Sony announces new PSP
Sony has unveiled the latest addition to the PSP line, the NGP - or Next Gen Portable.
The NGP will introduce new several new features to Sony's handheld line-up, including a new 5-inch OLED, multi-touch screen and dual analog sticks to help improve usability.
The NGP will also feature two cameras - one on the rear, one on the front - and a second multi-touch surface on the rear of the chassis. WiFi, Bluetooth and 3G connectivity are included too, as well as built-in GPS and WiFi location service support.
Techwise, Sony reckons that the NGP's quad core CPU (an ARM Cortex A9) and new graphics chip (a SGX543MP4+) will allow it to create PS3-quality experiences on the 960x544 resolution screen. The PS3-like experience will be supported by a six-axis motion sensor (three-axis gyroscope, three-axis accelerometer). There's also a three-axis compass.
Eurogamer sources claim a battery life of 4-5 hours.
The physical dimensions of the NGP are 182x18.6x83.5mm according to Sony, which also confirms that the NGP will not feature a UMD drive. Instead, the NGP will introduce a new game medium - small flash memory cards dedicated solely for NGP games. Each card will have space to store extra content and all savegame data on it too.
Sony has also announced a new Android app today, the PS Suite, which will 'closely coordinate' with the NGP so that games released on Android can then be played on the NGP too.
Sony hasn't given an official price for the NGP yet - though industry analysts EEDAR reckon a $299 - $349 bracket - but has confirmed that it will be on shelves in time for Christmas 2011.
Let us know your thoughts in the forum.
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QFT
Why can't sony just stfu and stop cramming crappy formats down our throats.
Other than that it looks fairly interesting, although I'm not sure I care very much.
3G data, so why not put a phone software on it and call it PSPhone? why does it have to be a gaming device when all people want is a pocket device that does everything.
goes back to angry birds
EDIT: Nvm, just had to look myself http://www.techtree.com/India/News/PSP2NGP_Game_Line-up_Announced/551-114289-585.html
Nothing of interest there then, suddenly don't care :(
Yup, we'll just have the fake MS Pro Duo at mental prices farce all over again.
I may have a bad understanding but won't it just be like every other handheld gaming device (minus the UMD) that has had a new form of cartridge? I don't see the problem with that, infact I come to expect it now.
This. It'll a propitiatory format locked to the NGP to try to (attempt to) stop piracy. It's no different from the NES, SNES, Gameboy, DS, cartridges people bought.
I think mobile phone gaming has meant that more people are now able to take a high quality gaming device around with them all the time now and naturally means it eats away at the stronghold that the PSP and DS used to have over the market, but I don't honestly think that iOS or Android have persuaded too many portable console owners to give up their devices yet; I enjoy the odd game on my Pre/iPad/Zune HD but none of them really offer the longevity that dedicated platforms seem to accomplish.
Either way though, the ubiquity of mobile gaming has made Sony and Nintendo up their game considerably so that they now have to go all out to offer a USP on their next gen devices (3D, super-awesome power, dual cameras, rear touch-pad) and at risk of sounding like an utter cliché, competition really has done the customer proud in this case.
That said though, credit must go to Sony for realising the potential in Android as a gaming platform and creating a more open-ended solution to it. With Apple making inroads with Game Centre (despite it being pretty cruddy for now) and Microsoft shipping Xbox Live equipped smartphones through 3rd parties it almost seems like a perfect fit for Sony to adopt a platform that hasn't been a runaway success on the gaming side and exploiting its potential.
Sounds a bit easy to pirate to me.
Not that I'm bothered anyway, if I want to game on the go, I'll just use my Motorola Atrix (perhaps with Sony's new app).
We arn't 100% sure yet that all/any of the PSP games will be compatible. I would assume that some will be but definately not all.
Welcome to console and handheld gaming, ladies and gentlemen. If backwards incompatability surprises you then I highly suggest finding a new hobby.
i digress. a mobile gaming device is a portable console. mobile phones that can play games is still nowhere near the fun-factor of glass-free 3D loads of gaming option or multi-touch screen gaming device with graphics that is close to PS3 with 4-5hr battery life. no matter how much fun slicing fruits with your fingers or throwing birds into buildings, i would say its still more fun to play God of War or Uncharted while on-the-go...
im not saying cell-phone gaming isn't fun, but i found it not as fun as a dedicated portable device. heck, i myself still playing and enjoying iphone games simply coz the idea of having to buy a dedicated gaming device is cost-prohibitive.... but for people who can afford it, oh yes, its fun.
http://kotaku.com/5744718/hands-on-with-the-ngps-brand+new-uncharted-and-a-deviant-surprise
Also, consider what DS catridges are: proprietary flash memory sticks. Similar to the point that devices such as an R4 actually let you use an microSD card in them! Effectively the same thing as Sony intends to use. Little memory cards with enough room for the game and some save data. Effectively the same thing as every cartridge system prior, only this one gets the fancy term "flash memory".
If you're going to make assumptions about non-game cartridge storage solutions being invented by Sony then I'd kindly like to point you to Memory Stick. Present on the PSP, one can assume that it will be carried on to the NGP rather than using the game cartridge as a universal storage medium and opening themselves up to even more rampant piracy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM5ItI8gCRI
I'm not going to buy one of course, I just hope that if Sony are pushing the tech combination of Great Screen + Fast CPU + Fast GPU + Flexible input controls then we're only a generation away from having the same in our smart phones.
I don't want a portable gaming machine, but I want to play portable games on my (i)Phone with better visuals / response and better controls.
