By a curious coincidence, just hours after AAN posted an editorial discussing N-Gage being embedded into phones, Nokia has announced on its official N-Gage blog that it has begun shipping the very first phones with N-Gage pre-installed. This means people will be able to access the new platform on their new phone straight out of the box, which will hugely expand the platform's userbase.

The first phone to have N-Gage built-in will be the N81 (and presumably its technically-identical cousin the N81 8GB too). Other models including the N95, N95 8GB and N82 should also start shipping with N-Gage built-in over the next few months.

This is great news for N-Gage, as it will probably bring lots of new people to the platform including those who don't know about N-Gage, those who don't know how to install applications manually, and those who aren't keen on N-Gage but might be tempted to try it if it's pre-installed.

This is the beginning of the proper launch of N-Gage, Nokia is finally using its trump card of including their gaming platform with popular phone models. Embedded N-Gage can be used straight out of the box, you just click on the icon and select some games from the showroom to try or buy.

However, the most important part of the launch is yet to come: the real moment of truth for N-Gage will be when it is embedded in brand new phone models right from their very first day.