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PSP2! aka NGP

T

Taustin Powers

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 5, 2005
273
610
Well, it's finally out in the open! I am actually AMAZED that we didn't see any leaked pictures of the final hardware before the event - congratulations, Sony! That's the first time they managed to keep something fairly under cover since I can remember!

I'm rather surprised they went with the traditional PSP design, rather than doing a slide-out like the Go. Dual analog sticks was a given, 5 inch capacitive touch controls on front AND back could open up some interesting new mechanics. 3G is potentially interesting as well...but how will it work? Will it be linked to a specific phone provider plan? Will Sony have their own data flatrates available? Monthly payments on a game console are a no-go for me. All the other stuff (GPS, motion-sensing, compass, front/back cameras) are IMO nice to have, but ultimately gimmicks I could do without.

Gamewise, I have seen the titles Killzone, Resistance, LBP and Uncharted being mentioned - sounds like a winner to me! Also, PHYSICAL MEDIA!! I actually like the downloads, but I know this will make a lot of people happy. Some kind of flash card, it looks like. And backwards compatibility to PSP download games.

Supposed to be out this holiday season...haven't seen any info on pricing or battery life yet. Both factors are potentially worrying, given the specs of this machine.

All in all, it looks like a great device - it has more appeal to me than the 3DS, but that's personal preference, of course. I also probably won't pick it up right away. Launch prices are usually very high, and I only just got around to buying a PSP last summer. Haven't even played half of the 10 free games that came with it yet... :rolleyes:

sony-tokyo-event-1430-1296110915.jpg
 
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Sounds really impressive, but the final judgement is when they announce the pricing.
 
Taustin Powers said:
...haven't seen any info on pricing or battery life yet. Both factors are potentially worrying, given the specs of this machine.
Click to expand...
If this sells for less than $400, I'll be surprised. That is a lot of very current tech to be cramming into a device.

Given the hardware specs, the look of the status bar, and their big play towards Android earlier in their presentation, I'm guessing this is also running a custom version of Android. OLED screens look awesome, and all those cores in the CPU and GPU are great, but my phone (Samsung Captivate) has closely related hardware and gets terrible battery life any time I start to play a game.

This thing uses the Cortex A9, my phone has the A8. New PSP has the SGX543 GPU, my phone has the 540. This thing has a 5" OLED screen, my phone has a 4" SAMOLED. And so on and so forth. All of that adds up to an amazing piece of hardware, there is no doubt about that. But all of it also adds up to a device that is going to eat through battery like crazy.

I think it looks very nice, and the hardware is obviously top notch. But, if it costs a ton and has crap battery life, I'll never buy one. Especially with all their talk of PlayStation Suite™ stuff for Android, I'll just stick with gaming on my phone.
 
It looks and sounds great (cept for the analogue stick placements, owch :() but there are 2 things that stop me from leaping over the moon-

1. No UMD.

Unlike the 3DS I won't be able to play my current generation games on it. And that sucks.

2. A reliance on EU PSN.

Do you know how bad the EU PSN is? I preordered Peacewalker from Amazon for £14.99 (PSN had it at £32). It arrived a day before launch. Yesterday they had their first sale on this game and brought it down to £15.99. :(. It's a terrible service with virtually no releases, 2-3x the price of store bought games and total region locking.

Unless things massively improve I won't be able to buy a PSP2 just because of the infrastructure it's built around. I just hope this memory card thing is the primary way to get games and not just a backup method (like the DSi/3DS SD card slot).
Which is a shame because I've played much more of my PSP than DS in the past 2 years, if it wasn't for a few DS gems I wouldn't play it at all.
 
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well looks like sony did their usual approach: just add power and gizmos ... 3G in theory sounds great but that means provider plans (monthly costs) and less battery if it has 3g a telephone function better be included
back side touchpad: this baffles me the most... jsut why
interesting that they did go back to a cartridge/flash based medium for games for saving save games/DLC on it ;) ... looks like UMD is finally put to the grave
what i'm a little concerned is the ergonomics of using the analog sticks and some of the buttons, i already did find the original psp to hold for a long time and this things even bigger


the price as many expect is very likely astronomical: the original PSP was already really expensive, the PSP Go and the 3DS are already out of a sensible price range
399 bucks will be the minimum
or they will do it all over the monthly plan: 299 but you are paying 10 per month ;)
 
Interesting. It looks nice, but I'm not giving Sony's designers any points for originality.

It certainly sounds like a very powerful bit of kit, and the added gyroscope/compass and cameras are a great addition. Both the front touch screen and rear touch panel are capacitive multi-touch. Smashing. Basically, Sony have brought the PSP up to currently accepted market specifications. It's the love-child of a PSP and iPhone.

However, the original PSP was much more powerful than the DS, and look what happened there. The novelty of a dual touch-screen handheld was enough for the world to forget about the PSP, no matter how powerful it was. It'll be interesting to see what happens this time around. The 3DS really is just more of the same, except the top screen is now 3D. Will the 3D gimmick be enough this time around to wow the general public?

I want to find out more about the 3G capabilities, the battery life and the price. I think it's best to wait until then before making more of an assessment.

:apple:
 
Thought I was done with portable gaming except for my little iphone/android games but this thing has my interest. Looks like this is going to be a portable PS3 and if I'm able to play some of my games(fallout, dead space, silent Hill) on the go with the same save files...excellent:D

I can see Sony offering exclusive games with the NGP DL/PS3 on one blu-ray. I don't understand the touch pad in the back but finally we got dual analog sticks!


