New iPhone can ‘surpass’ PSP power

Apple’s new iPhone 3G S has the potential to outdo Sony’s PSP in terms of graphical capabilities.

That was the assessment of Michael Schade, CEO of the Germany-headquartered mobile phone developer Fishlabs.

Speaking to Pocketgamer, Schade reasons that the new iPhone’s OpenGL 2.0 support can allow developers to craft games which will “push the iPhone beyond PSP," though he does warn that such opportunities will be resisted by financial barriers.

"As graphic assets need to be designed from scratch to benefit from 2.0 shaders, it will be very hard to monetize the extra effort in the early days," he said. "It’s definitely not worth it for $0.99 apps."

Schade was not however unconcerned that developers will have more iPhone systems to optimise for. He said the catalogue of iPhones and iPod Touches will create “some fragmentation”, but he says Fishlabs can still support all devices, using “just one SKU that detects automatically what device it’s running on, and switches to the best graphics automatically."