The Aino will let users control their PlayStation 3s using “Remote Play,” allowing for across-the-internet streaming of media from your home console to your cell phone. Not bad. While it may not let you play Lair on the bus, it will apparently let you stream movies, music and whatever other media content you may have stored on your PS3 wherever you are in the world.

It’s the same tech introduced in PSP firmware 3.50, which actually works rather well.

The Aino also lets European users enjoy the PlayTV service on PlayStation 3 on their phones. It also does a bunch of things that people expect phones to do now, like take 8.1 megapixel pictures, access Facebook and do the Google. Full list of specs at the official announcement.

Sound and vision set free with the Sony Ericsson Aino [Sony Ericsson]

Well, that’s all well and good, but a different gaggle of experts (Juniper Research, this time) are casting worried glances at the non-iPhone end of the market. Apparently Java game development has “flatlined across North America and Western Europe,” although the quoted jump from $US5.4 billion in 2008 to more than $US10 billion by 2013 doesn’t sound that flatliney.

Ironically, it could be the iPhone’s fault. “The revenue share offered by Apple to games publishers is incredibly attractive,” said the report, “The danger is that if operators do not respond with a similar business model, publishers faced with low margins may simply exit Java completely”

Sales of mobile games have “flatlined” – report [GamesIndustry.biz]

It was a nice idea, hampered slightly by the fact that games had to be rewritten to add support for the thing. Now Nokia has decided to embrace the ZeeMote by releasing downloadable software to let the controller work with almost any S60 app or N-Gage game.

The ZeeKey app is available for free download from the Nokia website and the mobile manufacturer has promised to bundle the app with selected handsets (presumably its more entertainment focused N-Series models).

Zeekey app for Zeemote available for Nokia phones [Pocket Lint]

“”We don’t use half the buttons on the 360 controller,” admitted Molyneux, “simply because the whole dream I’ve got is that someone will sit down to play Fable 2 who has never played a game before and they can play with someone who’s played games the whole of their lives.

What a lovely way to put it. Harrison, on the other hand? A bit more colorful.

“You hand somebody a game controller and it’s like you’ve handed them a live gun or a hand grenade with the pin taken out”

I believe Harrison is exaggerating, but then again I make it a point never to carry around live hand grenades on my person so who knows? They both make a very good point. Back when games consoles first started there was a joystick and a button, but since then controllers have evolved to the point where you can find a complicated looking map within the first two pages of most game manuals.

Harrison went on to praise two innovators in the realm of control…Nintendo for the Wiimote, which gives non-gamers something more familiar to work with, and Apple’s iPhone, which he says appeals to the user’s natural instincts.

“I saw this first hand a few weeks ago where a two year old was playing with an iPhone and he knows how to get the pictures up of mum and dad. The two year-old then intuitively thought that all electronic devices worked like that,” said Harrison. “He’s pressing the TV to change channels.”

“He’s right and the rest of us are wrong – that should be applied universally. Apple should be applauded for that innovation,” he added.

Harrison: Non-gamers see controllers as live guns [GamesIndustry.biz]