Next-gen mobiles to match PSP?

Tim Closs, chief technical officer for Ideaworks 3D, has predicted that the next generation of mobile phones will be on a par with Sony's PlayStation Portable when it comes to performance.

Speaking in an interview with our sister site, MobileIndustry.biz, Closs said, "In some ways, console and mobile are becoming closer in terms of the actual horsepower of the devices.

"The high-end mobile devices, especially those with hardware graphics association, are comparable in performance to maybe a DS, and the next generation are going to be comparable maybe to PSP."

Closs believes PC and console game publishers are taking more and more interest in mobile gaming - particularly since Jamdat was acquired by Electronic Arts.

"When a player as significant as EA makes that kind of move it validates our vision for mobile gaming," Closs said.

"It's led to a closer collaboration between us and major publishers who have woken up and thought, blimey, if EA are doing this we really need to be looking closely at mobile as well.

"From a publisher's perspective, they're actually looking at these two spaces as being very similar, and looking at how they can address development across both as a single process."

However, Closs did admit that there are still problems to be overcome before the mobile gaming market reaches its full potential."One of the issues is still the problems from the operators' perspective - making it easy for people to actually buy and download these games," he explained.

"That's something that everyone in the industry is working very hard on, to try and make them improve their processes and make the user experience much easier."

Visit MobileIndustry.biz to read the full interview.