Nokia, EA Partner For Next-Gen Mobile Gaming Platform

Cellphone handset company and N-Gage creator Nokia and major publisher and developer Electronic Arts have jointly announced a collaboration that will see EA become a major supplier of mobile games to users of Nokia mobile devices through the Nokia Content Discoverer on-device portal solution. Nokia Content Discoverer allows mobile customers access to downloadable content through a collection of shopping mall "stores" on their mobile device. Beginning this holiday season, customers will be able to download seven EA titles, including Tetris, Tetris Mania, The Sims 2, Doom, FIFA 06, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06, and FIFA Street 2. In addition, EA plans to support the launch of the Nokia next generation mobile games platform in mid-2007 with unspecified titles that will be custom-designed for Nokia S60 devices. Launching the first half 2007, Nokia’s first showcased its next mobile gaming platform during E3 2006, at which time the company noted that the new platform would stress gameplay across a range of Nokia cellphones, rather than one particular 'gaming handheld,' as before with the N-Gage. Nokia also announced during E3 that gaming communities, in a similar vein to Xbox Live, will fill another key role in the company's mobile gaming strategy. “The core of Nokia’s games strategy is to make it easy for people to find, buy and play great quality mobile games and we’re excited to expand our relationship with EA to help make that possible,” said Jaakko Kaidesoja, director, games, Multimedia, Nokia. “Nokia and EA have a common vision regarding the opportunities in mobile games and how to turn them into a reality. When you combine Nokia’s leadership in hardware, usabiliy and software platforms with EA’s brands and quality thresholds, the results will speak for themselves.”