Originally published on Lalawag
Last night during their Playstation Meeting 2011 event in Tokyo, Sony announced their next portable gaming device, the PSP2 “Next Generation Portable” (NGP).
This baby’s got almost every gaming and technological innovation from the past 5 years, including dual touchpads, dual analog sticks, dual cameras, six-axis motion sensing, a high resolution OLED display, 3G and WiFi connectivity, and heck why not throw in that built in GPS. There’s a laundry list of features so we’re going to windmill slam that spec sheet right in front of you here:
BAM! For those of you who are into hardware, that’s two quad-core processors powering this beast. Sony says the graphics quality is almost Playstation 3 level and they wouldn’t be too far off that mark, especially with the 960×544 resolution OLED screen (That’s almost the iPhone 4’s resolution, folks). Sony also says that the six-axis motion sensors in the NGP are the same ones that power the recently released Playstation Move motion controller. And we can’t even begin to sing the praises of having two “real” analog sticks to play with, rather than that unseemly “nub” of the original PSP.
Want a visual demonstration? Check out this video from the Playstation Meeting 2011. (Feel free to cue the video to 4:30 to start at the game demonstrations. Be warned that the rest of the video is in Japanese.)
If you know anything about games, you’ll immediately notice some heavy hitting first-party Sony franchises shown there, including Killzone, Hot Shots Golf, Wipeout, Resistance, and Uncharted. They may not have as rich a history as Nintendo’s franchises, but they still are great games in their own right. You can see some of the more innovative uses for the hardware like the augmented reality-like feel of Hot Shots Golf with the NGP’s camera or the back side touchpad in manipulating the environment of Little Deviants.
In addition to Sony’s game franchises, the usual suspects of 3rd party developers also showed their support. These included Capcom, Konami, Koei, and even American developers Epic Games and Activision, who promised that the Call of Duty franchise will be come to the NGP(shocker). Konami’s presentation was especially impressive in that they showed an in game cutscene from Metal Gear Solid 4, a Playstation 3 game, running on the NGP.
Having two touchpads will be interesting as it adds another level of control for games. One of the annoying things about front-facing touchscreens is that your finger or stylus is invariably going to block some of the screen for you. Sony’s found an interesting way around this while also keeping the front touch screen for traditional touch screen gaming along with UI navigation. Time will tell if the back side touchpad ends up being utilized smartly, but at least it’s something no one’s done before in a gaming device.
Just how promising is the NGP’s software development platform? John Carmack, the programming mastermind behind Doom/Quake and hobbyist rocket scientist, tweeted this earlier:
Low level APIs will allow the Sony NGP to perform about a generation beyond smart phones with comparable specs.
There you go, The Carmack hath spoken. However, it sounds like Sony will need this leg up as the NGP is scheduled for release in Japan in 10 months with a North American/European release date not disclosed yet.
We’re going to be real here and say that we’re way more excited about the NGP than the Nintendo 3DS. Other than the 3D effect, the graphics fidelity of the NGP blow the 3DS out of the water. In fact, on almost every other technological feature, the NGS wins out here. Dual analog sticks, two touchpads, full 3G/Wifi connectivity, you name it. If Sony can manage to find a way to have halfway decent battery life along with a reasonable price point for the NGP, they’ll definitely be in the drivers seat in the battle with Nintendo’s 3DS.
Press photo gallery:
