Over at All About N-Gage, we're wondering when the Next Generation Gaming Platform is going to fully launch? With the initial roll-out of S60 v3 Feature Pack 2 phones not shipping with the N-Gage Client, phones aiming for a large user base, including the currently available N78 and impending N96 and Nokia 5320, and no sign of a compatible N-Gage client, the question is whether these devices will have the client in firmware before 2009. (Update: the official N-Gage blog has just announced the first FP1 phones with embedded N-Gage apps have begun to ship, starting with the N81. No word on FP2 yet.)

Most famous is the N96, which combines the dual slider of the N95 with the stylings of the N81, and has dedicated gaming buttons that slide out from under the screen. Even more significant is possibly the 5320 XpressMusic, which also has dedicated gaming buttons but more importantly will be the lowest-priced N-Gage-compatible phone so far, and the best contender for driving N-Gage gaming into the mass market.

No one knows exactly when these devices will be released, but Nokia has stated they'll be available some time in the third calendar quarter, which ends in September. In other words, even if these phones are released right at the end of September, Nokia only has about two weeks left to get the FP2 version of the N-Gage application ready if it wants to embed it in these phones. Embedding therefore seems unlikely to happen with these phones either.

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Well, the obvious answer is to pour as many resources as possible into getting the FP2 version of the N-Gage application ready, not just for current N78 owners to download but mainly so that the 5320 and N96 can be sold with N-Gage out of the box before Christmas. This ought to take priority over absolutely everything else in N-Gage, because the entire N-Gage project depends on being embedded in phones so that it can build a healthy userbase of millions.

Read the full article over on All About N-Gage.