â??Mobile gaming will beat consoles within a yearâ??

Fishlabs CEO Michael Schade has stated his belief that "iPad HD" will be released and running games at at least an equivalent standard to the Xbox 360 within a year.

Talking during a session entitled “Mobile becomes Console” – itself named after a recent Mark Rein comment about mobile gaming’s future – at the Develop Conference in Brighton, Schade was very confident about the potential for mobile gaming to match and overtake console gaming standards within that time.

“I think you can expect some time next year to have rendering capabilities on mobile devices superior to the Xbox 360,” Schade said.

“And I believe by the end of the year the ‘iDevices’ could have sold 120m copies, which puts them close to a par with the PS2’s 140m.”

Schade also had a clear vision for the future of mobile gaming as he was hoping to see it.

“When we have made it so that someone buys a mobile device to play a game, then the mobile has become a more important platform than consoles,” he enthused.

Later, when questioned about UI interfaces and screen size issues for mobile gamers in comparison to console gamers, he replied that he believed if you can watch Hollywood films on a TV screen without jeopardising quality, the same could be true of video games on iPhone and iPad.