Xanadu Next, an N-Gage-exclusive 3D third person RPG from legendary Japanese developers Falcom, has now started shipping according to Nokia. It should start appearing in shops worldwide over the next couple of weeks.

Nihon Falcom aren't quite as famous as behemoths like Square Enix, but among connosseurs of Japanese RPGs they're one of the greats. Falcom are best known in the West for their Ys series of games, but in Japan they're also famous for the Xanadu series which originally began on PCs in the 1980s.

Xanadu Next for N-Gage is not just an N-Gage exclusive game, it's also the first time a Xanadu game has been published outside Japan on any system. Many Falcom fans in the West are now buying N-Gages purely to play Xanadu Next, which would seem to make it an inspired piece of licensing by Nokia. This game is literally a system-seller, albeit not quite on the scale of Pokemon.

This, together with Nokia personally doing the first ever video game of Rifts, suggests that someone at N-Gage HQ is very familiar with the RPG world. It also bodes well for Nokia's forthcoming MMORPG HinterWars which is due to be launched in Asia at the end of 2005 on both the N-Gage and the PC.