Nokia has delayed the relaunch of its N-Gage mobile gaming platform owing to "unexpected difficulties".

A post on the official N-Gage blog said: "We have been doing an internal run with more than 1,000 global testers this week and uncovered an issue we feel we need to address.

"Overall, the games and service are working smoothly, but because of this issue we feel we could not release N-Gage First Access before the holidays as planned."

Nokia announced the development of the N-Gage gaming platform in March, which was originally due for release in September as the successor to Nokia's N-Gage range of gaming handsets.

This date was revised in August when Nokia announced its Ovi service, which included the N-Gage gaming feature along with other services such as music and application downloads.

The post added: "As we work on a solution, we will continue to polish the overall experience, ready more games for N-Gage First Access, carry on our extensive internal testing over the holidays, and prepare for the New Year and the new wave of mobile play."