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Nokia promotes mobile gaming with N-Gage Academy

Educational campaign designed to promote downloading and sharing on mobiles

Nokia N-Gage has announced an online campaign called N-Gage Academy, which aims to teach mobile users how simple it is to download and share mobile games content.

Visitors to the company website at www.N-Gage.com can select from four traditional educational subjects: History, Geography, French or Physics. A simple variant of Space Invaders can then be played, with the traditional alien invaders replaced by pertinent facts relative to the chosen subject matter.

The idea is incredibly simple - but that's the whole point. N-Gage are attempting to encourage more mobile phone users to download and enjoy gaming. In addition to online play with high score tables, the game can be downloaded to a wide selection of Nokia handsets through a simple WAP link on the site.

Once the game has been downloaded to mobile phones, gamers can share the title by sending it to friends through Bluetooth and online gamers can also send the game virally to a friend's PC.

Gerard Wiener, Vice President, Games Business Program, Nokia said: "The N-Gage Academy is our way of showing how easy it is to download games onto your Nokia mobile phone. The N-Gage Academy campaign shows everyone that mobile gaming is fun and that everyone can play."

N-Gage is planning to provide its gaming technology as a platform for a range of Series 60 handsets, and the N-Gage Academy campaign is part of the overall ambition to encourage the growth of mobile gaming.

At this year's E3 expo in May, Wiener commented: "We expect to make about 25 million Series 60 smart phones in 2005 worldwide. We're creating a platform for everyone. This will reach a range of phones, not just a single N-Gage device."

A recent study conducted by I-Play and research agency SKOPOS, revealed that 26 percent of American mobile phone users admitted that they would be more inclined to download and play mobile games, if someone showed them how to do it. It would seem that through its Academy campaign, N-Gage is attempting to do just that.

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