Saturday, March 12, 2011

Sony with NVIDIA, Tegra-powered Android Phones




Sony’s Play Station Suite is coming to NVIDIA Tegra-powered Android phones and tablets later this year. The news comes straight from an announcement posted in the graphics adapter manufacturer’s Tegra Zone app, which also reveals that there is a plan to eventually release Play Station 2 games for mobile devices through Sony’s software framework.

In case you’ve not read much about it, think of Play Station Suite as a sort of portable PlayStation Network Store, providing downloadable gaming content from Sony for devices which meet the so-far-unannounced “PlayStation Certified” requirements. Although Suite is considered “hardware-neutral” — meaning it is not tied to any specific piece of technology the way Apple’s App Store is — this is the first indication that it will be available on something other than Sony Ericsson’s XSperia Play, the so-called “PlayStation Phone.”

The “hardware-neutral” status means that a wider range of supported devices was expected and today’s news confirms it, though there’s no mention of exactly which devices will qualify as “PlayStation Certified.” NVIDIA’sTegra 2 sports a dual-core processor — the company also has a couple of quad-cores in the works — which makes it ideal for bringing console-quality gaming experiences to the world of mobile devices.

No date was given for when PS2 games might be arriving, though it’s a safe bet that they’ll probably be held back until quad-core mobile processors are more readily available. Support for PSOne games had already been confirmed with the previous announcement of PlayStation Suite alongside the Xperia Play, and it looks like Wild Arms, Cool Boarders and Syphon Filter are expected to launch this year.

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