I seem to be revisiting this one time too many. Perhaps it’s the nostalgia for the original N-Gage, but I do know a couple of more people who still look fondly back. Anyway, I promise that this is the last I’ll be musing on the subject. Best to let old dogs lie right? On the other hand, Ovi’s just gotten started.

This will just be a quick update on the whole Ovi business Nokia is moving towards. The N-Gage service will still be up and running till the end of this year. This means that the N-Gage Arena, your online high scores, and community features are still available this year. The games itself can still be downloaded through N-Gage till September 2010. This is the reason why clicking on the Controller icon on www.ovi.com still points you back to the N-Gage site. After that though, it will be gone. R.I.P.

For all new Nokia owners, you phone should have the Ovi Store installed. The last time I touched on the subject, I said that the Ovi Store is basically just an app store for Nokia. Yes, Nokia as pushing the Ovi Store for games in a major way, and they’ve already got a better line-up than N-Gage ever did both past and present. So the good thing is that Ovi has surpassed N-Gage as a download platform, and Nokia has moved onward to deliver a competent App store for their devices. Everyone’s doing it, so why shouldn’t Nokia? Integrating all their various app services into Ovi is a smart thing to do. Go ahead, browse through store.nokia.com now, there’s actually meaty content in there for your phone.

BUT, as Symbian S60 touch devices roll out for real in retail though, the Ovi Store needs to be giving Nokia some extra mileage for apps and games to compete in the online marketplace. A few of the original N-Gage games have been updated to support touch input on the Ovi Store, which is a start – but – social networking is still the buzz word, and what Nokia really needs to do is to introduce an API for Ovi developers to re-integrate the community features and achievement structure of the N-Gage Arena into their apps.