Electronic Arts has now released an official statement in response to the circulating rumors that  they have let go Pandemic Studios in Brisbane, Australia. While they did admit that their upcoming job cuts will affect studios, they did not divulge any more specific details about it.

As rumors would have it, Electronic Arts has shut down the Brisbane, Australia office of Pandemic Studios. Says a "reliable source", the shut down was more of a "find a new publisher" thing, rather than a "sorry, we'll have to kill you off" scenario.

Speaking with Eurogamer, Scott Warner revealed that once Pandemic Studios were done with Mercenaries 2 anything is possible - even a handheld version of the game. Here's Scott Warner's words:

At the moment we're only concentrating on the versions of the game we've announced, but I'd love for us to work on a handheld version of Mercs! Anything's possible!

What has Pandemic Studios currently busy at the moment is Mercenaries 2: World in Flames, which is being custom built for next-gen consoles, the PC, and the PS2. After they're done with that game, we just might see more Mercenaries for the PSP or the DS.

Mercenaries 2 is set to feature fully destructible environments and is set to look a lot like Venezuela.

This combination of destruction and Venezuela is something that the aforementioned country doesn't seem to like - heck they even asked Bono to do something about it.

Anyhow, all the mercenary focus on next-gen platforms (and Venezuela) should end by Winter, as Mercenaries 2: World in Flames game is set to be released by then. Will we see a PlayStation Portable version of Mercenaries? We certainly hope.