Barney Rubble comes to Sony Ericsson handsets

AFTER LAST week's news that Nokia has acquired Sega.com in order to bolster its online gaming offer for its N-Gage platform, Sony Ericsson has raised its game and decided to cut a deal with Turner Broadcasting.

The result will be that familiar Cartoon Network characters such as Tom and Jerry, The Flintstones, and The Powerpuff Girls will end up gracing the screens of Sony Ericsson's handsets.

The conversion of these characters into mobile format will be handled by Macrospace. Sony Ericsson bow has also signed deals with Atari and iFone (for the conversion) to load the popular V-Rally 2 game onto Sony Ericsson newly announced handsets including the Z600.

It seemed particularly proud of the fact that the Z600 shakes when the car crashes. Hardly a novel feature. Perhaps the most important move is to announce that these new handsets support both Mophun from Synergenix and Java - although shaking gamers may disagree.

Sony Ericsson's Philip Rambech claimed that Mophun allows cleaner OTA (Over The Air) downloading of games plus allows developers to use C++ tools to create games. He also added that there is already a large of catalogue of games available through Mophun.

Last month Synergenix announced it will unite Mophun with TTPCom's WGE (Wireless Games Engine). This will mean that manufacturers of low cost handsets in regions like China, will be able to build in support for Mophun using TTPCom's handset designs. µ