A tiny start up called Zeemote in the US was showing a games controller to handsets at the Mobile World Congress, claiming it had signed 80% of the world's gaming companies to "adjust" their games to work with it.

The idea is that this is a universal games controller, light enough to fit in your pocket with its own battery, which can be Bluetooth connected to your phone, and used instead of using the controls on the handset, which are often cumbersome and suffer from not really being sensitive enough to control many games.

Zeemote (rhymes with remote) is based on the idea that with the addition of a proper analog games controller, the processing power and connectivity of a mobile phone can be harnessed to create an unrivalled gaming experience, more like a proper home based games console.

Zeemote first shows the controller last year at the show, but now has convinced many games operations to ensure their games work with it, and it is now targeting new breeds of phones which come with "TV out" functionality. After a little less than a year of selling the device Zeemote reckons it can entirely replace gaming consoles in some countries, by plugging in the phone to the TV, and then controlling two player, Bluetooth connected games, from up to 10 meters away.

We can see the theory, there is more than enough processing power, and some good graphics capability and of course sound in many top end handsets and about 20 new devices which now have TV out capability.

Zeemote is calling this an ecosystem, the Mobile-Console Gaming platform (MCG) which it says has three core ingredients, requiring a mobile handset with TV Out or a micro-projector handset, connected gaming content and either one or two Zeemote Bluetooth gaming controllers. Gaming companies can use the cellular network for game distribution.

The Zeemote JS1 Controller comes equipped with just a thumbstick and four assignable action buttons, and games companies have, throughout the year, been mapping their controller functions to this device.

One area this is tipped for are the emerging markets where many consumers cannot afford PlayStations or the Wii. But then again this TV out function is only seen on the very top end devices so far, so in those markets, which rarely subsidize handsets, gaming will still be expensive - so we’re not sure this logic holds up.

Zeemote already has a partnership with Nokia for N-Gage and the devices works on Series 60 phones as well as on the Blackberry, and the company claims it has attracted 80% of games developers to adjust their games, where necessary, to work with the JS1. The device was demonstrated at MWC this year working with a Nokia N85.

Zeemote's CTO is Beth Marcus, a veteran of the Force Feedback intellectual property wars, where both Sony ad Microsoft were sued until they both agreed to pay royalties on the Force Feedback invention and then Microsoft bought the company she worked for, so the team is no novice at conquering the world.

The next step is to develop the device not just as a games controller, but a device for controlling a number of the other applications on the handset, such as internet browsing, controlling music players, and multimedia and video players, instead of going through handset menus. A lot of internet browsers on handsets would benefit from a point and click device it's true.

The company says the JS1 controller has already made significant impacts in Germany, Mexico, Holland, Spain, Switzerland, Finland and Sweden.

The whole idea of a separate device to speak to the phone may not hold up log term because there is one universal analog control that is coming to almost all top end phones, and that’s touch. The situation will emerge where touch screen phones are both used as controllers for console games, and where they are simply ARE the games, as in the iPod Touch.

With a touch screen you can have whatever controls you wish built in software, but of course interacting with the game via the game’s screen, just by touching gaming elements, is probably even more attractive.

We might see a version of the gaming graphics on the touch phone, and another version on a TV out screen, working in tandem for dual player games.