When Sony announced its next-generation portable gaming device in January, it also took out an insurance policy with Playstation Suite, a gaming service for Android smartphones.

Smartphone gaming gives Sony a backup plan in case its fancy, dedicated gaming device falls flat, but until now, we haven’t known which devices will run Playstation Suite besides Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Play (a.k.a. the Playstation phone).

Enter Nvidia, which says it’ll bring Playstation Suite to Tegra 2-powered smartphones and tablets this year. Nvidia announced the news (via Engadget) in its “TegraZone” Android app, a spotlight for games that take advantage of the Tegra 2 hardware.

Nvidia doesn’t say that Playstation Suite will be available on all Tegra 2 devices, so there are no guarantees for owners of Motorola’s Atrix 4G and Xoom tablet. At the same time, the announcement doesn’t preclude smartphones that don’t run on Nvidia chips. Officially, Sony has only said that Playstation Suite will be available for phones Android 2.3 and higher.

Still, the support from Nvidia is good news for Sony, as the chip maker is finding its way into lots of upcoming smartphones and tablets. If Playstation Suite is going to be a hit, it needs to be ubiquitous.

Unfortunately, Sony’s own plans for Playstation Suite are a bit murky. The company has said that the service will include original Playstation games for sale, but murmurs of support for PSP and Playstation 2 games have been dismissed as unsubstantiated. Sony can’t milk the Playstation 1 forever — the game console debuted 16 years ago — and Tegra 2 can certainly handle newer games. I hope there’s more going on behind the scenes.

 
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Read more: Gaming, Nvidia, Playstation Suite