It took them a couple of days to respond properly to our article about games being locked to one phone forever, but it now seems that Nokia have made the right decision: you WILL be able to transfer N-Gage games between phones! At first it will work through customer service, but later it will use some unannounced longer term solution (possibly software of some kind). Nokia has sent us an official statement on this issue, which you can read by clicking on the headline of this news item.

Here's the official statement from Nokia:

"We have noticed a number of media stories about N-Gage game transfers and wanted to clarify the issue. Due to copy protection, N-Gage games, like most mobile games, are linked to one device. As the value of content increases, a robust copy protection mechanism is essential as it makes it possible for the games industry to invest in N-Gage content.

We acknowledge our customers' concerns and have been working on a solution that would allow people to transfer purchased N-Gage games to a new Nokia device. We are working with our Nokia Care Centers with an intermediate solution to enable the licensed transfers of games until a final solution is ready to be deployed.

We apologise for the confusion around this issue and look forward to delivering an appropriate solution to transfer purchased N-Gage games to new Nokia devices."

They haven't given any indication as to when we can start transferring games, but at least they've now admitted this is a problem and admitted they must come up with a solution.

This is a complete turnaround when compared to their previous statements earlier in the week, which all defended the idea of not allowing transfers.

The news of this first broke on the Nokia Conversations blog.