Nokia's Ovi Store will allow gamers to try before they buy

'Lite' wasn't even a word until the App Store came along, but now it's got its very own connotation when it comes to gaming. The opportunity to try a game before you buy it has proven massively popular, and is one of the primary methods for promoting a game on the iPhone.

Nokia is preparing its Ovi Store equivalent to go one better, by allowing developers to offer free demos of their games that will allow users to unlock the full game from within the application.

"The first new business model that we're going to launch is try-and-buy," Nokia's head of media and games Marco Argenti told the Nokia World Conference, reports Mobile-Ent.biz. "It has already been tested in some of our preloaded games, and we're making that available in the store and allowing people to upgrade to the full version directly from the application."

He went on to say that subscription payments are also on the list of Ovi Store improvements, which also includes dynamically calculated popularity charts which aren't based on downloads alone.

This all tallies very neatly with Nokia's new range of touchscreen, feature-rich handsets that are clearly aimed at gaming and multimedia users, positioned to provide an iPhone-like experience for the massive Nokia install base.