Ben-DutkaThe PSP2 – or the NGP, as we've come to call it – has been revealed, but it likely won't be on store shelves here in North America for at least another year.
That being the case, some have been wondering: why did Sony decide to announce it so early? Well, according to Sony boss Kaz Hirai, the move was made for two big reasons : firstly, they wanted to attract more publishers and developers ASAP and secondly, they wanted to avoid any headaches caused by possible leaks, rumors and speculation. Furthermore, when Hirai was asked how they plan to compete with the 3DS, he specified "integrated sensors and connectivity options" as secret weapons. Of course, we should remember that some analysts say the NGP and 3DS won't be in competition at all; they're two entirely different products and offer very different interactive experiences. But the comparisons are inevitable, and it was probably a good idea to build some NGP hype early. Plus, it really is important to gain early support from game designers.
Only when the unit exits the prototype phase will we get a price and an estimated launch date, but hopefully, that won't be too far off.
Good luck to them. 🙂
Since Sony can't keep a secret to save their lives they might as well reveal early. Maybe it will give MS time to slap something together out of legos, release it first and call it a next gen portable.
ms would probably use mega blocks, you know the ripoff lego.
hahaha
lol
a train needs momentum early on to work effectively. giving consumers the chance to know about it ahead of time lets them save for it and build hype all over the internet. the best thing they can do for this device is to get support of the consumers and developers well before launch. i for one will be wanting one right away.
sorry to be off topic but i cant stop telling people. i won custody of my daughter today and now have full custody. with my bday on sunday it feels like an early bday present.
maybe next year my bday present will be the NGP
Congrats on the custody man, I am not a father myself but i can sort of understand what you are feeling right now. It is the best feeling ever other than holding her for the first time right? 🙂
Congratulations. Custody battles can be nasty, I know from bitter experience.
I have no kids myself but I witness the horrors of custody issues every day and have 4 nieces. Happy Birthday man.
thank you guys for the kind words.
kev yea it did give me a feeling that is hard to duplicate.
Congratulations, Frylock. And Happy Birthday to you as well!
Congratulations and Happy Birthday. I went through a 2 year custody battle/war for my oldest son. I was young and the system was not in my favor at the time but I proved myself and finally won. It was a feeling like no other. Cherish every moment because the years go by fast. Its your Birthday in more ways than one.
Last edited by FatherSun on 2/5/2011 7:00:18 AM
Congrats man! Battle fought well 🙂
again thank you guys. standing in front of that judge after representing myself and being told that i get custody was a great feeling. but telling everyone and getting all the positive responses gives me a great feeling also.
being a male and winning your child's custody in court is a hard thing to do.
Yes i heard it from Kaz himself in a sceablog interview
Early support from game designers is key for sure. Get the big ones on the PSP2 and gamers will buy.
Alienage,
In case you didn't see my replay in the thread from earlier…
You're right, and I apologize. I allowed my crap day to affect my posting here which is wrong, and I apologize to you for that and the harsh words.
It makes me wonder what happened to the developers that has their hands on of the PSP2 before the NGP was announced. Almost all the developers on the Playstation meeting said they were only tech demoes. They spent like half a year for this tech demo. There's less than a year left for them to make a full game.
@ TheHighlander – Sorry to hear about the crap day. Those do seem to come around whether we want them to or not. But no harm done and no need to apologize. We've been cohorts for a long time now. We can't let one bad day ruin all the fun can we?
Thank you, I appreciate your patience, a day spent being a bear with a sore head…not a good thing. There ought to be a way to disable internet access on days like that.
For me, i think the reason is to compete with 3DS. I was leaning towards getting a 3DS rather than the mysterious PSP2, until the NGP was announced.
To me 3DS is just a DS with a better screen. Gameplay will remain the same. They may be only 1 out of 100 that relies on the 3D screen. Even the DSi cameras, its so sad to not see any games that utilizes them. A 3D screen will probably just be another accessory.
As for the NGP, I am really interested in how the rear touch screen, compass, GPS, cameras etc. will be used in their games.
Yeah, but…I don't want to wait an entire year for this thing. I hope that they can use some of their time to manufacture sufficient of these to do a worldwide launch. Either that, or the Japanese firmware on the wifi only model better include English!
I can wait for portables like a camel for water so I'm good. Just got my PSP last year 🙂
I'm leaning towards reason 3: We're terrified that Nintendo will get a huge jump and this 3D thing may actually take off big time, so we'll try diminish it as much as we can.
Still, a masterful stroke on Sony's part.
Their prototype and alpha copies of games were remarkably well put together though. I wonder whether they will be able to bring it forward a little as time passes?
PCG, that's what I thought as well. Better drown our the hype on the competition and focus on our own gadget. Good strategy though.
