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 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." ...

Nintendo has raised its DS shipment forecast to 20 million units after net profits rose by more than 48 per cent during the first half of the financial year.

Profits for the six month period ending September 30 stood at YEN 54.35 billion (EUR 361 million) - up from YEN 36.6 billion (EUR 243 million) a year previously.

Revenues were up by almost 70 per cent to reach YEN 298.8 billion (EUR 1.98 billion, while operating profit more than tripled to YEN 67.11 billion (EUR 446 million).

Nintendo attributed the rise to increase global sales of the DS handheld; 10.9 million units were sold during first half of the year, up from 3.57 million units during the same period a year ago.

As a result, Nintendo has upped its forecast and now predicts sales of 20 million units, rather than 17 million, by the end of the financial year. The company also expects to sell more DS games, raising its projection from 7.5 million to 8.2 million units. The forecast for Wii sales remains at 6 million consoles and 17 million games by the end of the financial year.

Nintendo also earned foreign exchange gains worth YEN 24.1 billion (EUR 160 million), due to a weak yen.

There was no change to the company's end of year forecast, which predicts net profits of YEN 100 billion (EUR 665 million) and revenues of YEN 740 billion (EUR 4.9 billion). ...

Sony's Phil Harrison says he has no regrets at all about not including rumble functionality in the PlayStation 3 SIXAXIS controller. But is he bothered about the overuse of capital letters?

"Not at all," he told Eurogamer's Rob Fahey recently, although to be fair he was talking about whether Sony has had any second thoughts about ditching rumble. "I think that the next generation interfaces that can be created built on SIXAXIS motion sensitivity give tremendous gameplay benefits that far outweigh a reactive vibration function.

"The vibration function is the game sending a single channel of feedback to the player - six axis of input puts the player in control in a much richer, deeper way. So, game design can go in much more interesting directions as a result of that than from receiving a single input from the game itself."

The obvious retort to which is surely Sony could just have included both? Immersion, which makes rumble and force feedback technology, has said they reckon it's pretty easy. "I think the caveat to that statement always has to be based on the fact that when we make a pad, we're making maybe 150, 200 million of them," Harrison explains. "So it has to be done at a price, and it has to be done at a volume that fits our production requirements. I think the decision that we’ve made to build in the SIXAXIS functionality, and Bluetooth wireless, and great battery life, and all the other functionality that comes with it, far outweighs the chatter that we’re getting on vibration. And, it's incredibly light! Just pick it up!" ...

Sony has been talking a bit more openly in Japan about what it plans to do with downloadable content around the PS3 launch.

According to IGN, Sony in Japan has revealed that Blast Factor will be one of the first e-Distribution (Live Arcade-style) games released, along with some sort of weird daily information service starring Sony mascot Toro the cat, which will be available for free.

With those out at launch, there will also be demos of flOw, Lemmings, formerly PSP-based puzzle game Kazuo, and a Sony Europe puzzle game about exploding blocks (called, for now, "Puzzle") - with full versions of those games due to be released online by the end of this year.

Japanese gamers logging into the PlayStation Store will also be able to download a game of future-best-PS3-game-ever Ridge Racer 7 on launch day.

And for those of you wondering about those PSone games that you'll be able to download on your PS3 and then copy and play on the PSP, Sony's said that there'll be quite a few out in late November, including Resident Evil Director's Cut, Bishi Bashi Special, Arc the Lad, Hot Shots Golf 2, Silent Bomber, Mr. Driller and Tekken 2 - with around ten following each month thereafter. ...

Epic's Xbox 360 exclusive Gears of War is finished and should ship to US retailers on 7th November. "Waaaait-a-second," you say, "wasn't it down for the 12th?"

Well, the 12th is Emergence Day, Microsoft has been explaining, when it will be staging all sorts of celebratory events, but in actual fact the game ought to be on the shelves of some retailers as soon as the 8th, which is handy.

It's due out over here on the 17th - and it'll be interesting to see whether retailers break the street date, as sometimes happen in these situations.

In the meantime, our American friends will be enjoying an Emergence Day packed with activity, including a 24-hour Gears tournament on the 12th, with the winner receiving a Gears-branded guitar and a pass into the finals of the forthcoming "Global Gears of War Tournament", due to take place in 2007.

There'll also be sweepstakes and an exclusive free Gears of War gamer pic and theme only available on 12th November, while Megadeth and CliffyB will be hopping onto Live to take people on, too.

What a mad world. Mad World, incidentally, is also the accompaniment to a rather interesting new Gears of War trailer, which you ought to be able to find on Xbox Live Marketplace. ...

FIFA, Xbox and EA Sports have revealed that the third FIFA Interactive World Cup - the footy tournament for gamers - will be kicking off this weekend in HMV Stores and on Xbox Live.

You can register for the tournament qualifiers on Xbox Live from November 1st, or simply turn up to any of the Oxford Circus, Manchester, Leeds Headrow, Glasgow, Birmingham High St or Cardiff HMV stores on either Friday 27t or Saturday October 28.

Local winners from the qualifier events will then progress to the grand final on Decmber 9 in Amsterdam, where 128 FIFA wizards will battle it out for the grand prize trip to the FIFA World Player Gala in Zurich and a cool cash prize of $20,000 (around £10,600).

Last year, Xbox Live entrant Chris Bullard from Ipswich defeated Gabor Mokos of Kecskemét, Hungary in a button-mashing final at London's Brewery.

You can find out more info on the tournament at FIFA.com. Potential entrants can brush up their skills via the Xbox Live marketplace demo. ...

Still wet from the great media cistern, we've got four (yes four) new screenshots from upcoming movie tie-in game Flushed Away (Flushed Away is the latest flick by Aardman, the animation studio behind Wallace and Gromit).

The game features an array of mutliplayer and single-player modes, the latter allowing you to customise your character and go on a romp through the sewers of our fine capital.

You can find Flushed Away on PS2, DS, GBA and GameCube on November 24.

Screens Here ...

After the critical success of DS, the company saw net profits of 54.35bn Yen (£242.8m) between April and September.

The handheld sold 10.9m units worldwide in the same period. And the success looks set to continue as Nintendo raises its worldwide sales forecast for the DS from 17m to 20m units for the one-year period ending March 2007.

It would seem Nintendo's drive to pull in new gamers with software such as Brain Training, Nintendogs and Animal Crossing is working a treat.

With Yoshi's Island DS, Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, Legend of Zelda Phantom Hourglass and many more triple-A games on the way, it's not about to stop. ...

Look! Extremely tall chaps running around, dribbling basketballs and performing crazy slam-dunks! It's not entirely clear whether EA's new NBA Live 07 footage - PS3 version - is in-game or just in-engine, but whatever the case you can be guaranteed that the title will be damned realistic in both visual terms and in its representation of the sport. It's probably enough to make B-Ball fans squirt a small drop of wee into their underpants in excitement.

We've yet to get a sniff of an official UK release date for NBA Live 07 on PS3, but we imagine it'll launch with the console next year.

Trailer Here ...