The touch screen version of Nokia's N-Gage gaming service is scheduled for a release in 2009. One such game to be part of the new version will be GameLoft's Guitar Rock Tour for the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic.
This, along with a lot of other news-worthy tidbits, were spilled out by Nokia's head of gaming operations, Jaakko Kaidesoja, in a recent interview with Reuters. "This year is as tough or even tougher. There are hiccups in Western Europe, North America," according to Jaakko. As such, the company expects the challenging times for the mobile gaming market to continue, and Jaakko further comments that "The overall gaming market is likely not growing."
However, Nokia sees growth in preloaded games, emerging markets, and platforms, and is currently working on touch screen support for N-Gage that's scheduled for release next year. They'll probably have no trouble promoting their new and upcoming offerings in Britain, Italy, Germany, Australia and Spain, since N-Gage is most popular in those places, but for the rest of the 20 million N-Gage capable device owners that aren't already aware or using it, N-Gage has a long way to go.
