It took a while, but Nokia's N-Gage platform finally went live last month across a selection of handsets. Since then, a succession of games have been launched, not to mention the unveiling of the ambitious cross-platform Reset Generation game.

As you might expect, Nokia's Jakko Kaidesoja is in a positive mood. "It's been a fairly smooth ride," he says. "We're really pleased with how things are turning out. We got good user feedback from First Access [beta application in advance of the commercial N-Gage launch], and we were able to sort out most of the critical issues, although there are still a few glitches here and there. Overall, it's going exactly as I was hoping in my better dreams!"

Kaidesoja says that user feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, both to the N-Gage application itself, and the games available for it. However, he admits that this is only the start, and that N-Gage will not start to truly scale until the application is fully preloaded on handsets, rather than having to be downloaded from the N-Gage website.

Nokia isn't publicly announcing any details of how many people have installed the full N-Gage application yet or how many games they've bought, although Kaidesoja says that N-Gage has seen retail transactions in more than 130 countries.

"Most people are downloading multiple games, and some people are downloading all of them to try out," says Kaidesoja, referring to the free trial versions of every game.

"We are monitoring the download to conversion rate, too. In some countries we are seeing lots of downloads, but not all the billing enablers are in place for purchasing, so that's distorting the averages. But in others, you have local language and local billing mechanisms, which is boosting the conversion rates."

Promotion, promotion, promotion

I asked Kaidesoja about how Nokia plans to promote N-Gage to people once it's preloaded on handsets, since out of the box it'll be competing for their attention with Nokia's other handset applications – everything from mapping to music to web browsing. It seems game preloads will be one important strand of the N-Gage strategy.

"You might get a free game, or several games to trial," he says. "We're trying to find the right combinations of device, target audience and preloaded games. So for a female-targeted device, we might have a handful of games that target that market. So we wouldn't preload a fighting game on there, but we'd rather go for Creebies or something along those lines."

Nokia may also put vouchers inside the handset boxes for free games, with the benefit being that users will still have to go and download the games from the N-Gage application – ensuring they learn how to find and use it.

"But the real thing is to get N-Gage onto as many devices as possible," says Kaidesoja. This is where the recently announced 5320 Xpress Music phone comes in. It's the first non-Nseries handset to support N-Gage, but apparently it'll be the first of many.

"We can get N-Gage into a lower price-tier," says Kaidesoja. "We know that many gamers are price-sensitive, and if you look at the youth market, they won't all be going off to buy N95s. So going into the lower price-tier non-Nseries devices is very important to us."

How capable are these lower-tier handsets of actually running N-Gage games, though? Kaidesoja says that getting the games running is "fairly easy" due to the N-Gage SDK's abstraction layer, but that the native N-Gage application itself requires "a little bit of tweaking and porting". However, he seems confident that it'll be ready for when the 5320 goes on sale.

What about distribution?

The next question is how Nokia plans to expand the distribution of N-Gage games beyond its current method of users downloading them within the N-Gage application itself. Last year, there was much talk of web-based distribution and sideloading, as well as publishers being able to sell N-Gage games from their own sites.

It's not happened yet, but Kaidesoja says it's on the way. "We need to do some work to enable that, but we are working on those tools, and then it will be a business decision for any third-party on when to start doing that," he says.

"The enablers should be in place in the second half of this year, although I can't estimate the timeline, since it's a third-party decision. We're also moving towards that with our operator partners for Ovi, so that's also the right timeframe for them to start retailing games on their own portals."

That seems to be one of the ways operators will have a role to play with N-Gage: selling games from their own portals.

It'll be interesting to see how exactly that works, and whether they'll expect their usual revenue share. If an N-Gage game costs £8, would the operator expect a 50 per cent share of the price? And if so, assuming increasing the price to £16 isn't an option, whose share does the operator's cut come out of? Or will the operator settle for a smaller share?

The tariff is right

It seems like a potentially thorny issue. Simpler is the other role operators have to play in N-Gage: offering suitable data tariffs to users who buy N-Gage handsets (as part of wider relationships around Nokia's Ovi suite of services). "Certainly the data tariff is something that needs to happen," says Kaidesoja.

"It's happening in any case because we are not the only application where you need a data plan. It doesn't necessarily mean free data, but people need to understand what their monthly bill is. We need to be in a predictable environment, rather than unpredictable. The industry is moving in the right direction."

The last thing I wanted to ask Kaidesoja about is the attitude of the big publishers towards N-Gage, and whether they're fully committed to it as a separate gaming platform in its own right. The first crop of third-party games – even the impressive ones – have seemed like basically beefed-up Java games with connectivity tacked on.

Kaidesoja agrees, kind of. "The core business for our partners is still Java and BREW gaming," he says. "They might take some risks with some titles, like Gameloft did with Asphalt 3 and is doing for Brothers in Arms, creating really deep gameplay and rich graphics."

However, he admits that the flipside to this is the kind of ports we've seen in the early days of the new N-Gage platform. "I don't like to use the word 'ports', but maybe more adaptations of Java and BREW titles," he says. "Some of them are really well done, and some probably could have had more time spent on them. But it's a learning curve for all of us."

N-Gage exclusives

Does Nokia expect to see the big mobile publishers launching any titles exclusively for N-Gage in the future?

"I would love to see exclusives, but it's hard to speculate on whether that's realistic or not," he says. "I'm not too stuck on that discussion at the moment though. We have a good line-up of exclusive content coming from third parties though, such as features, gameplay and connectivity."

Then he ends with something even more interesting, and potentially controversial.

"You might see the same title on Java as on N-Gage going forward, but I think the Java versions will prove to be inferior ports from the N-Gage versions. I'd like to see publishers starting from N-Gage, and then if they want to downgrade from N-Gage to Java, they can."

(Check out our earlier story for Kaidesoja's views on the potential of ad-funded business models for N-Gage.)