EA announces first N-Gage title

Leading independent publisher Electronic Arts has announced that its first title for Nokia's N-Gage platform wil be NCAA Football 2004, which will arrive in time for Christmas and support several of the deck's mobile features.

The announcement comes in the wake of EA's pledge to support the N-Gage with software releases, news which lent significant credibility to Nokia's forthcoming platform at the ECTS trade show late last month.

NCAA Football 2004 will support several mobile features of the N-Gage, although like most of the early titles on the device, head to head multiplayer will only be possible over the local Bluetooth system, not over the GPRS phone networks.

It's not clear whether this announcement of a single title indicates that EA is merely dipping its toe into the water on the N-Gage, or if there's more to come from the giant publisher on the platform. European Nokia executives have privately expressed the hope that the company will produce a version of FIFA for the N-Gage this Christmas, a title which would certainly boost the platform in this territory.