Chalk another one up for the rumor mill because Nokia’s hottest new gaming-centric slider could be heading toward the shores of the United States as early as next month. We came across the new Nokia N81 last month and at the time, we heard that there would be two versions of the phone. One would come with 8GB of internal memory, whereas the other would get the bulk of its storage via a microSD expansion slot.

What makes both units particularly interesting, however, is that the Nokia N81 will be rocking the all new N-Gage platform, granting mobile phone gamers a whole new world of mobile button mashing. The N-Gage edition is said to be destined for the USA.

The version that will be heading to Europe gets equipped with a quad-band GSM radio as well as single-band WCDMA, so it’ll be interesting to see how Nokia tackles the 3G end of things for the States. The N-Gage gaming store is also scheduled for launch in November. Stay tuned.