Occupying a space only millimeters wide, and supporting the Open GL ES 2.0 standard, Product Manager Remi Pedersen says that the Mali 200, and eventually, Mali 400, are designed to work in a phone that goes 2-3 days between charges. Pedersen says the first phones will appear at the end of 2009, followed by an influx of devices in 2010.

Graphically, games shown were on the level of PS2 and Xbox, able to push a decent number of pixels with a smooth framerate. A port of the original Project Gotham Racing runs on the Mali 200 GPU with virtually no lag and a decent number of polygons.

But they can also provide hardware acceleration for device UIs, process HD video and make Flash usable on mobile devices. ARM says that features such as HD video encode/decode and Flash decoding will be centered more around the multicore Mali 400, which will appear en masse sometime in 2010. And by all accounts, we can probably look forward to seeing this line of Mali GPUs in future netbooks and MIDs.

Here's quick vid of the Mali 200 in action. It's pretty smooth for a mobile GPU.

But no matter—Namco/Bandai has dropped an update that almost entirely fixes our woes. Framerate throughout has been greatly improved, with the only brief hiccups coming when you level up to the next size of Katamari—all else is smooth. And in addition, even though I still stand by my preference of ILK's tilt controls over Monkey Ball's, a new gauge has been added to let you know where you are in the accelerometer's X-Y tilt axes, which helps a lot. Still, I wish there was a way to re-zero your acceleromter so you don't have to tilt forward so much to roll at full speed, but even without that, Katamari is infinitely more playable now. [I Love Katamari - iTunes, Kotaku]

The Cost: $8

The Verdict:
A thrill, but slooooow. With releases for the Wii and PS3 still in the deep rumor stages, this is the first installment to add any type of accelerometer-based motion control to a Katamari game—something that feels totally natural.

For those not familiar, the object of Katamari is to push a sticky ball around various worlds, picking up various delicious-looking Japanese foods, household items, houses themselves, countries, etc—the more objects you pick up, the fatter your katamari gets, and the bigger the objects you can then pick up in turn (Katamari Damacy, the original's title, means "clump spirit" in Japanese—love that). It sounds simple, but log a few hours on any othe other editions (two for PS2, one for PSP and Xbox 360) and you will not be able to stop. This time, there are four stages, each with modes for unlimited-time rolling, time attack, specific size targets and specific item scavenger hunts.

You will also realize that the series was born for motion-control. I Love Katamari has among the best tilt-based controls I personally have played with, using a hybrid touch/tilt system: tilt forward and to the sides to roll in those directions, while at the same time tap your Katamari repeatedly to dash, tap the sides of the screens to move laterally, etc. It's pretty easy to roll around and pick things up with some modicum of precision, although obviously not as much as a dual analog stick would provide. And it blows Monkey Ball out of the water.

But things would be a lot better if the game wasn't constantly, constantly glitching up. Whenever you graduate to a new size level of Katamari, the framerate drops heavily to the point where you can barely tell what's going on. That, there, will very likely be a dealbreaker for a lot of folks on an $8 game. But, for lovers of the series, that same, unique satisfaction of rolling up the cat's food and then the cat itself is still in there. Let's hope they iron out the performance in an update. [I Love Katamari - iTunes]

Here's a video via the folks at Venturebeat:

Sony Ericsson Takes Mobile Gaming to New Level With Launch of Zeemote(TM) JS1 Controller

BEDFORD, Massachusetts, August 4 /PRNewswire/ —

- Sony Ericsson First to Market

- Retail Promotion in Netherlands Gives New W760i Consumers Mobile
Gaming Edge

Zeemote(TM), Inc. (http://www.zeemote.com/), the makers of intelligent
wireless controllers for mobile devices and Sony Ericsson, today announced
a partnership to bring near-console game play to the W760i. In a world
first, Sony Ericsson is to launch the Zeemote(TM) JS1 Controller featuring
Bluetooth(TM) technology with an exclusive promotion throughout hundreds of
retail outlets across the Netherlands.

Across the Netherlands, from August 8th 2008 to October 31st 2008, the
Zeemote(TM) JS1 Controller will be offered free to purchasers of Sony
Ericsson's new 3G mobile handset, the W760i Walkman, via a mail-in voucher
promotion. The W760i will come with two embedded Zeemote Ready(TM) games
with a further fourteen additional games available through the Fun &
Downloads section on the http://www.sonyericsson.com/nl/

Additional to the Walkman capabilities, 3.2 megapixel camera and GPS
functions of the W760i the Zeemote(TM) JS1 Controller will bring a whole
new dimension in mobile game play to Sony Ericsson customers - enabling a
near-console experience on mobile phones. With a thumbstick and four
assignable trigger buttons, the JS1 offers real analogue control over
Bluetooth(TM) enabling users to truly engage with mobile games. Sitting
perfectly in the hand and ergonomically designed the JS1 weighs just
47g/1.7oz.

"Sony Ericsson prides itself on bringing intuitive technologies to its
customers. We recently announced the motion gaming F305 and we're delighted
to be giving our Netherlands customers the opportunity to be the first to
own an award winning Zeemote JS1 controller," said Max Van Den Berg,
General Manager at Sony Ericsson Benelux. "Adding a new dimension, such as
controllers for mobile gaming, gives us and our customers a competitive
edge!"

"Mobile gaming will never be the same as the Zeemote(TM) JS1 launches
through our first commercial relationship with Sony Ericsson". Said Jim
Adams, VP of Worldwide Sales at Zeemote. "We are delighted to partner with
Sony Ericsson and give users even more of a reason to buy the feature
packed W760i. This agreement is the first of a number of deals we intend to
announce over the coming months."

Citing industry sources, Marketing Week heard that the relationship between the two companies has become "frosty" and that Sony would “never give its PlayStation branding” to a Sony Ericsson joint venture. If it were true, it could go a long way in explaining the recently released F305 which is certainly not PlayStation branded and seems to fall well short of a fabled PSP phone. Could it be that Sony is throwing Ericsson scraps while they keep the juicy ideas to themselves? There have been a lot of rumors thrown out there about a PSP phone, and so far nothing has materialized. We will just have to wait and see. [Marketing Week]

The tech's been validated on phones from all of the majors; Sega Mobile and some other developers are onboard; and they just got a nice cash infusion, so a launch next year is looking good. The timing is solid, too, as mobile phones get beefier specs to run more intense games that I might actually wanna play if I forget my DS at home. [Pocket Gamer via Max Console

Patent [via Unwired View]

We've been using Nokia's N-Gage as a punchline to (extremely nerdy) jokes for years now, ever since we first heard about Sidetalking—long before the N-Gage actually hit the market and, you know, failed. Ewan Spence over at All About Symbian's written a fairly long piece about how we should stop mocking the N-Gage and pay attention to how Nokia's been using what they've learned about mobile gaming with the N-Gage platform to sneak improved mobile gaming experiences onto their incredibly popular S60 phones:

Putting [Nokia] up against the heavyweights gives a raw number of roughly 4 million N-Gages shipped, against 17 million PSP's and a comparable number of Nintendo DS. But now ask yourself another question. How many S60 phones are going to ship in the next 12 months? Maybe 50 million? How many of them are going to be able to play these next generation of mobile games? Maybe 30 or 40 million? Those numbers are standing up pretty well against Sony and Nintendo now, aren't they?

We hate to admit it, but Spence does make some sense. But we're not going to give the Sidetalk jokes up, you'll have to pry our love for them out of our dessicated little walnut hearts after we're all long dead and buried.

The N-Gage at E3 2006 - Machiavellia Would Be Proud [AllAboutSymbian]