Nokia officially unveil Next Gen N-Gage platform

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At their Go Play press conference in London today, attended by various Nokia bigwigs including CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, the Next Gen N-Gage platform was officially unveiled. Other services and devices, especially music-oriented stuff, were also unveiled, but we concentrated on what they are saying about gaming. Click on the headline of this story to read the lowdown on everything we learned about Next Gen N-Gage.

Here's a summary of what was revealed:

- The Next Gen N-Gage platform will launch in November 2007.

- Compatible phones at launch will include the Nokia N73, N81, N81 8GB, N93, N93i, N95 and N95 8GB. This list will apparently grow over time though, especially as even newer S60 devices become available.

- Next Gen N-Gage will be part of Ovi. Ovi is Nokia's new brand covering all their current and upcoming online services. "Ovi" is the Finnish word for "door".

- The new official N-Gage site has now launched.

- Many new Next Gen games have been confirmed (see our separate news story for a complete list).

- The games will cost between 6 and 10 euros (plus any local taxes). You can pay by credit card or your phone bill. Games cost even less if they're rented for a day or a week, and all the games are free to try.

- Next Gen N-Gage will be compatible with tens of millions of phones when it launches, so userbase shouldn't be the same problem that it was on the original generation N-Gage.