3 FP1, which is what all the other current N-gage phones use. It could be that it's the lack of FP1 on the N93 and N73 that's also causing problems.
To be honest though, the basic problem seems to be that the N95 sold far better than the N93, so there's more incentive for Nokia to update the N95 firmware. The N93 turned out to be a very niche item, perhaps because it just looked too bulky when used as a phone.
I have an N93 myself incidentally, and I think it's quite simply the best camcorder phone and gaming phone made so far, but I can see why the average phone user would be put off by its bulk.
More money, better management and resources need to be pumped into areas of weakness.
Nokia spent a VAST amount of money on the original N-Gage, including buying a big chunk of Sega and creating some of the most expensive phone games ever made. However, almost all of that money went down the toilet. I suspect they want to avoid throwing cash at the problem this time round.
That said, as I wrote in the article their main imperative now should be getting the application onto as many phones as possible, mainly through embedding.
Once you have people using the platform, the money will naturally start flowing in as people buy the games, and the more people buy the games the more new games will get released on the platform, which makes even more people interested in the platform.