Nokia Delays N-Gage Game Portal as Warner Pulls from Its Music Store

Yes, the title could have been “Nokia’s Crappy Friday”: Reuters says the N-Gage gaming service and the new music store are “among the cornerstones” of Nokia’s big mobile-content push, yet today neither one is where it’s supposed to be.

The new N-Gage gaming service, unveiled in August and due to launch this month, will now go live in December.

“Software testing is taking a bit more time than what we had expected,” [spokesperson] Kari Tuutti said. “We are talking about a couple of weeks.”

Of greater concern is the music store. Nokia stuck its toe in the OTA download water this week in the UK, but Warner Music Group—one Fourth of the Big Four—promptly pulled its content from the service. WMG had no objection to the site itself, but rather to MOSH, Nokia’s legal P2P filesharing service.

Already, over 6 million people have used MOSH to exchange files. Nokia assures that copyrights are protected by Audible Magic, a scanning system that checks files as they pass through the service. Clearly, that’s not enough reassurance for WMG.

And if I might add: What the hell are 6 million people exchanging if not some variety of copyrighted content? Original demo tapes and manuscripts? Seriously. [Reuters]