Quite a number of announcements were made by Sony in this year's Game Developers Conference. While most are probably talking about the fact that there are 2.8 million PSN gamers, developers have been going crazy at the new PhyreEngine from Sony Computer Entertainment. For more on this, be sure to check out the full article.

TGDaily reports that AMD currently has plans to bring "Xbox quality graphics to handheld devices." AMD plans to do this by utilizing their next gen mobile graphics technologies.

While specific details have yet to be released, AMD is reportedly "working with content developers now in preparation for the arrival of phones." These should be made available to handset manufacturers through "discrete media processors as well as through IP licensing agreements with semiconductor suppliers."

A developers toolkit that includes OpenVG 1.0 and OpenGL ES 2.0 support has already been released. The toolkit will also incorporate the same Unified Shader Architecture found in the Xbox 360. There's still no word yet on which companies have already signed up, but keep checking back here on QJ for more updates.

The whole videogame industry is currently in the middle of the transition to high-definition next gen visuals with the introduction of DirectX 10, and to make the transition an easier process, here comes Nvidia with the "definitive" game development platform, Nvidia SDK 10.

The core of Nvidia's new platform is the new NVIDIA Developer Toolkit. It promises to "save developers time and money in creating games that deliver almost lifelike graphics and physics realism." The platform consists of Nvidia GeForce(R) 8 Series graphics cards, Nvidia nForce(R) 680 motherboards, and DirectX 10.

The new NVIDIA Developer Toolkit also includes instructive code samples, advanced shaders, performance tuning, and more, all in a bid to make the creation of Microsoft DirectX 10-compatible games easier.

The Nvidia Developer Toolkit also includes the following:

• SDK 10: all-new DirectX 10, OpenGL, and CUDA code samples for the latest GPUs
• Texture Tools: Powerful libraries and plug-ins for working with textures - now with DirectX 10 support and approximately 10x faster due to GPU acceleration via CUDA
• PerfKit 5: powerful tools for debugging and profiling GPU applications for Windows Vista and DirectX 10 -- now with shader edit-and-continue, render state modification, customizable graphs and counters, and more
• ShaderPerf 2: detailed shader performance information with support for new drivers
• FX Composer 2: a world-class development environment for cross-platform shader authoring; DirectX and OpenGL support with HLSL, Cg, and COLLADA FX
• Shader Library: the world's largest collection of GPU shaders featuring more than 100 different shader effects and support for external submissions

Nvidia is currently demonstrating the entire development platform and distributing some of its components free of charge at the Game Developers Conference (GDC).