Nokia will close its gaming service N-Gage next year in an effort to focus on the mobile gaming service and build up the portfolio of games in Ovi Store.

N-Gage, the company's online gaming service, opened last year but it never moved beyond a niche audience of hard-core gamers.

Nokia suggests users to visir store.ovi.com/games for the latest mobile games for their Nokia device.

N-Gage games can be purchased until the end of September 2010, the company said. While the N-Gage.com site together with the N-Gage Arena and other community features will remain in operation throughout 2010, the Ovi Store will be the new central place for all the mobile games that Nokia and other publishers offer from this point forward, the company added. Nikia said it would no longer publish new games for the N-Gage platform.

N-Gage Arena will remain in operation throughout 2010 and players can e.g. keep posting their high scores until then.

Purchased N-Gage games will continue to work on N-Gage compatible mobile device. However, community features of the games will not be functional after 2010, Nokia said.

Nokia is also actively working on offering more community elements through Ovi - a smaller rival to Apple's popular App Store - and encourages developers to use community features in their applications.

N-Gage had attracted all the top mobile game makers -- including Electronic Arts, Gameloft, Glu Mobile and Digital Chocolate -- to create special games for the service.