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Publishing leviathon confirms development work on Sony's PSP handheld, while keeping options open on Nintendo's DS

Speaking to members of the US financial press, EA CEO Larry Probst revealed the company's early plans for Sony's handheld. "I would imagine we would do something between eight and 12 PSP titles in the fiscal year (2005)," he said.

EA's Chief Financial Officer Warren Jenson, clearly a well-informed man, went on to speculate on PSP's price point. "While it's not our call to make, we think the opportunity for the $149 price point has come and gone," he said.

Probst himself went on to say that EA assume a price of between $199 and $249, with games selling for about $39.99. UK gamers should bear in mind that technology products usually hit our stores at a pound-for-dollar rate.

The engagingly revealing Probst also went on to discuss the schedule for the next generation of consoles proper. "I think one of them may have something to say about next-generation consoles in the next three to five months," he said, possibly reclining in a huge leather chair and gesticulating expansively. "We're still thinking that 2006 is the launch year, and who knows, somebody may surprise us with an earlier launch period."

Probst was more circumspect on Nintendo's DS. "It's a technology we're evaluating, but we haven't made any decisions as to whether we are going to support it yet." Well, the bafflingly double-screend handheld was only announced last week, after all.

News source: gamesradar.com

Gal Saloman, chief executive of Discretix, told The Register that 12-15 handsets feature its crypto technology. These devices include phones from Sony Ericsson and other manufacturers, some of which will be declared publicly during the forthcoming 3GSM conference.

Over the last year mobile operators have become more interesting in selling content over mobile phones, providing access to corporate calendaring and performing firmware upgrades over the air. This requirement has led to a need to hardware-based security from handset manufacturers.

Without improvements in security the industry risks repeating the cracks to games for Nokia NGage the accompanied the high-profile release of the integrated phone / gaming device last year, Saloman warned. NGage's protection technology was software based and therefore less secure than a hardware-based system, Discretix argues.

Discretix is a member of the Symbian Platinum Program and its technology also supports Linux. Saloman said Discretix is "still waiting for its first Microsoft customer".

"We'd love to help but we're not seeing much traction in the market," he added.

Discretix also provides security technology for PDAs and storage cards. By contrast to mobile phones this is an area where demand for Discretix' security technology for Microsoft-based devices is far more tangible.