We’ve just heard a little rumour that next week’s big Nokia launch won’t just be about music - but about gaming. Yes, that’s right folks, next week will see Nokia’s big cheese jump on stage to reveal the all-new N-Gage platform.

We’ve just heard a little rumour that next week’s big Nokia launch won’t just be about music - but about gaming. Yes, that’s right folks, next week will see Nokia’s big cheese jump on stage to reveal the all-new N-Gage platform.

Lets look at the facts. The invite for next week’s launch says ‘Go Play’. The N-Gage site says ‘mid-year launch’ and i-Play has just been named as signing up with WRC 2006. We reckon the whole ‘we’re-going-to-whoop-Apple’s-ass’ music launch is just a smokescreen for what is going to be a much bigger deal than a music download service. It doesn’t make sense for Nokia to take on Apple in a proper head to head. Plus, Nokia’s been working on the N-Gage launch forever and a day, it’s about time it saw the light of day.

We’re also hedging bets on seeing a spanking new N-Series as well. We’ve mentioned it a few times before, but we can feel it in our bones that there’s a PSP-stomping N97 in the works, ready to be unveiled next week. We’re fully expecting the N81 and the N95 refresh, but the N97 is the one we’re really hanging out for.

We still have a distressingly long eight days to wait, but we reckon it’ll be worth it. We’ve cleared our diaries for 24 hours of gaming mayhem, just in case. 

Of course, it isn’t beyond the realms of possibility that the all-new N-Gage platform won’t just be for games, but also sport video and music too. And it’ll plug neatly into the Nokia MOSH.