Sony has officially revealed the successor to the PSP, and it’s codenamed ‘NGP’. The device’s spec list reads like a techhead’s dream, with two cameras, a 5 inch OLED touchscreen (boasting 4x the resolution of the PSP), twin thumbsticks, a front and rear camera, Sixaxis motion control, 3G, WiFi and GPS, front and rear touchpads and an electronic compass. It will use flash based media, as we already hinted at a while back.
Games shown so far include Hot Shots Golf, Gravity Daze, Killzone, Reality Fighters, Smart As, Broken, LBP, Little Deviants, WipEout, Resistance, and Uncharted, and apparently look just as good as their PS3 counterparts.
Trophy support has also been confirmed, and a new UI called ‘LiveArea’ has been talked about. The LiveArea UI is what Sony are calling the ‘gateway to the games’. and will include the ability to launch the game, jump straight to the Store for that game (for DLC, etc) and communicate with others playing the game, and see what they’re up to.
You can even comment on what they’re doing, such as when they get a good score, or hit other milestones.
Kaz Hirai was understandably proud of the NGP, which is still just a temporary name for what everyone will be calling the PSP2, but the specs are indeed impressive – but it’s the control options that’ll really wow audiences – the Uncharted demo offered a variety of inputs, including tapping the X button or the touch screen to jump.
Capcom, Sega, Tecmo Koei, Konami, Epic, and Activision are all supporting the new console, with Capcom showing Monster Hunter 3rd and Lost Planet 2. Tecmo showed off a demo of a touch-screen powered Musou, and Hideo Kojima showed off a realtime cut-scene of Metal Gear Solid 4, massively trumping the 3DS’s MGS3 demo.
“On NGP, we can enjoy the same quality as PS3,” he said. “What I’d like to realise is playing on your PS3, and when you go out, you put the game on your NGP, and when you come back home, you can once again use your PS3 and large screen TV.” We’re told to watch E3 for more on that.
Then, Epic showed off a realtime Epic Citadel-esque flythrough, and then Dungeon Defenders, which was apparently ported from PS3 to NGP in “about a week”, and Activision’s Philip Earl just said three words: “Call of Duty.” This could be huge.
It has also been confirmed that you can play downloadable PSP titles on the NGP.
Finally, Sony confirmed that it’ll be pushing PlayStation branded content to Android phones and other devices, you can read more about this aspect of the presentation here in a separate post.
We’ll be reporting on everything NGP throughout today, but for now here’s the official Fact Sheet.
Juelz345
Well…trophies, PSN Friends, PSN Messages, amazing graphics, capacitive touch screen and buttons & dual analog sticks.
That decides it, a 3DS for the kids and NGP for me.
The price isn’t even a factor of “if”, just “when”. If it’s around the 3DS price point or less, it’s a day one for me. Hell, anying under $350 is day one for me.
Galgomite
How do people feel about the strategy? Last time around, Sony’s hook was to bring the console experience “on the road.” Everyone promptly got into the technologically inferior DS. This told me that people don’t want console experiences when out and about, and yet Sony is taking the same path again. Is there a reason it’ll work this time? (If it works for me, it’ll be because it finally has a second friggin’ analog stick.)
Voolar
Sony seem to be pandering to the “core” gamer at the moment. There is quite a big demographic who want nothing to do with the Casual Market. Personally the Kinect/Wii/DS thing makes me want to break stuff, I want to play KZ3 God Damnit. I got the Move because it offered me more than just Dance and Waggle games. If I can get a really excellent COD or KZ experience in my pocket – I’m in.
BadBoyBoogie
I’m loving everything that I’ve read about it so far. Assuming it’s sensibly priced, this will be a day one purchase for me. :)
ElGuason
man loooks amazing great design and lets hope its not 500 bucks
Dexter17
Oh man. Fingers crossed that Sony get the price right.
SpikeyMikey23
WANT WANT WANT!!
fattyuk
Fantastic! Day 1 buy for me
icuyesido
Back from Uni and a wealth of amazing news! :D… This looks great, deffinatly getting this day one, cost doesn’t matter, that’s what student loans are for! :P
Charmed_Fanatic
Looks great! more like a PSP then its design been thrown around
gaffers101
I’d still like to see the specs on the PSP phone before I make a final decision, but so far this look great.
cc_star
They’ve been released already. 1ghtz processor, a tad faster than the in the Samsung Galaxy S and 512mb of RAM.
Bearing in mind quad-core processors will be the norm for high-end phones by the time this NGP is out, it makes the Xperia Play seem a bit under powered
No where near the specs of the Android phones coming out over the next quarter, I wonder if Sony gimped it back a bit so as to not compete with this