Nokia have announced that Electronic Arts will publish games for the N-Gage gamedeck, at their press conference which was held during the first day of ECTS at Earls Court.

Electronic Arts will bring a number of yet to be confirmed "EA Sports" and "EA Games" titles to the platform, and it's hoped that they'll take advantage of N-Gage's advanced multiplayer facilities such as online high score tables, and "ghost times" of other gamers which are available on the N-Gage Arena service.

However general opinion from a number of attendees to the press conference was that Nokia may have set the £220 to £230 price point of N-Gage far too high for the games market - a point raised many times in various forms during the Q&A session which followed the main press conference.

Nokia defensively say that no other gaming device offers the same sort of features as N-Gage, such as bluetooth wireless gaming against friends, or gaming over GPRS where you can download other gamers fastest times and compete against them in a virtual-multiplayer mode. The company also strongly stand by their point that N-Gage is primarily a games console which has phone features, and not a phone which has game features bolted on - you will, however need a simcard in the phone for it to function as a games console.

October 7th's global launch of N-Gage will be very interesting to follow, and the first few months of sales will reveal if the concerns over the pricing of the device and games (£30 to £40 per cartridge) were justified, or if Nokia have got it about right - something which Nokia's Jukka Hosio appeared to have no doubt was the case.

We'll have further coverage of Nokia N-Gage at ECTS over the next few days, and further news of the launch as it approaches during the next couple of months.

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