The 3DS has a never seen before new feature that even my grandmother (if she were still alive) could appreciate, to hell with the rest of the spec. The NGP's extra touch sensitive surface would take some time to explain to... well, anyone. Someone on the bus sees you playing with it, they'll think you're watching porn and getting a little too involved in it.
So yeah, outside Japan (where it'll get a whole slew of sleazy new dating sims), the NGP will once again suffer from having a comparatively tiny target market. Oh, and it won't have Pokemon on it either.
and what will they call it, Blu-RAM? Shame that Sony's format ADD has returned but if it's games only and any TV/Movies remain as downloads, it could work.
I bought an original PSP at launch and was blown away by the graphics at the time. It's still quite nice to have when on a long train journey - Wipeout Pure and Pulse are probably the most fun I've ever had on a handheld. Oh, and the Syphon Filter games were cracking as well. And GTA Liberty City Stories!
What feature is that? 3D? I don't think that is something new. Never was. Just rediscovered if you want to even call it that.
Whether the PSP topples the Gameboy or not. The market needs it. Before the arrival of the Gamegear Nintendo felt quite comfortable with their black and white colors, lack of backlit screens, and lack of graphical capabilities. Sure that didn't topple them either, but Nintendo quickly rectified the situation with Gameboy Color, and then the Advance. Because of competition Nintendo finally gave us better than 8-Bit graphics, full colors, and a screen you can still see in the dark without an accessory.
Pokemon is a juggernaut franchise, but unless you haven't been paying much attention, Monster Hunter is slowly become it's own juggernaut in the handheld market, and currently calls the PSP it's home. I don't think the PSP2 will outself the 3DS either, but right now Sony is the only competition in the market that will keep Nintendo from getting complacent again.
You buy them again, of course :)
I bought a PSP mainly for the GOW series that exist on it. Now it just sits and does nothing.
Also $300 for a handheld? They are crazy...
Backwards compatibility is both a blessing and a curse. For example, Nintendo has ditched the ganeboy cartridge slot from the DSi onwards. It would be nice in the new console could handle PSP Go. But to build in UMD compatibility would be asking a bit too much. Physical disk access just eats battery life on a device that small. And UMD didn't really take off that well as a format, in much the same way as minidisc didn't. Or consumer Betamax ultimately failed.
This console, and the phone version are probably Sony's last chance to keep any sizeable chunk of the mobile gaming market. If they fail now, they will have to settle with being a software publisher.
Interesting that they are planning to use propriety SD card storage. Unless there are significant hardware differences, such as pin layouts or hardware on-card encryption, I can see this being jailbroken pretty rapidly.
The other thing to note is that Sony are a massive empire, covering electronics, software, films and other entertainment. One of the mistakes they made with the PSP was trying to make it a jack of all trades. When Nintendo has concentrated on being the master of one. Any additional multimedia features being mainly coincidental to the main function - playing games. And playing games well.
This is why, until recently, Nintendo has wiped the floor with the competition across most gaming formats. In terms of the numbers at least. I suspect the dip in Wii sales is as much to do with reaching market saturation point than with people wanting more advanced hardware. Although Nintendo may have taken the Wii for too long to successfully win the non-portable console wars again...
Plus its flash memory based, which is getting increasingly cheaper.
Let's not forget one of the best reasons to flash your original PSP is playing games off the insanely superior MS. UMD was sluggishly slow and killed battery life, would anyone actually want it to be brought forward to other sony consoles?
There was an 8 year gap between the release of the Game Gear and the GameBoy Color. Can't really see any pressure on Nintendo there. The Game Gear was made completely impractical by it's 4-5 hour battery life on 6 AA's, so the 10 hour battery life on the GameBoy (4 AA's) did at least make it's lack of a backlight forgivable. Apart from the NeoGeo Pocket, by which time Nintendo were putting out a colour screen sans-backlight with 15 hours from 2 AA's, I can't think of anything apart from the PSP that's given Nintendo even the slightest sniff of competition.
I won't bash the PSP, it's a powerful machine and considerably more capable that the DS, but that battery life issue comes back from Sega's grave to haunt Sony. On it's 1800mAh battery the original PSP was measured by IGN to last 3.5-5 hours for gaming. The DS phat's 850mAh unit managed 8-10 hours.
Haven't really looked at Monster Hunter but I doubt it's got a competitive community as large and fanatical as Pokemon. Good luck to it though, looks like a cracking game. Might have to get the Wii one...
@Penfolduk01: They ditched the GBA slot to make way for the SD card slot after they realised that anyone with a GBA back catalog they still want to make use of has probably had a DS for quite some time now.
You can say what you want about the PSP, but I still keep coming back to mine more than the DS. Even if it's just for the back catalogue of great PS1 games I can play on it, thanks to homebrew (note: homebrew, not piracy; I own all the PS1 games I transfer to it). Plus it has some pretty awesome titles of it's own: Wipeout Pure & Pulse, Ridge Racer, Final Fantasy Crisis Core, Dissidia, etc.
The specs of the NGP alone are enough to make me drool. It doesn't really have much of a "wow" factor - unline the 3DS' glass-less 3D - but with specs like that (and Android cross-compatibility) it's certainly got enough grunt to produce some spectacular games.
Although, the storage medium does somewhat wind me up. Just use SD cards like everyone else, ffs! Even the UMD was not enough to curtail piracy, once the firmware was hacked; most piracy protection methods are all in software anyway - you can download a PSP UMD ISO, but you still can't play it on a PSP that uses official firmware.
As long as it still has an SD or even a Memory Stick Duo Pro slot, then I'll be happy.
It simply replaces the UMD. It does not replace Memory Stick or SD. It's the same as going from the Gameboy Advance to the DS. The old format was fat and unwieldy so they made a new one and dropped support for the old one.