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Thursday, January 27, 2011

PSP2 is NGP


Engadget's got a rundown on the NGP here.


Oh man, a lot of news lately. I was glued to Engadget's liveblog at 10:00pm last night & would've posted about it but my netbook battery was low....

So the PSP2 has finally been revealed! And at first look it looks like.... the previous PSP. But a closer look reveals many small differences.

2 SKUs - one with WI-FI only, a 3G model available (All Japanese NGPs will be 3G) - I shudder to think of the 3G purchase price here in Canada.... I'm sure it will only be available with a 3 year contract through Rogers, Bell, or Telus...... *sigh*. So unless you want to pay $2000.00 over 3 years for a NGP, the WI-FI only version will probably be the only viable option (I hope I'm mistaken but I've recently learned too much about the awful cellphone companies here in Canada to be optimistic)



Games will run on "new media" a.k.a cartridges - though I'm sure there'll be download games too (At this time I haven't heard/seen what kinda flash storage NGP will use, memory stick or SD?)



Specs include a quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor, 5-inch touchscreen OLED display with 960 x 544 resolution, dual analog sticks (not nubs as on the current generation), 3G, WiFi, GPS, a rear-mounted touchpad, the same accelerometer / gyroscope motion sensing as in the PlayStation Move, an electronic compass, and cameras on both the front and back.

rear touchpad:




Price hasn't been announced, but Sony says NGP will be available-- this year??? Awesome!


The bottom of NGP seems to show (yet another) proprietary USB/media port, a headphone jack & maybe a memory stick door?


The top of NGP shows power button & iPhone-style volume buttons. No hold switch??



I have to say, when you look at the comparison photo of the NGPs with the PSP-3000, the NGP looks huge. It's very chunky. I knew that Sony wanted to go bigger with the PSP 2, but it seems like portability is taking a back seat in design.... also the overall design looking exactly like the previous PSP. It just seems to me that Sony Computer Entertainment from the years 2007-present don't have any innovative design staff left. Whoever came up with the original PSP design deserves kudos; it was a slick little package that carried the Sony legacy of high-class electronic products. But since then, all we've seen are recycled designs from that era: the Sony Mylo design recycled as the PSPgo. And now the 2005 PSP design recycled in 2011. Some might see this as a case of "if it ain't broke..." and I might even agree with that to some extent. It's just very conservative.

But overall, the NGP is getting me very excited. We don't know much about it right now, hopefully we'll get a clearer picture of the overall video/media support & more specs soon.

GameSpot video comparing it to a PSPgo:





later
don

6 comments:

HerrJeff said...

Glad to see you back. Got a PSPGo for $100 after Xmas to keep my son away from my Ipod. I'm still fine playing UMD-games with my 2000 for the moment but might purchase a NGP later on, depending on price and games offered. Good thing Sony allows to share digital games among 5 different devices! Let's just hope my access to PSN store will remain trustful. although I never received that free Charlie's Angels code.

Don said...

$100.00 is a great deal for a PSPgo. What colour did you get? I was thinking of picking up another Go if I saw them really cheap.

I never got that Charlie's Angel code either.

NGP is really far away in my mind, I'm convinced we won't see it here this year. But I suspect/hope that digital PSN games bought for the PSP will be downloadable on NGP. I can't imagine why they wouldn't be.


later
don

HerrJeff said...

I chose a white model, mainly because I dislike fingerprints on black. Might do the same for Ipad2 next month...

If you're still interested to add one to your collection, I saw PspGo on clearance for $99.97 at Staples this afternoon.

Don said...

Yes, white is a great colour for being fingerprint-resistant. I hardly ever had to clean my PSP-2001. Basically any colour that isn't black is preferable in that respect. And it's partly the reason I cancelled my order for the black 3DS in favour of the blue one.

Yeah I saw that Staples deal a few days ago, it's really tempting because of what I've been seeing lately, I don't think NGP will be a very robust media player the way the PSP has been. So it would be nice to have a backup PSPgo since it will probably be discontinued soon. But last week I bought the Aluratek Cinepal 4GB Portable Media Player (APMP101F)... will do a review of it soon hopefully... so I want to cut back mhy spending on gadgets, especially with the 3DS taking a $250.00 + HST bite out of my wallet in a few weeks....


later
don

Herrjeff said...

Nice media player but can it read DRM-protected files? That's a big problem with the PSP

Don said...

Unfortunately, no, the APMP101F can't play protected video files. At least they make it clear in the instructions. But it does play back a variety of codecs with the glaring exceptions of WMV and FLV.

In a nutshell it's an ok but clunky player that doesn't play back everything, even codecs it claims to... but for a cheap price and the screen size is good. the screen quality is only ok though.


later
don