Sony Announces Next-Generation Portable
SCE President Kazuo Hirai announces new console at Playstation Meeting 2011
February 3rd, 2011
Last week Sony announced the NGP – Next-Generation Portable – reaffirming their commitment to portable gaming and the Playstation brand. With brute force power, and more input methods than a Move Starter Pack, it looks like we have worthy successor to the PSP in our hands.
The feature list reads like a who's who of a PSP2 wish list, including twin thumbsticks, touchscreen, 3G data connectivity, six-axis gyroscopic control, geo-location, 802.11n WiFi, front and rear cameras… and some surprises no one saw coming.
There's a multi-touch panel on the rear allowing gesture control from the back, demoed nicely at the event with rope climbing in Uncharted. A clever replacement for analogue triggers.
Powering the system are impressive quad-core processors. An ARM Cortex-A9 CPU and Imagination Technologies SGX543MP4 GPU…. Devs are saying this thing is powerful, with some being bold enough to suggest PS3 powerful. Such as Hideo Kojima who was happy to show off a cutscene from Metal Gear Solid 4, pulled directly from the PS3 version, running at 20fps.
The likes of Capcom, SEGA, Tecmo, Epic Games and Activision were more than happy to throw their weight behind the announcement, showing off their finest wares. Yakuza, Monster Hunter, Dynasty Warriors were all on show, while Sony themselves demoed NGP versions of Uncharted, Killzone, Resistance, Hot Shots Golf and Little Big Planet.
Despite impressive connectivity options, Sony seem intent on distributing games on… something, for the foreseeable future. UMD is out, but games will be sold at retail on SD card-like flash media. No word on spec or size or anything, but the new storage appears proprietary – which would probably help keep piracy out for a few days.
Leveraging the expanded connectivity and geo-location capabilities is a built in Near app, which allows you to find players in the area, share data and even see what's popular.
The NGP is expected to launch by the end of the year in at least one territory, likely Japan. And while Sony promises it "will be affordable", making this amount of tech affordable is still likely to mean a hefty sum.
There's a multi-touch panel on the rear allowing gesture control from the back, demoed nicely at the event with rope climbing in Uncharted. A clever replacement for analogue triggers.
Powering the system are impressive quad-core processors. An ARM Cortex-A9 CPU and Imagination Technologies SGX543MP4 GPU…. Devs are saying this thing is powerful, with some being bold enough to suggest PS3 powerful. Such as Hideo Kojima who was happy to show off a cutscene from Metal Gear Solid 4, pulled directly from the PS3 version, running at 20fps.
The likes of Capcom, SEGA, Tecmo, Epic Games and Activision were more than happy to throw their weight behind the announcement, showing off their finest wares. Yakuza, Monster Hunter, Dynasty Warriors were all on show, while Sony themselves demoed NGP versions of Uncharted, Killzone, Resistance, Hot Shots Golf and Little Big Planet.
Despite impressive connectivity options, Sony seem intent on distributing games on… something, for the foreseeable future. UMD is out, but games will be sold at retail on SD card-like flash media. No word on spec or size or anything, but the new storage appears proprietary – which would probably help keep piracy out for a few days.
Leveraging the expanded connectivity and geo-location capabilities is a built in Near app, which allows you to find players in the area, share data and even see what's popular.
The NGP is expected to launch by the end of the year in at least one territory, likely Japan. And while Sony promises it "will be affordable", making this amount of tech affordable is still likely to mean a hefty sum.
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