Nokia have said on several occasions (including E3 2006) that they're replacing the N-Gage and its games with a totally new Next Gen solution in the first half of 2007 which will be available across their Symbian S60 range of smartphones. However, that's still some way away and until then they seem to be trying to keep existing N-Gagers happy by providing them cheap and available games through the Gameshop at a time when most game shops no longer stock the physical games.
Perhaps there's a link to the Next Gen replacement though, because whatever the technological achievements of the Next Gen service, and whatever the merits of its games, one of the biggest challenges to such a system is beyond the abilities of mere technology to solve: how much should its games cost?
Market surveys are often difficult to take seriously when people in them complain everything is overpriced, and comparisons with console games are difficult because the target audience and devices aren't similar enough. Comparisons with Java games don't completely work either as they have a tiny development budget compared to something like Pathway To Glory or ONE, it would be like comparing a packet of crisps to a three course meal.
But with the existing N-Gage userbase of over 2 million, Nokia have a perfect chance to find out what it is that smartphone gamers are willing to pay, because N-Gagers are the first ever large group of smartphone gamers to use a single platform. The reason for the downloads' high price when the N-gage Gameshop launched now becomes clear, they wanted to start out as high as possible and see how low they had to go to attract a mass audience to their games. When they hit a "sweet spot", with mass takeup of a game when it's at the right price, they can get a better idea of how much the games should cost, and consequently how much should be spending on their games' budgets in the first place.