While I think the idea of a portable/home console hybrid could work (especially in this economy: "Why buy a home system and a separate portable when you can have both in one unit for less money?"), this isn't that portable/home console hybrid. Sony's still got that PS3 debacle floating around, and this is gonna be marketed as a portable game system. So what's the problem? While I agree it looks damned sexy, and that power is awe inspiring for a portable game system...is it really necessary? I mean, do we really need portables to match current gen home consoles? Especially at the expense of battery life and price point? Portables in the past tried to get as close to the $149.99 price point as possible. That was the expected price point. Portables that got closer to it, or under it, did better than those that were over it (BTW, keep in mind that iOS devices are NOT portable game systems, but mobile platforms, and mobile platforms have higher perceived value so can carry higher price points). Just look at DS vs. PSP. Everyone was actually excited about PSP. But then it launched in the US at $250, whereas the DS was $100 less at $150, and guess what happened? DS had the larger initial install base, which led to more dev support, which led to more reason for consumers to buy. Exact opposite happened for PSP. It wasn't until the 2000 or 3000 revision, with the price drops, that sales increased, particularly in Japan (and I wonder how much TV out had to do with it, going back to the portable/home hybrid idea). Now what do we have? 3DS at $250, and PSP2/NGP likely to be well above that. Do we really want to pay home console prices for portable game systems? [Again, before anyone chimes in with "iPhone/touch/Pad costs more", understand that iOS is in a different market (and iPad in a distinct market even from iPhone and iPod touch) and that market (mobile platform) carries with it a higher perception of value that dedicated devices like portable game systems. Put it to you this way: consumers wouldn't completely balk at paying $600 for a ready built PC, but they would balk if asked to pay that same price for a video game home console (see PS3). Why? PCs have a higher perception of value than PS3, which was seen as primarily a game console.] For that matter, do we really want to play home console style games on a portable system? I've always enjoyed the differences between the markets, wherein portable games were more "pick up and play" than their home console counterparts, and didn't take as long to really get into regardless of how long the game actually was. A 50 hour RPG on a home system might take a half hour or even hour of gameplay to really grasp and get into, but on a portable a game usually is grasped and gotten into within the first 15 minutes or less even if it ends up being a 50 hour game. That's to say nothing of levels being shorter, gameplay periods usually lasting shorter, etc. Do we really want to play the same games we can play at home on the road? I'm not sure I do. And I'm definitely not sure I wanna pay over $149-199 at most for a portable game system.
according to joystiq, this thing may only be out in one territory by christmas. By the time its out in the states, the iphone 6 and ipad 3 will be right behind it. This is SONY we're talking about. They will not meet this deadline because apple will buy up all the parts
I'll wait. Even if the iPhone 6 and iPad 3's graphics are superior to the NGP, physical buttons are still better than virtual buttons.
Well, if we think of the psp, it's been in the market for years and the graphics are still not that bad. I'm hoping to buy the PSP2 if it comes out to be a fair price. If not, then i'll just move on to the iPod Touch 5th generation, if it exists.
People are placing too much faith into smartphones. Could many smartphoness have quad-core CPU and GPU in two years time? Yes, but will that give those smartphones the same edge as NGP? Unlikely, because anything that is made on iOS has to contend with the OS overhead. On NGP, the OS is set and minimal in resources, even Epic stated they like the console setup of NGP as there are no issues with resources and memory. There's also the matter of RAM. Smartphones continue to use crappy slow RAM that is for general purpose needs, there may be a lot of it but it's still slow. The RAM in NGP is LPDDR2 and there's 512MB of it, giving it far more performance for gaming than even the 1GB smartphones. The RAM is also susceptible to OS overhead on smartphones whereas it's almost all dedicated to gaming purposes on NGP. Last but not least, games that push such specs is well established in the dedicated portable sector and will continue to be the case for NGP, whereas it is the rare exception on smartphones. So even with sky high specs there's not going to be as many games to take advantage of it on smartphones, unless a major change occurs in that market. EDIT: There's also unlocking. The PSP is set at 333MHz but was underclocked to 200MHz to begin with, it was then later clocked back to 333MHz when Sony deemed power consumption and battery good enough. That, and Sony didn't want their new platform to be advertised with less than three hours at full clock as that sort of thing would become more acceptable sometime after launch. It's likely Sony will do the same with NGP, underclock those vast quad-cores for now and then clock back up when a redesign hits. The benefit of this is it would still affect all NGP models, whereas in smartphones the companies aren't known for doing this and when it comes to increasing the spec they just release a whole new product. So even years after release, the NGP could still remain at the top in spec.
