Nokia’s (NYSE: NOK) new Ngage effort will go live this week, morphed into a multiplayer service available across its range of smartphones. The New York Times goes in a bit hard against the old Ngage device (after all, you have to “hoist” most mobiles to your head to make a phone call), but it’s true that the devices did not sell as well as Nokia was expecting...it’s also true that the Ngage Arena was pretty successful. So now Nokia is putting Ngage functionality across a range of handsets, which should improve take-up. “Owners of phones that run N-Gage software will be able to play games against friends, sample, buy and recommend new games from their phones, and compete in large tournaments.” A lot of the new features are based on research conducted with design firm Ideo, such as being able to sample games before they buy them, see what games their friends have and whether they are online, and see how many points someone has earned in the game so they know the skill level before playing them. There’ll also be recommendation features. “Ideo also noted that many users had never discovered most of the features of the original N-Gage. So the designers helped Nokia put shortcuts on the main N-Gage screen to display information without forcing users to dig through menus. They also urged Nokia to streamline the service by giving up some features, like “positive distraction,” the diversions users see while they are downloading a game.”

The service will initially run on some of the S60 phones, with Nokia planning to roll it out across the entire series over the next year. The games will initially lean towards the casual side of gaming—which makes sense considering that is the biggest mobile gaming segment, although I hope Nokia has had a look at what users of its S60 phones tend to play, rather than the phone market in general.

Gartner analyst Tuong Huy Nguyen said that the big issue behind this is Nokia’s attempt—along with everyone else in the mobile phone industry—to control customer interactions in areas like mobile gaming and music downloads. “Everyone is trying to provide a complete end-to-end experience for consumers, because if people get comfortable with using these services on their phones, more money flows into the ecosystem,” he said. More importantly, whoever “has” the customers has leverage in negotiations. Carriers have “owned” the customers for a long time, but Nokia is keen to get people using its services so they think of themselves as using Nokia rather than their carrier.

• Nokia Unveils Next-Gen Ngage To Game Publishers
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• @CTIA: The Future Of Mobile Gaming