New-N-Improved N-Gage N-route

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. That seems to be the watchword for Nokia's games business program, which is prepping a revamped version of the N-Gage QD for release.

Although the company's American representatives would say only that the Finnish handset giant "will be making an announcement early next week," Reuters has it on good authority--Gerard Wiener, director and general manager of the games business program at Nokia--that those changes, and more, are due shortly.

Speaking to Reuters informally at this week's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, the executive said Nokia was contemplating new colors and "a new look and feel" for the current N-Gage model, the QD. The update to the original N-Gage was launched in July of 2004 but remains a distant contender in the handheld gaming sector, having sold only 1.5 million units worldwide since launch, according to Reuters.

Wiener also told Reuters that the handset maker is considering manufacturing models that run on CDMA wireless networks. "There's no question addressing the CDMA market is something we'd like to be doing," he said. The QD, like other Nokia handsets, is based on the GSM standard. CDMA (as well as W-CDMA) wireless networks are more prevalent and offer faster networking speeds.

When contacted by GameSpot US, Nokia reps would go only so far as to advise the industry to "stay tuned" to forthcoming news "early next week."