Are you even part of this discussion? You're welcome to join in but... what the hell are you talking about?
Every platform has it's exclusive games, the ones Sony announced for the PSP2 or likely sequels to PSP exclusives, or the announced ports of PS3 exklusives, all that ones I don't want to miss, they are so much great. They never ever will be released for the iOS. I will keep my iPhone and add the PSP2 to the PSP, and if there will be killer games for the 3DS I will buy one, too. Developing (3D) engines costs money, it's the question if that development is really financiable in the app store world, if you compare big games (Gameloft, EA) running on < iPhone4,iTouch4thgen, to the PSP, the most PSP games still have better lightning effects, framerate, enemies/objects have more complex abilities in physics. You have that risk in the PSP world too, that your game won't be a seller and won't be in the charts, but I would say if you have a blockbuster in the App Store and a blockbuster PSP game, due to the high price the PSP megaseller will always have better revenue and so that dev company can invest more in their engines. The burners in the app store like Cut the Rope, Angry Birds, Doodle Jump etc., there is a clear similarity, small indie games with great ideas are the most succesfull, devs don't need no frigging EA behemoth anymore And if you look at the big 3D games from EA or Gameloft, they don't take the risk to put theirs permanently to 1 dollar because the engine development want's to be earned back, the Guillemont dude even made it clear in an interview after EAs short Dollar hell ride in the christmas sales, that this is very dangerous for the app store.
Gaming on iOS will become a hole lot better later this year when apple drops support for the iPod Touch 2 and iPhone 3G...
But every year the last generation minus the already dropped ones get's outdated, this will keep coming, so next year in July you can trash your 3GS because the games won't run or look as great as on iPhone 4 and up. And 2012 you can trash your iPhone4 because the same will happen. Whereas PSP2 customers will have a 7-9 year stable non-outdating period.
Well electronic devices just do become outdated. If they wouldn't, technology wouldn't advance. Also, 7-9 years is really overdoing it.
I preferr good gaming over the religion of hardware. Also the sucess stories in the app store don't need any fancy OpenGL stuff, it is completely unimportant to them. Full console experience in gaming I got only on the PSP so far, only need the PSP2 because the 2005 tech begins to rott. Also platform generations can have very different life cicles, see PS1 vs. PS2, PS2 lasts even long into the PS3 life and is still important to Sonys financials. I expect the PSP2 to have a very long life cicle as the PS2.
I watched that demo of Uncharted and notice that the game moves at a glacial pace and very little seems to be going on. The environment looks great, yes. But they move (slowly) for a bit, climb a cliff, then, oh look, there's one bad guy - let's shoot him (slowly).
Seriously? It was only a demo and they didn't had probably much time. You can expect much better final performance once it releases in december this year. or later 2012.
Well, aren't demos generally supposed to show off the most exciting parts of games to make them appealing? Also, it looks very clunky to switch between tilting to swing on a vine, controlling using buttons, and swiping the screen to go over a log. It seems very gimmicky, like Sony is pretending that touchscreens are a technology only in their product, and it must be shown off.
The only problem is that there won't be games made for PSP2. They'll move onto a new storage system for games. What do you think happens to PSPs with UMD slots? EDIT: I meant games made for PSP2 after PSP3 launch, PS2 was an exception to the rule.
The 3DS comes out in March, so was this PSP2 conference more a propaganda against the 3DS to take out the mindshare, take out the sails wind for the 3DS? I think the gameplay looked great of Uncharted, can't wait for accelerometer snipering Will be more fun as on iPhone sniper games, because you can fire with the left or right trigger buttons and don't break the gaming experience psychologically by tapping on the screen and also don't see areas because fingers on screen. Are you dellusional? The PSP will go out of stock permanently in 2012 or first half 2013. The old PSP games in stores will go OOP.
The Uncharted demo was obviously made with the intent of showing off the NGPs new tricks, anyone who's played the Uncharted games before will know just how great Naughty Dog are with the pacing, it's not an issue.
