Code name: NGP (Next Generation Portable). The goal: "to transform every aspect of people's life."
And so it has happened. Mere minutes ago, Sony's new portable unit was unveiled at the PlayStation Meeting in Tokyo. The sleek unit features dual analog sticks (yay!), Sixaxis controls, front and rear cameras, new game media, a larger screen, and even touchpads on both the front and back; it's quite the appealing machine.
The pictures shown at the event show the NGP from a variety of different angles, and other relevant data includes- flash memory, 3G support and WiFi, and according to what Sony boss Shuhei Yoshida said, the "graphics are PS3 quality." The screen will be 5 inches, larger than standard 3.5-inch smartphones, and it'll feature an OLED display that will look brilliant from all angles. It seems you'll be able to use either the touchpad or the micro analog sticks to control the character on the screen. "It's like the world in your hands," Yoshida stated confidently, and everyone seems awfully psyched. Rightfully so; this thing is pretty amazing.
A bunch of games are shown running on the unit, including Reality Fighters, LittleBigPlanet 2, Wipeout, Resistance, and holy God, even Uncharted. That's gonna be pretty insane in the palm of your hand... During the presentation, Yoshida was moving Drake around with the touchpad; he also uses the gyrosensor to make Drake jump. At one point, Yoshida slid his fingers down on the touchpad on the back, and the main character slid down a vine. Simply by touching places, Drake will jump to desired locations, and you can even draw lines to new spots off in the distance. Oh, look an enemy standing on the edge of a cliff...flick the finger at him, and Drake shoves him off the edge.
From what we can tell, that's Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, only with the NGP controls. Evidently, as far as the design of the unit, it's called "Super Oval Design" and although it's a little tough to gauge the actual size right now, the device appears to be about the same size as the original PSP. Perhaps most interesting is the fact that the rear touchpad is 5 inches; the exact same size as the front screen, so where you put your fingers on the back matches up with what you see on the screen. You can even use two fingers! Lastly, the NGP will boast a user interface called LiveArea, where players can learn about new games, access the PSN, and yeah, it's touch-based. There will even be a live feed so you can see exactly what your buddies are doing, if you're into that voyeuristic stuff.
With its ARM Cortex-A9 core CPU and SGX543MP4+ GPUs, you can be assured that they have improved vastly. This means the PSP2/NGP has a central processing unit with 4 cores and an advanced graphics processing unit also with 4 cores. For other spec information about the NGP read Alan Ng’s article here.
Imagination Technologies, who manufacture mobile graphics, explained that this quad-core GPU has a wider data path, therefore double the shader performance of previous versions. For more on shader and Imagination Technologies read the full article over at nicagamerz.
The Samsung Galaxy S is a feature-packed smart phone. It has a huge screen which is a 102mm (4-inch). Its hardware ticks every box, and, with Android providing the brains and usability, the result is an excellent phone. Read the full review at cnet for more on specs.
When compared to the Samsung Galaxy S, which has a SGX540 GPU that has 4 lines shaders, the NGP will be 8 times as powerful despite having the same number of shader pipelines because of its more advanced GPU.
What are the main factors that you look for in devices like these? Is it features or graphics? Let us know your thoughts. Check out how the battery life of the PSP 2/NGP compares to other devices.
