This might not sound like it's connected to N-Gage, but bear with us because it is. There's now something called Nokia Account which provides easier access to Nokia's online services. At the moment it's just used by a few of the services, but it should eventually expand to cover them all, and that would probably include N-Gage Arena. For that reason N-Gagers ought to register a Nokia Account username now, to make sure they get the one they want.

If you're wondering why Nokia Account has a separate membership database to N-Gage Arena, it's a long story. In the meantime, here's that address again:

http://account.nokia.com/

You don't need to provide anything except a username, a password and a working e-mail address.

Now, here's the long story...

Nokia is changing. Instead of just making phones, it's now starting to develop software and online services such as maps, music, file sharing etc. Most of these services started out life as separate companies which Nokia bought, so all of them have separate membership systems, and you have to register with each service separately in order to use them.

Having to give several different usernames to access all of Nokia's services is a bit annoying of course, so they're trying to provide a single membership system to allow access to all services from a single account. That's what Nokia Account is, the beginnings of a single system.

As an umbrella brand name for all these services, Nokia is using the word "Ovi" (which is Finnish for "door"). The idea seems to be that eventually you can access all the services from the ovi.com website, and if you go there now you'll see that N-Gage is one of the Ovi-branded services.

Although Nokia Account doesn't work with N-Gage yet, at some point Nokia will probably let you log in to N-Gage Arena using Nokia Account, which could mean the end of the old player name system. In order to make sure you can keep your player name after the switchover, it might be wise to register it now on Nokia Account.

Any more info?

If you're interested in the services currently available on Ovi, pop on over to the official Ovi website. The current selection includes Nokia Maps, Nokia Music Store, Ovi Share, Ovi Files and of course N-Gage. Other services including synchronisation and instant messaging are coming soon, and there is probably other unannounced stuff in the pipeline too (we'd guess webmail and a video store, but that's just speculation).

In fact you can already try out the beta version of Nokia's IM application on the Nokia Beta Labs site. It works on all N-Gage-compatible phones (and a lot more besides), with its main attraction being that it lets you tell your friends where you are using the Nokia Maps application. The IM app is one of the few services that currently uses the Nokia Account system, incidentally.

Just to emphasise again, you can't use the Nokia Account username on N-Gage right now, but you will be able to in the future, so that's why it's worth registering it now.