An executive from the Netherrealm Studios, a game development company, said that Sony Computer Entertainment had already started to supply samples of its PlayStation Portable 2 platform to game developers. Apparently, PSP2 is "pretty powerful", but no other details were released.

“We have a PSP2 in the house and we are looking at the engine, like what can it support. Always a big thing for us is the performance. We are running at 60 fps, what can we do and do we have to build all the art assets over. We are definitely looking at them. PSP2 looks like it’s a pretty powerful machine. We do not have a 3DS system in house yet, but we are looking to get one, and we will certainly look at what its power is," said Shaun Himmerick, and executive producer at Netherrealm Studios, in an interview with Industry Gamers web-site.

At present nothing concrete is known about Sony PSP2. The PlayStation Portable 2 – or whatever its actual name is – will be based on the Cell processors with four synergistic processing elements (SPEs), according to a report earlier this year. Back in late 2008 rumours transpired that Sony had licensed PowerVR graphics processor technologies for the next-gen PSP2. Considering that feature-set of Imagination Technologies’ is akin to desktop-class graphics processors, the PSP2 may be more capable in terms of graphics than the PS3 itself.

Quite interestingly, but the PSP2 may also be very smartphone like. According to other market rumours, PSP2 has two cameras, one forward and one backward facing, in addition, it has a touch-screen in addition to physical PlayStation buttons. Finally, according to the unofficial information, the device sports both 3G/3.5G and Wi-Fi connectivity.

Netherrealm Studios is developing a new version of Mortal Kombat game for portable devices.

Sony did not comment on the news-story.

Tags: Sony, PSP2, Playstation, Cell, Imagination, Imagination Technologies, PowerVR