Nokia axes Canadian studio

There was a spate of closures when the global economy took an acid bath at the beginning of the year, but things appeared to have stabilised somewhat in the run up to summer. Regrettably, Nokia has continued to suffer, closing the doors to its Vancouver-based N-Gage design studio on June 30th.

The development studio has seen considerable success through mobile adaptations of franchises such as Tiger Woods PGA Tour, Call of Duty, and Tony Hawks’ skateboarding. The jobs of the 100 plus staff affected by the closure is uncertain at the moment but this is presumably linked to the announcement Nokia made in March that it would be shedding 1700 jobs in total.

Given that the Canadian studio was responsible some of the most successful N-Gage games, the closure throws an unfavourable light on the struggling system in general. The fate of Nokia's beleaguered handheld system has been in debate for quite some time now, and can only suffer from the loss of in-house game development.