If you're a mobile game company interested in publishing your games on the N-Gage platform, you may want to check out their slightly updated Developer Application Process page. This page used to only mention becoming a first party developer. However, the application form now also says it can be used to apply to be a third party publisher, so presumably you can now publish your games on N-Gage without giving up ownership of them.

It seems that this IP issue has been a serious sticking point for some mobile game makers when considering the new N-Gage platform. Smaller companies who wanted to publish games on N-Gage were apparently told they could only do so as first party developers, i.e. if Nokia owned the published title and all its IP. Hopefully the updated application page means Nokia is now willing to talk with smaller third party publishers, instead of just bigger third parties like Gameloft and EA.

It would be great to see indie mobile companies allowed to publish as third parties on N-Gage as it potentially provides a much more effective sales channel onto S60 devices than Nokia's Download or web-based retailers. It would bring new life to the S60 game development ecosystem, and also strengthen the N-Gage platform by giving it a much wider range of titles.

For example card games sell well on phones, they have sold very well on N-Gage's sales charts, yet there are only two card titles on the platform. S60 has many dozens of card games waiting in the wings, N-Gage is technically just a subset of S60, so why aren't any S60 card games allowed onto N-Gage?

Classic board games are another big favourite with phone and casual gamers, there are lots of excellent S60 board game titles out there, yet there are no classic board games at all on N-Gage. Why?