Coming straight out of nowhere, the Asian branch of Nokia's Games division today announced HinterWars: The Aterian Invasion, a Massively Multiplayer Online game for N-Gage and (interestingly) the PC. The client will be free to download for both formats, and will let PC and N-Gage owners exist in the same persistent game world, although N-Gage owners will have a number of extra features at their disposal. Nokia also unveiled the game's official website where people can sign up for Beta testing before the final release at the end of the year: http://www.hinterwars.com/

Allowing PC owners to interact with an N-Gage online game should act as a marketing double whammy: people can try the game without buying an N-Gage, while existing N-Gagers will get more people to play online with.

It's also worth noting that this signals that Nokia intends to back the N-Gage format for quite some time to come, as the HinterWars MMO only begins at the end of 2005.