And yeah, I don't believe there are "leaks". Its more likely that the initial news were posed as rumors to gather consumer feedback without solid advancements or to get hype going for them
lol, to avoid leaks. he's funny. this thing had so many leaks, I've been following the psp2 leaks for like 2 years now, and all the rumors and leaks ended up being true. even the rear touchpad which I didn't really believe until the worldwide reveal. I think taking the edge of nintendos launch was a huge factor, it was what 5 days after nintendo had there 3ds event that told the price and release date. well good thing for them it worked on me, I wanted the 3ds but now it seems like last gen to me.
oh yeah and devise have had this thing for awhile so im expecting a pretty big/good launch lineup, also if it doesn't make it out of japan by december they missed a huge opprotunity.
my 2 cents
~wrote
leaks, you mean like the leaked photos of this we received months ago?
or the leaked commercial for the PSP phone?
dunno WTF is happening at sony lately, but they got more leaky pipes than the freaking titanic!
Like nintendo doesn't. Ookay.
Some many leaks because Sony has too many pipes.
where did i say they dont?
everyone has leaks, but no one as bad as sony!
first the ps3 slim leaks, then the qore epp for the PSP go released like a few weeks before announcement, countless games, the whole hacking debacle, leaking SDKs, PSP 2, PSP phone, plus was also leaked, heaps of ps3 bundles have also leaked like the KZ3 bundle sony has not announced it yet, but today i found a screenshot of gamestops storage and they had a KZ3 bundle in there.
actually, have sony announced a single thing this gen that we did not know was already coming?
So, The NGP wont even be compared to the 3DS, Nintendo will have a new DS by next year. They do every year.
To be fair, there's a new PSP every year too.
Last edited by Fane1024 on 2/5/2011 5:14:17 PM
I don't feel the need to compare the 2, it's like the wii and the ps3, there is no comparison. I'm ok with the early reveal, I will enjoy digging up info about it over the next year.
Well hopefully the price of the features it has will come down during development, because if it is like, £200 I might consider getting it. £150 would be closer. £100 would be definate lol.
So many factors for the early reveal. A little rain on Nintendos parade. Revealing it themselves rather than others. Giving the PSPhone and PSSuite some breathing room. Allowing the anticipation to build into a frenzy. I like when Sony uses strategy. Let the market get a taste of the Playstation brand then bring on the main
I just hope they don't take too long because the specs may become outdated. Unless they keep up with the times. In which case by all means. Also, even though WE know that the NGP and the 3DS cover completely different demographics the same cannot be said of the average consumer. Don't let the one year head start predicament happen again Sony.
Also, since they confirmed that it will run anything that PSS generates as well as all existing, and future, downloadable PS1 and PSP titles, they have nearly a year to build a library of compatible games, plus the NGP specific/exclusive games coming from what seems like a who's who of game development. Sounds like Sony wants to have a very strong library for this machine.
Also Sony probably announced the NGP early, because they want to phase out the PSP-3000 and UMD all together. There will probably be a lot of price drops on games and hardware in the next few months.
at least I have plenty of time to pay for this 🙂 even though I'm basically there it not being released for another year I'll be able to get games with it too 🙂
@ Boom agree i can see that.
You might call Resistance and Killzone series guilty pleasures for me cuz I bash FPS a lot. But those really are the creme of the crop in my eyes.
er, wrong article 🙂
Have you guys seen the ps3-like graphics of this thing?
That alone will make me get this.
I will probably get the 3DS too.
They're not really in competition.
Don't worry Sony, I would rather have the NGP over the 3DS.
Didn't they say that the psp was a psp2 handheld? Or something to that effeect? Again, i don't see anything that blows away the 3ds in terms of graphics. The 3ds has a killer lineup of games set to debut, in addition, it's just a matter of time, before nintendo has 3ds upgrades with bigger screens.
The ngp looks slightly better, but not by much. They say that the ngp is in high def, but it won't say which one it is. Am i suppose to assume that just because the handheld looks equal to or better than the psp2's quality, that it is equalvilant to that of the ps3?
Must it have a touch screen and a rear touch pad? I would gladly prefer something to that of the pspgo with a much bigger 1080p oled screen, with equal or better than that of the ps3 quality with a 2 to 4 gigs of ram.
By size, i mean screen size of a small mousepad,and the ngp slided like the pspgo. Do you know how sick that would be? Even if they can prove that the games will be stored on memory cards that are much larger than the 50 gig blue ray discs. And can put ANY ps3 game on that handheld and make it slightly better?
OH well, i guess we'll have to wait another 6 to 12 years for that to happen.
Dude, do yourself a big favor and look back over the last week of articles. The NGP is way more than the 3DS, and in terms of screen or system capability it's in a different class. In fact it's safe to say that technologically speaking, the NGP is to the 3DS as the PS3 is to the Wii.
I'm not sure where equating PSP and PSp2 came from, I think you have your wires crossed. You really need to read some more information.
Dude, ahh, no it's not. What game is most spectacular for the ngp? uncharted? Resident evil, metal gear, and street fighter for the 3ds looks killer.
Have you've seen the 3ds lineup of games? wow!! There lauching an attack on the handheld franchise.
Regardless of the specs of each system, graphicly, i just don't see anything that comes close to blowing away the best graphics ps3 game to the best graphics wii game in the comparison your talking about.
As far as comparing the psp to a handheld version of the ps2, you never heard sony making a statement like that? The specs on the ngp are still vague. No matter how many posts they keep putting up.