$250-$300 and I'm all over this...anymore and I'll wait.



Bless
 
Liquorpuki said:
If the battery life isn't ridiculously short, I'll buy it.

Best part - its flagship game won't have birds and pigs
Click to expand...

They are claiming it will be like that of the first PSP, which is in line with 3DS numbers (5 hours at most).

This has a quad core cortex A9 and a SGX 543MP4. It's a technical beast in every sense of the world. I can't wait to see it jailbroken. Full speed N64 emulation is a given. We might even get full speed dreamcast emulation.
 
I am probably done with strictly portable gaming device, but this is impressive. To me, the thing that really hurt the first PSP was not adding trophies when they were added to the PS3. I know they are stupid and mean nothing but they are fun to go after. I had both a PS3 and PSP for a while and if I had free time at home, I would also choose the PS3 to play because I liked going for trophies. I would have played my PSP more if it had trophies that could add to my PSN account.

I think I read in one article today that trophies will be a part of the PSP 2. That is going to be a huge selling point and I think get a lot of people to buy small PSN titles.
 
Assuming this thing is priced at $400 (I'm guessing it will be), it means that with the 3DS' $250 price tag, portables are no longer cheaper than consoles. If anything, I think we may see the next Xbox/PS4 in the $1000 price range.
 
Brien said:
Assuming this thing is priced at $400 (I'm guessing it will be), it means that with the 3DS' $250 price tag, portables are no longer cheaper than consoles. If anything, I think we may see the next Xbox/PS4 in the $1000 price range.
Click to expand...

I will be surprised if it launches at anything other than $300.

As for consoles, that doesn't make sense. They're built to sell software. Anything over $400 is cost prohibitive.
 
Brien said:
Assuming this thing is priced at $400 (I'm guessing it will be), it means that with the 3DS' $250 price tag, portables are no longer cheaper than consoles. If anything, I think we may see the next Xbox/PS4 in the $1000 price range.
Click to expand...

chrmjenkins said:
I will be surprised if it launches at anything other than $300.

As for consoles, that doesn't make sense. They're built to sell software. Anything over $400 is cost prohibitive.
Click to expand...

Wasn't $599 the launch price of the PS3? AND people still camped out... :eek:

Not possible in today's economy - which is one of the reasons why we won't see any new consoles for a few more years...
 
Taustin Powers said:
Also, PHYSICAL MEDIA!! I actually like the downloads, but I know this will make a lot of people happy. Some kind of flash card, it looks like. And backwards compatibility to PSP download games.
Click to expand...

NGP cards - looks like *yet another* proprietary Sony format (I still have my Betamax... :eek:).

At least it still has physical media - makes us collectors happy. :D
 
gkarris said:
NGP cards - looks like *yet another* proprietary Sony format (I still have my Betamax... :eek:).

At least it still has physical media - makes us collectors happy. :D
Click to expand...

To their credit, if it wasn't proprietary, they'd have a hard time selling developers on it with fears of piracy.
 
I expect it to retail at
€399-449
$399-449
£349-379

It has too much 'tech' to come in at anything sub $300 and if they had positioned it to do so - it would have been a major announcement and blow for the 3DS. The 'SILENCE' on price is undoubtably a telling sign.

And personally I think when that inevitable price announcement comes there is going to be a lot of bloody moaning from every where.

By choosing to leave the pricing out of the equation at the announcement Sony are clearly hoping that people are wowed by the technical prowess, rather than outraged at the pricing. The pricing doesn't steel the media limelight, the tech does.

But it's only delaying the inevitable. Wishful thinking is all well and good (like a Retina Display in the iPad 2 ;) ) but economics are the only thing that really makes the world go round.

Even at the the lower of my estimates €399 I'd suspect Sony would be making a loss.


So will power over price win out for them are Sony are making the classic mistake yet again. All the tech in the world. All the latest and greatest components do not make your machine the undoubted 'winner'.

As much as the tech impresses me and I suspect I'll buy one - day one, as I did almost every other piece of hardware out there, it's not the audience like me with disposable cash that will decide if this is a success. It will be the money conscious families, and the older folks who Nintendo pretty much have all to themselves.

We will see, we will see.
 
See, I'm not convinced. Yes, if it was releasing RIGHT NOW then we'd be seeing those high prices, but it's a whole year away which is enough time for more OLED screen production to come online and bring down prices, and that blistering quad-core CPU to actually be reasonable and obtainable. We'll have A9 in other devices by then as well, so the NGP won't be the only device with it.

Frankly, I'd be disappointed if Sony were sticking a price tag on it today. It's too soon, and there's too many things that can result in changes in the next year.

I vote for a $299 price point, converted to the various currencies (€299, £279). That's only a little more than the 3DS is launching at (though by Christmas 2011 the 3DS may be a bit cheaper), and isn't such a hard sell.
 
I won't be buying this if its more than £200 (what I paid for my 3DS). I love handhelds, but not that much. It's a Sony machine after all... nix all those low estimates! Especially since they said they want it to be profitable.

Given their Rev A track record I'll probably wait till the PSP2-2000 and wait for that library to build up and the price to drop. I don't trust SCEE's PSN support.
 
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